Sunday November 9, 2014 Guerneville CA.
Waking up the bulldozer
Today, the plan was to help a couple of my brothers, Mike and Barry clear some fallen trees off of some forest roads up in the hills above my house.
That meant I had to get the bulldozer going after sitting around doing nothing for over a year. The dozer was parked up in the hills, so we loaded fuel and oil and a charged up battery in my brothers truck and took off up the hill.
I put the fuel in the dozer and dumped a bunch of oil in the leaky transmission. Greased it up and pushed the start button and we were good to go, so we did.
I was to meet my brothers at the top of the hill were we would clean up a bunch of fallen trees across the road.
They took off first and I caught up with them at this unexpected down tree. Since they were in front, they had to cut it out of the way with a chain saw, while I watched and waited.
They took off again as they could go much faster than the bulldozer.
I followed along at my slow, but sure pace along this road.
We had to go about a mile. I was almost to the spot here.
The dozer is leaking something
As I pulled into the spot were we were going to do the work it looked like the tractor had a bad oil leak as the tracks were all wet. Closer inspection showed there was radiator fluid leaking up near the top front of the tractor. I thought, maybe the water pump might have failed. We were thinking of calling it a day and coming back with some tools another day to see what the problem was.
Sitting around talking about it for a bit, I decided to see if I could get the engine covers and hood off with the little adjustable ranch I had brought up to install the battery. The wrench just barely fit on the bolts, I had to force it.
A broke down tractor. My brother Barry offering his chain saw socket wrench to get the exhaust stack off. He has a black mask on as he is doing some skin treatment to his face and isn’t supposed to get any sun on it.
After working on getting the covers off, we could see it was a little rubber hose, about four inches long on the water pump. It looked like a packrat had eaten through the hose last winter.
We go get parts and tools
Barry and I went on down to my house to find a piece of hose and clamps and some more tools.
On the way down the hill, Barry kept stopping his truck to pick up some mushrooms here and there, so it took a little longer than expected.
We got what we needed and headed back up the hill, were I repaired things and filled the radiator with new fluid. Turned the key and we were good to go, so we worked on clearing some big trees off the road, but I was so busy bulldozing, that I didn’t take any pictures of that.
We cleaned up our mess and I left them in their truck and I drove the dozer down the hill a ways on this road.
Park and walk
I parked the dozer here and walked down the hill to my house.
Checked the tanks water level gauge
I stopped by our water tanks to check the gauge,which read full, so all is good with our water springs.
It was getting late in the day as I walked along this road, almost home.
An apple would sure taste good
As I was walking down through the old apple orchard, I was looking for an apple tree that might still have some apples on it and spotted this one, which looked promising from were I was looking at it.
Sure enough, this tree still had some apples on it. They were winter apples that get crunchier and sweeter the longer they remain on the tree, until they start to rod.
I picked one to eat and put two in my pocket for later. Hummmmmmmmmmm, a great tasting apple.
I was eating that apple as I walked into my yard and put some of the stuff away we’d pulled out earlier to do the dozer repair. By this time it was almost dark, so I went in and put some fresh wood on the wood stove coals to get it going and that was my day.