Well, first off, here’s a little fella who I look forward to seeing real soon….

Todays trip was one of the more interesting ones. Hauling a 500 gallon Roth Multitank up there for future use. Managed to fit it into the back of my itty bitty pickup truck (although I had to turn the tank on its side) and get up there with no problem. However, it was a rather awkward and heavy object to get out of the back fo the truck by hand. Figured I’d just give it a shove and let gravity do the work. Smarter, not harder, yknow? Well, I lost control of it and it rolled off the back of the truck and right over my AK…

Managed to squash the corner of the magazine floorplate and ruin the mag. Here’s the kicker – I only brought one mag for the AK. I figure if I haven’t solved the problem with thirty rounds of steel core another mags worth aint gonna change things to a noticeable degree. So, there I am, in the middle of Beartopia, with a single shot AK. Bad survivalist!

So, what to do? Why, break out the ’emergency rifle’, of course. Reached behind the seat of the truck, opened the gun case, and pulled out the Green Meanie:

That one has eight spare mags with it, by the by. So…moral of the story…spare mag even if you think you wont need the extra ammo because you may just need the mag itself. And, as they say, unless you’re swimming or on fire you can’t have too much ammo.

So, rolled the Roth off the truck and looked like the Presidents escape pod from Escape From New York. (Note that the iamges show it laying on its side. That lid is the top of the thing.)

Size? Uhm… let’s see….

Height: 51″
Width: 62″
Length: 60″

The 750 gallon, which will be up there in two weeks, is same dimensions but 103″ long, which means it’ll hang out the back of my truck by a tad under three feet. Not too unworkable.

Still gotta get the equipment to bury these guys though. Here’s a cross section of what the terrain is like under the grass:

Lotsa shale-like rock. A guy at work wants to sell me this:

Needs a new starter switch assembly which can be had on Amazon for less than a hundred bucks. For a couple grand, it might be worth taking a chance on . It might not have enough cajones for larger projects but for small projects like trenching, post holes, etc, it might be worth it. However, If I wanna drop a good deal more coin he has a Case backhoe for sale….

Thatll do pretty much anything I want but its probably more than I need. To my way of thinking I only need it for a year or two until all my digging projects are done. Then it’s just money sitting idle. However, I am told that once you have a backhoe you discover a lot of uses you didnt know you needed. I imagine I could always sell it to the neighbors…there’s always that one guy living in the sticks that has his own road grade, bulldozer, or similar equipment.

Regardless, something has to happen and soon. In addition to needing to bury these guys, I need to get some holes deep in the ground for concrete piers for a little bare-bones cabin. Starting tomorrow the days get shorter and it’ll snow up there in probably another 10-12 weeks. Tempus fugit.