Aug 4 Water Tank

Drinking water is essential to a healthy lifestyle.

Stephen Curry

Cold ginger beef is still ginger beef. I have been craving ginger beef for a few weeks, I finally saw some in the store today. I am eating that right now, but my story today starts a few hours before that.

The wait was over, I haven’t had running water since a surgeon kept me in the hospital for 45 days in the middle of a very cold winter, while he kept changing his mind on as to how best to repair my broken neck. That was Dec 2014.

Today I could drive into town and pick up my water tank. I had to pick up my disability cheque. Yes, I am severely disabled, that made today a bigger challenge. Yesterday while sorting tools and organizing my back pain was so severe I had to lay on the floor for a few hours. That is just the beginning, my knees are shot, my right ankle, left wrist and I have balance problems and as if that wasn’t enough sometimes my muscles just painfully seize up, just like the frog’s leg in high school science when you add electricity.

I poured some gas down Gracie’s throat, got her to fire up, once the garage doors were closed off we went, first to the post office. My cheque wasn’t in my mailbox, a stop at the counter and the nice woman did a search and found my cheque. I loaded some cat food and another box that had arrived a few days ago, into the van. Oh yeah, I still needed to unload those.

Off we went to the town. I stopped to have a look at the tank, before paying for it. There it was sitting in the only mud puddle around. I moved it a little and decided that it might be possible for me to manhandle that inside the house. I paid for it and got them to put it on the roof of the van. I managed to get straps thrown over the top and have them drop down the holes in the tank. But there was no way to get them from under the tank.

I walked into the store found a broom handle, and a rubber strap with a hook. In a few minutes, I had fashioned a happy hooker. I was able to grab the straps and get the back of the tank secured. Over the years I had lost some parts of the straps and realized I needed more. Another walk to the store and I purchased more. I would need some anyways to secure the debris in the trailer when that time came.

After getting the tank secured front and back and on a strap secured it for side to side movement, I noticed that there was an opening at the bottom of the tank. I needed a cap. Another 200-yard walk to the store and the nice lady sent me off with a two-inch cap. The hole was smaller, so after another walk inside I tried a 1 1/2″ still too big. One more walk in and a 1 1/4″ cap fit.

I was ready to head deeper in to town and pick up a few groceries. I got that done and realized that I had sealed the back window in with straps. I had gas cans in there that needed filling and I needed some 4×4 posts to finish building the deck. Those would have to wait.

With all the town stuff done I headed for home. I took it very slowly, if that tank fell off it would shatter and even if it didn’t I would never be able to get it back on the roof. We used a forklift to get it up on there. DId I mention that it was extremely windy today. With crazy gusts happening.

I travelled home at 40 MPH, only worried once when the turbulence from a logging truck shook the van and the water tank. It held and I thanked the Gods above.

I stopped once more in the village I had spent a little too much getting the tank and I had to pay bills. And I just remembered I forgot to pay a bank in town for my land. I had to go back in tomorrow.

So I managed to drag the tank off the van slide it down a board, drag it a hundred feet through four-foot high grass, stand it up drag it through the door with an 1/8 of an inch to spare. Drag into the next room, now I needed to remove a window and a part of a wall to get it into my old office. I also needed to clean that up and finish the wall and insulate it before winter. Then comes the plumbing I needed to get a water filter in place before filling it. The outside rainwater tank was full of swimming bugs How they got there is beyond me. Looking at the new tank I also hoped we would get more rain. The rainwater tank had only about two hundred gallons in it, this tank was 330.

I also wanted to automate my Berkey water filters so the tank would fill automatically. I had planned it that way, but never finished the setup. I had hoped there would be less lugging buckets of snow this winter to melt on the woodstove.

When I was done I was way overheated, in severe pain and barely stumbled upstairs to my desk. Did you know, cold ginger beef is still ginger beef.