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It was 17 degrees this morning. Burrrrrr!
I've been working outside jobs for over 30 years now. You have to plan your work with the seasons. Things are different now. It seems awfully possible that climate change is a real thing.
The seasons here seem to be delayed by about three to four weeks now. It's making for some weird side effects. Winters here in Maine can be pretty cold and snowy. Push the exit of winter back by four weeks ... you're getting into the longer days of sunlight. Average daytime winter temps are in the 30's & 40's. ( They should be in the 20's & 30's )
Anyways ... there's less snow. What there is melts off pretty quick. You might as well forget about ice fishing & ski mobiles in this area. The locals had to travel 200 miles north for their favorite wintertime recreation this year.
Quote:
Originally Posted by jimicrk
Official Maine Temperature Conversion Chart 60 above New Yorkers try to turn on the heat. People in Maine plant gardens and go fishing. 50 above Californians shiver uncontrollably. People in Maine sunbathe while fishing. 40 above Italian & English cars won't start. People in Maine drive with the windows down on the way to go fishing. 32 above Distilled water freezes. While out fishing, Mainers notice that the water in Moosehead Lake is getting a little thicker. 20 above Floridians don coats, thermal underwear, gloves and woolly hats. People in Maine throw on a flannel shirt so they can fish at 3:00 in the morning. 15 above New York landlords finally turn up the heat. People in Maine have the last cook-out before it gets cold. 0 People in Miami all die from shock. Mainers lick the flagpole to tell which side of the lake the ice is thinnest (so they can go fishing). 20 below Californians fly to Mexico. People in Maine get out their winter coats, so they can drag their uninsulated ice fishing cabins out on the lake with the tractor. 40 below Hollywood shatters into a pile of frozen faux jewelry. The Girl Scouts in Maine are selling cookies door to door among the ice fishing communities on the lakes. 60 below Polar bears begin to evacuate the Arctic. Maine's Boy Scouts postpone "Winter Survival" classes until it gets cold enough. Instead they go fishing with their folks, and work on their bare-handed catches at the ice fishing holes. 80 below Mount St. Helen's freezes. People in Maine rent some videos to watch during their overnights in their ice fishing cabins. 100 below Santa Claus abandons the North Pole. Mainiacs get frustrated because they can't thaw the keg while fishing. 297 below Microbial life no longer survives on dairy products. Cows in Maine complain about farmers with cold hands. 460 below Absolute zero on the Kelvin scale. ALL atomic motion stops.
People in Maine start saying "Cold 'nuff for ya?"
(answer: "ayuh, 'bout time to hit the lake and catch a couple…")500 below Hell freezes over. The New England Patriots win the Super Bowl and the Red Sox win the World Series.
I've got most of my wintertime stockpile of scrap & e-waste processed through now. It was nice to have some quiet time and hunker down for the winter but it's coming to an end. Feels like the change came much too soon.
The world is coming back to life here off the coast of Maine. Saw some Canadian geese headed North a few days ago. Most of the snow has melted off. Daytime temps are in the 40's and the lawn is starting to show a little green. The mud is starting to dry out. I haven't heard the song birds for months but they've made their debut. Our seasonal residents have been returning in droves over the past week or so. I slept with the window open last night.
About the only thing left is the spring peep frogs. You know you're pretty much in the clear when you hear them singing down in the wetlands at night.
Of course ... it doesn't ALWAYS hold true to form. We had a wicked cold snap after they had come out one year. The swamp froze back over and turned em' into peepsicles .
Such is the rhythm of life when you live by the seasons.
It's a funny thing CD. We seem to have different roles in life. I've been tasked with turning a dump into a transfer station. The material comes in ... gets sorted & processed to a degree ... then shipped out ASAP. It takes a certain sense of urgency to keep everything moving in a timely way. There's a lot more to the job than i ever would have thought when i first hired in but it's a fun challenge. There are all these problems that come up which have to be solved. There's never a dull moment. Some days are straight out from open to close with people pulling and tugging at me all day long. They all want or need something from me. Other times things are a little more quiet and i have chance to work on the machinery or tend the piles. It's amazing really. The eventual cleanup cost on one of the piles that accumulated over the past 30 years will be over a million dollars by the time it's all said and done. No rest for the wicked i s'pose. I think i'll go in on my day off and see if i can't make a little more progress with that pile today.They don't mind if i put in a little more overtime as long as i stay within the operating budget.
As the weather goes: I'll never forget a wisdom that was passed on to me as a young apprentice carpenter. We generally worked outdoors year round back then in all but the very worst conditions.
One of the old time carpenduhs once remarked : " You lose a lot of good days to the wind." That always seemed to be especially true in the springtime.
He also said: "Measure twice and cut once" ... young grasshoppah'. There ain't no such thing as a lumber stretcher.
He used to laugh when the killer bees came flying out of my vest.
It seems that better days are coming. Sunny and in the low 60's today. Perfect working outdoors weather. Heard the peep frogs for the first time on the way home from work this afternoon. It's almost time for blackfly & tourist season to arrive now.
The running joke here is that you can slap the blackflies but you can't slap the tourists. That kind of thing is bad for business. ;)
You probably won't have too much longer to wait CD. It's good that you don't have a lot of blackflies where you are. They can be a real hassle when you are working outside. I generally have to light up a cigar and keep a good smudge going throughout the day to keep em' at bay. That seems to work with the tourists too !
Jeez ... it was an awfully nice day yesterday. Sunny,dry, and in the 60's with a light breeze. Went into work for half a day and then spent the afternoon on a metals fabrication project that's been on the docket for awhile. Everything went incredibly well. Haven't done any AC arc stick welding for years but it went off without a hitch.
It's funny ... some days the welder throws a really nice bead and other days i can barely strike a spark. Don't think it's the machine. Seems more likely the guy running the machine doesn't know what he's doing.
Maybe i'll just blame it in the weather instead ................... ;)
Next time burn a couple of rods on a piece of scrap metal this will warm up the transformer coils inside the welder and drive off any moisture. If your using the welder daily this won't be necessary.Quote:
Originally Posted by hills
Thanks .... i'll give it a try. That would explain why the welder seems to work best on those bright (dry) sunny days. It sits for long periods of time out in an unheated shop. A bit of accumulated moisture certainly seems within the realm of reason.Quote:
Originally Posted by alloy2
Where's the fun in a magic wand ? Challenging problems to to sort out are the spice of life. Overcoming them fosters new learning & personal growth. :)Quote:
Originally Posted by ChildhoodDream
Whew ... thank gawd. Can you imagine how tedious it would be to live forever. It's the end that gives life meaning.Quote:
Originally Posted by ChildhoodDream
Just livin' the dream here. It's a pretty good quality of life on the island. Spring has sprung and everything is coming to life again. Lots more scrapping opportunities these days so it's time to shift the machine into high gear and get er' done. Sixty to sixty five hour work weeks are about the norm this time of year. You work hard in the spring,summer, and fall to put up enough to carry you through the following winter. You live by the seasons.
It's a lot like the way my grandfather's generation lived back in the late 1800's - early 1900's. You do it a little differently in this modern world but the basic idea is still the same. Reminds me of the fable they taught us back in grade school about the grasshopper and the ant.
https://www.umass.edu/aesop/content.php?n=0&i=1
I think there might have been one week out of the year I wasn't able to get outside and work this last year.... definitely different here we work outside year round
I generally used to figure on shutting down my outside construction jobs by January 1st. because the working conditions were so adverse. The coldest day we had this past winter was 35 deg. below zero with the wind chill. The snow is even worse though. It's nearly impossible to get anything done when everything is buried in two feet of snow. You spend four hours shoveling just to do an hour's worth of work.
About the only good thing is that the winters here are a lot milder than they were back in my grandfather's day.
I think you guys get the heat though ... don't you ?
Being a cold weather dog ... i start to lose interest in work when the thermometer hits 80 deg. I get heat beat & irritable. Sunny and in the 50's is about ideal working conditions in this neck of the woods.
It will be in the 90s for at least a month or two....I try to work in the morning a bit and then in the evening avoiding the middle part of the day....gonna take me a trip up the north east coast as I've never been further north than Baltimore....give me some sights I should see up that way
All interesting stuff Mike. You guys do get some winter weather then. My oldest son moved down to Myrtle Beach about 15 years ago. He's pretty happy with it. The winters are easier there. A life here in Maine just wasn't for him.
I used to split my work days when i was doing roofing work in the summer. It gets pretty hot up there by 11:00 am so you bail out and come back after 3:00 in the afternoon and work into the evening. I wish i could do that with my current job but we have fixed hours of operation. It's a large open area that runs about 10 deg. cooler in the winter and 10 deg. hotter in the summer. Some days i'll go into work a few hours early (5:00am) just to get the manual labor done and then hole up inside for the rest of the day. It helps to stay out of the direct sun and drink lots of water.
It's hard to recommend any one particular thing to see because i don't get off island much. It's easy enough to do because there's a causeway over to the mainland but i just don't have the desire to travel anywhere in particular. I grew up just outside of Boston but knew from a pretty early age that i wanted to move here some day. It's my family's heritage and the only place that ever felt like home.
If you do get this far North ... try taking Route 1 up the coast from Southern Maine to the Bar Harbor area. It's kinda touristy and heavy with traffic in the summer but there's lots of natural beauty along the way. (You get the amenities on rt.1.) If you want to see the real Maine head inland into the Western & Northern parts of the state that haven't been touched by development just yet. Any of the State or National parks are pretty good places to visit too.