It was a beautiful sunny mild day yesterday, and so I thought that I should probably wash the car, since we get dirty every time we get close to it. (Above you see how dirty it was).
Washing the car meant driving it up to the hydrant in the barnyard. That hydrant had been frozen all year, so before I started the task of washing the car, I thought I had better just check the hydrant first to make sure it had thawed out. When I pulled up the handle, water came forcibly spraying out sideways from the hydrant pipe, soaking my pants. Over the winter, the ice that formed in the pipe, swelled, and split the steel pipe, which caused the leak.
“Damn,” I thought, “What should I do now?”
I after some thought, I figured out that I might be able to put a patch over the leak, and began a search for materials that I might be able to use. I found an old roll of some “stop-leak” tape, and cut a patch out of an old bicycle inner tube, and some plumbing screw clamps. It was one of those instances when I was happy that I hang on to things, instead of throwing them away.
I constructed a patch over the leak. Although it didn’t completely stop the spray, it lessened it quite a bit, enough for me to go ahead and wash the car.
The whole episode reminded me that every time I think I am going to do something, I discover that before I do that thing, I end up having to do something else first. If I am lucky, I will only have to do one thing first, and not two or three things, which often happens.
No comments:
Post a Comment