Conex? II

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Talked to the folks at the container place. First thing, the difference between new and used. Used ones are a better deal but new ones are more secure with shielded padlock hasps and venting to keep condensation at bay. Price difference is about a grand. In all likelihood, I’ll go with the new one. A used one would probably work just fine, but the stakes are too high, in my opinion, to try to shave a grand offa things by getting something that may or may not have an existing problem (leaks, rust, history of toxic cargo leeching into the walls, etc.

Next up is the issue of delivery. The gal at the counter seems pretty sure her guys can get it in there. When the miniex was dropped off last week, that came up on a trailer of approximately the same size as the container (20′), and they dropped that at the big turnaround area near where I need it. Presumably they could get it at least that far and then ‘mule’ it the rest of the way with their crawler.

Once its on the property, I’ll have to jack it up and get it on some blocks a foot or two in the air to keep it off the ground. And once thats done…a world of possibilities become avaialble.

Cost? Well, probably some where north of $5k and south of $6k. Then I’ll need to paint it a less obvious color and add some more camo to it to break up its silhouette.

For right now, I need to print out maps and what not to send to the gal at the container place so she can consult with her boys to make sure that they can get that thing up there. While thats going on, I’ll head up there this weekend and try to figure out where to put it.

Battery possibilities

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When I head up to the Beta Site I take the StarLink setup with me because a) its nice to be able to have some form of contact in case something goes wrong, and b) it is exceptionally handy to have access to YouTube for finding videos on how to do whatever it is I’m up there doing.

StarLink Mini is native 12v which means it runs off of any 12v power source you can come up with. I go with batteries, although there are plenty of people who run it off of other off-grid sources like solar and hydro…and at some point I’ll be one of those people.

StarLink comes with several cables and adapters to allow you to draw power from whatever source you’ve got handy. One of those adaptors is your classic cigarette lighter type. You plug the adapter into your vehicles cigarette lighter (if your vehicle has one…different times, man), plug the USB-C cable into the adapter, plug the other end into your StarLink and youre off to the races.

For the creatively minded, this means all you need to run StarLink off of a 12v marine battery is a female cigarette lighter socket and some battery clamps. Something like this. Affix the clamps to the battery terminals and youre good to go.

Well, when I go up to the Beta Site, I usually have a bunch of Milwaukee M18 tools with me…Sawzall, chainsaw, drill, tire inflator, etc. Could I not simply run StarLink off one of the half dozen batteries I bring with me? Well, actualy, yes…yes you can.


Turns out there are devices out there to let you run cigarette-lighter-style 12v sockets off of your tool batteries. In this case, off of Milwaukee M18 batts. How well does it work? Well, I let the thing power StarLink all night and it still had juice in the morning. More importantly though, it streamlines my logistics train by using the M18 batteries I was already bringing up there. If you’re a Dewalt or Ryobi kinda guy, there are similar adaptors as well.

As I looked around, there appears to be a thriving aftermarket ecosystem of products out there that allow you to use your tool batteries for other purposes. Lehman’s, for example, offers a light that runs on tool batteries. And, as you dig around, you find more and more things tailored to use these handy power sources.

Anyway, I mention all this because if youre going to be off the beaten path and need to power something, you may want to investigate the possibilities afforded by these battery systems.

Conex?

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Putting a cargo container up at the Beta Site takes care of a lot of issues….secure storage, a place to secure the SxS, an elevated platform, a place to keep a battery system, etc, etc. I mean, its got a lot going for it. My hesitation has been that I cannot fathom getting a trailer in there to deliver the darn thing.

However……

My buddy cleaned up the alternate access into the property, and while it would still be a challenge for a trailer, it might not be a challenge for this.I Mean, getting a trailer with a miniexcavator on it up there turned out to be possible. Presumably a 20′ container could make it to that same location and then they could take it the rest of the way with this delivery system.

I need to talk to these people and see how much this is gonna cost. Getting a container up there would streamline a lot of things.

 

Antlerless tag

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Got a letter from FWP (aka The Fish Cops) yesterday. I got the antlerless elk tag I put in for. Same hunting district as the Beta Site, so when hunting season rolls around….

My goal (or fantasy, depending on how progress goes) is to spend the weekends up there during hunting season. I’d like to have some small structure built by then to sleep in during the hunting season…we’ll see how that goes. My buddy used the miniex to clear and level an area for a small structure. Now I just gotta get the dang thing built and appointed.

Still unpacking from last weekend. Next weekend I’m taking a friend up there to show him the place. Weekend after that I’ll start shuttling a small amount of stuff up there for hidden storage.

And, of course, I need to get the ball rolling on getting that small structure built. No shortage of things to do and to spend money on.

Long weekend of digging

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24

Where did all the energy I used to have go? Sitting behind a desk too long has definitely put me behind the curve. Five minutes with a shovel and I’m completely gassed. Getting old isnt for sissies….I get that. But, geez, Im not that old yet. Anyway…

So the rental people dropped the excavator off and that worked out as planned. What didnt work out as planned was me getting a flat tire on the way up there.


Not a big deal to change a tire, just a bit of a pain in the ass. But, it also means that for the time I’m up there until the time I return to town, I have no spare tire available. So, what does this mean? Well, the short answer is it means spending money. In the long answer it means buying new tires, a new wheel, and making sure when I go up there I have two spares in the vehicle. And it means making darn sure I take the hilift jack and some jack stands as well because those little hydraulic jacks are fine for working on the paved surfaces. Its a different story on dirt and gravel. So…..$$$. Also managed to somehow break thehandle on the tailgate, which means getting heavy stuff in and out of the truck was a bit more athletic than I had planned. This isnt the first time this has happened. Last time it happened I went to the local dealership and they wanted something like $150 to replace it. I went on eBay, found a replacement for $10. Went on YouTube and found a how-to video, spent $6 for a 10mm socket, and fixed the stupid thing myself.

Anyway, once I was mobile again, I parked at the Beta Site and unpacked. My goal was to leave about half my stuff up there for future trips, especially since, ideally, at the end of this trip I would have a hidden secure place to hide stuff.

A buddy of mine with a lot of experience driving everything and anything that is yellow and runs on diesel came up to ‘help’ me. I put help in quotes because he pretty much did the entire things himself. In one day. He’s a marvel of willpower and work ethic. I’ve no problem giving him a wad of cash next time I see him because he did a heck of a job that he didnt really have to do.

Although he did virtually all the work, I did get some time behind the controls of the miniex and used it for two purposes I had specifically wanted – stage some large rocks to use for blocking the road, and moving some downed trees. I’d never used an excavator before and it was a hoot. The notion that you can rearrange the Earth is a heady thing, man. Rock as big as footlocker? Weighs a several hundred pounds? And you want it where? No problem.

I literally could have spent days shuttling large rocks around and stacked them to create walls and lanes to channel vehicles. It was awesome. I actually may need to investigate buying one of these. But, as much as I was having an outrageously empowering time moving things that a hundred years ago would have taken a team of laborers hours of work, the miniex was there for other purposes. Specifically, to get two tanks in the  ground. Rather than go into a lot of detail I’m just gonna hand you a stack of pictures:

The soil in this particular area was mostly rock-free. Digging was about as easy as could have been hoped for. The hole for the second tank, however, was virtually nothing but shale….

In the end, both tanks got into the ground and were covered up. I need to go pick up a bag of grass seed and have a couple rainfalls before things look complelety innocuous.

Speaking of innocuous, game cams caught another trespasser (and his dog).

I suspect I know whats going on here. While I was up there this weekend, I went and walked the fence between me and the state land. When the survey was done, I took a picture of myself standing next to the corner marker. In that photo there was no barbed wire fence…it had been knocked down by fallen trees. When I was there this weekend I had the notion that it seemed like there were more upright t-posts with wire than there were last time I was there. I checked against the photos I took and, sure enough, there was no upright fence there when the photos were taken..but its up now. So, I think this guy was a state employee walking the wire and fixing what needed fixing. So…not gonna get too bent outta shape.

All in all it was a bit of an exhausting weekend. But some big stuff got done. While we had the miniex available, my buddy cleaned up the alternate road into the place which means that it might now be a vit more feasible for me to get someone to haul a ten or twenty foot container in here so I can start leaving more stuff up there in relative security. And there may or may not have been some holes dug for caches, outhouses, and a few other things that call for holes.

While I was out there this weekend, it also gave me an opportunity to try out and test some other gear which will wind up getting their own posts.

So…progress contnues, as does the hemorrhagingof money. But, ya gotta do what ya gotta do.

 

Weekend plans

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It’s gonna be an interesting week. First off, its Independence Day weekend. I know a lot of people just say ‘Fourth of July” but that makes as much sense as running around wishing people a “Merry December 25th”. Pedantic? Absolutely. But I think its a bit more respectful to the idea of the holiday to call it by it’s proper name. And its a reinforcement about what the holiday is about – the armed struggle for liberty, not just a day to take off from work and grill hot dogs.

Also on the schedule is playing with a mini-ex this weekend. This will be something of an adventure. It’ll also mark the first time I’m spending the night up there. Should be interesting. My goal is to dig the holes to bury the two poly tanks I hauled up there, a couple holes for some caches, a few holes for some concrete piers, and to move a couple larger rocks around. As I said, it should be entertaining.

For the last year or so, I’ve been kind of segregating stuff into a ‘To Be Moved To The Beta Site’ pile. So at the moment, I’ve a small mountain of stuff awaiting relocation to a hidden cache at the Beta Site. Things like sealed blue barrels full of freeze dried pouches, ammo cans full of gun stuff, etc, etc. It’ll be nice to get this stuff moved and get some space back in my house.

However, this is all predicated on the excavation project going the way I want it to…which might be a tall order since I’ve zero excavator experience and no idea how rocky the ground is. But…I’ll have a three-day weekend to figure it out. And I’ll have StarLink up there so I’ll probably make some posts on the progress of things. Assuming the bears don’t eat me.

Oh, and before I forget…speaking of caches and caching…this dropped in a timely manner the other day:

 

Bargain meat

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20

The Meat Tray, praised be its memory, is a thing of the past and its never coming back. But, my local Albertson’s still ‘remainders’ meat at 30-50% off when it hits the ‘sell by’ date. This invariably results in me cleaning them out of whatever it is that has caught my palate’s fancy. For the last few months its been ground beef….an all-purpose animal protein (like chicken breast) that lends itself to all sorts of meals.

They remainder other things, too. Steaks, roasts, etc, but I usually just stick to the ground beef for its low(er) price and versatility. However, today I caught the pork on sale and marked down 50%. I only grabbed about a third of what was there because, honestly, Im running out of freezer space. I picked up another freezer a few years back to supplement my big chest freezer and both of those are darn near at capacity. Time to start rotating out.

According to the receipt, what should have set me back around $77 came out to less than half of that. So, go me!

Im not terribly worried about starving to death. I think that, on the whole, its pretty hard to starve to death in a country of $6 rotisserie chickens. I want to put that in perspective for a moment. A 5# bag of potatoes is about $3 at Winco, a chicken is $6, and a 15 oz. can of yellow corn is about a buck. Half a chicken, corn, and mashed potatoes for two meal comes out to about four bucks for dinner for today and lunch for tomorrow. For an outlay of ten bucks. Since virtually no job is less than ten dollars an hour these days, I argue that not being able to afford to eat is a bit misleading.

But, as I said, Im not worried about starving. I’m worried about inflation and supply chain disruption. America is the only country in history where “Theres nothing to eat” means “theres nothing I want to eat”. In this country, it means “I dont want pancakes and canned pears for breakfast again”. Everywhere else it means, “There is (literally) no food in the house.”

“Buying the dip” when it comes to meats gives me a lot of margin in the event of a job less, supply issue, or other disruption. It’d be crazy not to take advantage of these sorts of sales.

Holemaking

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16

Went ahead and rented a mini excavator for the Independence Day weekend. The rental of the excavator itself was pretty reasonable. The delivery/pickup for it was another story. But…my small truck probably doesnt have the oomph for a twenty foot trailer, I dont have experience navigating goat trails with a twenty foot trailer, and the last thing I need is to go through the humiliation and expense of getting a twenty foot trailer stuck on some insane switchback on the way to the property. To me, it was worth it to just throw money at it and transfer all that risk and work to someone else. I agree that this is a talent or skill I will need to pick up at some point, but for now…time can substitute for money, and money can substitute for time.

A ‘new’ truck is in the future at some point….Ideally something with the formerly-common-now-hard-to-find eight-foot bed, and a bit more gravitas for hauling heavy loads. But thats at a later date. RIght now, today, I need to get things rolling a little harder and a little faster. Starting this week the days are getting shorter and I’ve done pretty much jack in terms of getting a small structure set up there.

My needs on this holiday trip are stupid simple – two holes about 5-6 feet deep to contain the 500- and 750-gallon Roth Multitanks that I’m purchasing. Dimensionally, they only differ in length…one is about twice the length of the other ….five feet long and nine feet long. This means displacing …hm….51x62x60….four cubic yards for the tank itself and that doesnt include the areas immediately around it or the depth on top of the tank to the surface. About seven cubic yards for the larger tank.

Since I have a three day weekend at that time, it seems like a good time to camp out there. That should be an adventure, what with the bears and all. I need to start getting my list of things to take up there together. If I forget something, the nearest shopping is almost 90 minutes away.

And , in other news, I’m dropping a cashiers check at the surveyors tomorrow. Final price was 66~% of what my ‘worst case’ price would have been. But, it’s worth whatever it cost. I now have a very high level of confidence about what is and is not mine, and, more importantly, what is and is not someone elses.

Which reminds me…gamecam caught another trespasser. I’m already in contact with someone to  install a panel gate across the main-and-obvious entry onto the property. I suspect this was simply someone who drove up my road thinking it was just part of the network of roads up there and then had no choice but to continue to a point where he could turn around. I haven’t detected an malice or criminal intent in the two cases. I think they were just cases of people not really knowing they weren’t supposed to be there. But, I didnt spend that money to not have privacy. So…gate. Gotta get the budget setup for that, get some bids, and get that on the calendar.

Looks like summer will be the expensive season.