Another week of spring weather in January. Is this global warming or global oompapa? I don't know. I just know it is really pleasant. I like it! Every day like this is one day of less winter and another day closer to spring.
This weather has water melted on top of the ice in sloughs and turned most towns into large skating rinks. Sooner or later someone is going to fall and break something. Take your time, don't hurry, be safe. So for the time being, you have to take little baby steps, so what, beats falling. Be careful out there.
The temperature out there is record setting. The highest temperature ever recorded on a Jan. 22 at Lloydminster was 8 C. We have weather records going back 100 years. Meadow Lake also set a new record that day of 10 C. I am sure other places set records too, but those were the ones I heard about. All in all it has been very nice.
Other than the icy conditions the only other drawback has been the never-ending wind. It has blown in the morning, blown all afternoon and all night besides. We must be getting to the 40 days and 40 nights of wind. This would be a good time to own one of those big wind turbines.
There is no hoar frost to report, but you must realize that six months from now it will be hot and windy. The daylight time in a day is really starting to show now. That one minute in the morning and another one at night. This is the race of the seasons as when we get to June 21 we go back the other way.
Saskatchewan is a really nice place to live with the long days of sunlight. I could not live any place that has overcast, dreary days. Give me sunlight and I will put up with a little bit of winter.
On the home front, Jaco is still struggling with the truck. We got a hydraulic motor from Princess Auto. We were going to use it as a pump and he installed it in the tank. Apparently some hydraulic motors are not pumps as when he turned the PTO on it promptly broke the yoke in the drive shaft. Drained the tank, took it all apart, took it back to Princess Auto and exchanged it for a pump. Got the pump home and here it only runs the opposite direction of the PTO. Lord love a billy goat, there are a lot of troubles when you try to jerry rig something.
Jaco has found a hole in the tarp. The support rod for the tarp that runs down the centre of the truck box was broken and got the tarp ripping. The rest of the tarp is still good as it was not that long ago we replaced it. He welded the support rod and I gave him my grandfather's old harness and glove patching kit with heavy needles and thread and he sewed the tarp back together. I did not ask him how long it took. I am sure it would have taken me a lot longer.
In the oil patch, the truckers in this family both tell me they have been cut back one day a week but everyone is still working. The extra day off is rotated amongst the trucks so no one is hit too hard. Any well that is a water jerker is being shut down. I am sure that any well that might need a service rig, the companies will add up the expenses and if they can't get enough money back, then that well will get closed down. That is how this will work. The companies start closing border-line producers and soon there is less income and more layoffs. As I said before, a downward spiral of misery.
The people working in the oil service industry are not so fortunate as they have suffered wholesale layoff. On the seller or usef side, we are all still driving and burning fuel. The trucks on Highway 16 are not less. Every night, you could set your watch at about ten o'clock as the train from the east starts coming by. There is a 70-foot grade climb from Maidstone to Waseca so the train is moving slowly and I have not been out there counting but I suspect that it is 200 empty tankers. After it is past the train from the west comes. There is a mile and a half passing track at Waseca and he has been waiting for the other train to pass. Then he is loaded with tanker cars so he can only be 100 cars long otherwise he can't fit on the siding. I know he is loaded because he comes slowly as he gains speed. It takes the better part of an hour for both trains to pass and then quiet again.
Now they have trains in the mornings and mid-afternoon, too. If you are unfortunate enough to want to go home and there are cars on the track, you will have to go more than two miles around to the next empty crossing. Sometimes they are waiting for the other train. If the train from the west is late, the train from the east will have to wait on the track and he can't pull into the siding because he is too long so he has to sit on the main track.
I don't know anything about the price or the market but I can tell you they have not stopped shipping oil.
Joke of the week from Janet: A lady was hurriedly driving along when she was stopped by the police. The officer walked up to the car and said, "You know you were speeding. I would like to see your driver's licence." "I don't have one," said the lady. "Can I see the car's registration?" asked the policeman. "I don't have any," said the lady. "Whose car is it?" said the policeman. "Oh, it belongs to that dead man in the trunk," she replied.
With that the policeman hurried back to his car and called for backup. Soon three more police cars arrived, including the commander of the local detachment. He walked up to the lady's car, his hand on his pistol. "You driver's licence, please," he said. The lady handed him her driver's license. "Your registration, please," he said. She handed him the registration. Everything was okay, so he said "Open the trunk, please." The trunk was empty so he walked up to the front and asked, "What is going on here? My officer told me you had no driver's license or registration and there was a dead body in the trunk!"
"Oh, what a liar that guy is," she said. "I suppose he told you I was speeding too!"
Ooooh boy!
