mm, has been a strange few days. Spent Monday and Tuesday trying to design, engineer, attach and wire up solar panel on roof of caravan. Bloody painful. getting old is an annoyance. Tiny screws and glasses kept falling off.. Up ladder, down ladder. Bloody annoying.
Check with cheap chinese Ammeter .. nothing. Um, think I, something is not working. Spent Wednesday in depressive funk.
Thursday, decided to go mow some fucking lawns (I know how to do that - at least). Came home Thurs afternoon, sun shining. Up ladder, took panel off roof, dug "expensive" Ammeter out of cupboard. checked every connection from source - phew .. solar panel out-putting 2.69 Amps. back up ladder, re-installed and reconnected solar panel. Wiggled some connections. Internal Ammeter registering. Ah, am not silly after all.
(this, of course, has nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that i decided to go fer a wander at 11.30pm last night. Ah bugger it, methinks, need to find a pub. Walked to the "usual" .. which was shut. Um, methinks. On the way back a bloke pops out from the Bikie fortress. "S'cuse" , say i, "anything open at this time of night?"
"Nup." says he. "Nah", say i, "Pubs".
"Ah", says he, and points .. across the road.
Now, this is a four lane busy main road. As a general rule have been reluctant to cross it on foot, as eyesight in dim light; and mental calculation of relative trajectories is not as accurate as it used to be .. buuuut .. Nobody depends on my existence, so what the heck.
love the Pub. Olde style front bar. Can't give the name, but tugs at my heritage heartstrings from grandmothers long ago.
sat there for a while. Nobody noticed, which was good. Eventually a young woman glanced. What would i like. "pot of VB, thanks" . "We don't have VB on tap, here. Can or Stubbie?" "Oh".
fumble for glasses, peer at taps. " OK, Coopers light, thanks".
Watched the young people for a while. Pretty normal, really .. been there, done that - then noticed someone different. Slender, grey haired, slightly lost. He looked a bit vague and inebriated, but not drunk. he chose a stool halfway between me and the rest of the drinkers.
Cutting a simple story short, his name is Tom. A welder, but I must be starved for real life conversation, since we managed a two hour intelligent, and articulate conversation.
Real people never cease to amaze me.
3 comments:
When I moved over here I lived in my pickup camper for a while and just bummed around on the streets and at the marina a lot.
Just before moving here I mounted a tube on the front bumper that a longer tube the solar panel mounted on slid into.
Then I could remove it easily and turn it any direction. I never tried driving with it mounted like that but I suppose I could have.
er, um .. yes. have just had another look at the photo. No, have not tested it in the "wind tunnel" of 120KPH. 'twas mostly designed so that i could just step up on the gas bottle on the tow bar and take it off.
Greetings from "Up Above," Davo.
Real people never cease to amaze me--very good line.
Post a Comment