Friday, June 28, 2013

The Orange Jeep Dad

I wandered across an interesting blogger this week, The Orange Jeep Dad. This gentleman is a refugee from the fallout from Obamacare. He lost his job at a hospital and has wife and 6 daughters to care for. His family has a farm in Oklahoma and he is baching it there, working at a new job and preparing to bring his family to the farm. Check him out, he has an interesting story and I wish him and his family well.

Monday, June 24, 2013

My Dad

On the morning of June 14, 2013 I received a horrible call. My step mother called to tell me that she had returned home from the store and found my Father on the floor, dead. Dad had a long history of illness, ranging from hypertension to diabetes and congestive heart failure. Over the last couple weeks he had spoken of and to all that saw him, appeared to be doing very well. Thankfully and regretfully, he followed in the footsteps of most of his male relatives and was hit with a swift and sudden death due to a coronary. No lingering death process for the Carder men.
 I will miss my Father greatly but know that his many years of suffering and frustration are over. I will see him every day though, every time I look in the mirror. He and I have always had an uncanny resemblance. During the few days of the funeral, visitation and other affairs that take place after a death, I saw many people look at me and then do a double take. As his first child and first son, things were not always smooth between us. I was a just like him, hard headed and strong willed and he was a young man new to the act of being a father. As we both grew, we developed a strong relationship. A man with an outgoing nature, he never knew a stranger. I swear, he could sell ice to an Eskimo and charm the tits off a witch. He loved cars the way I love guns, at one time he had over 50 vehicles in the pasture, everyone of them to be "fixed up and sold". Pop, I will miss you and look forward to seeing you later.

Tuesday, June 4, 2013

Changes

This life of mine is currently full of changes. In a short time I will be change from a great big house to a little one bedroom apartment in the local, what passes for, high rise building. I will be investigating prepping in an apartment. I will be trying to figure out what to do with the Harley I will be riding very day possible. Trying to get on with my life.
The biggest issue is this, I like to ride, some would call me a biker. I like to take care of my bike. The low buck apartment that I can afford does not have a parking facility per se. It has a couple of open lots in the scumbag infested downtown environs of Excelsior Springs. Now I can afford, I think, a rental storage unit big enough to hold my tools and work benches and the bike and associated items. I can put the generator in there and the compressor too. That way lets me generate power, to air up tires, charge batteries, run the compressor for other things. I can work on my hobbies for a short time in there. I say a short time as summer is fast approaching and the summer time  climate inside a storage unit is generally not suited for spending your leisure time in. Now all this is feasible. I just have to figure out how to transition from the truck to the bike. The aisles in the storage facilities are too narrow to allow backing the truck into the unit and the unit managers do not allow open storage of your vehicles. I guess this means I will request two parking spaces a the apartment, tarp the bike during bad weather and put it in storage during the winter. And do my spring motorcycle prepping in the storage unit and work on the truck, if allowed, in the parking lot of the apartment. God knows I'm growing to understand hatred.
I keep looking for a different job, I keep hoping for my disability claim to be approved. Either of these would make a huge change in my life.
You don't know the strength of the urges I have to sell all I have except the bike, pack up and leave. Leave for the life of a vagabond. I could have a pretty good amount of  money to live on by selling everything and then getting odd work here and there to supplement that. It's very tempting. Tempting indeed.