Generators and Moose

What a weekend!

Saturday, my son Travis was walking home from Coe Hill and he got chased by a moose! He was walking down Lower Faraday road, texting me to let me know he was on his way home, looked up and there was a male moose standing on the road about 30 feet ahead of him. The moose stamped his foot and charged! Travis did exactly what you are suppose to do when a moose charges you, he ran like hell! He ran into the woods, weaved around trees and slid down a steep incline. When he looked up the incline the moose was looking down at him, but thankfully didn't chase him further. What an exciting, but scary adventure!

~*~

Sunday morning we had to put the generator on as the batteries were low, it ran for about ten minutes and then died. We tried to restart it, but the cord wouldn't even pull out! Oh Gods! That's not a good sign at all! I had work, so we figured we'd take a look at it after my work was done.

Later Sunday afternoon and all of Sunday night, we worked on it. We took the whole damn thing apart, cleaned it and tried to figure out what was wrong. We were in a panic, no generator means no water and of course, the water tank was low. No generator means VERY limited power and it means I have to call our friend/landlord Claudia and tell her that the generator is dead. Not cool at all.

We took off the crank and manually turned it. It didn't want to turn at first (which made us more worried), but we kept trying and finally got it to turn. We turned it and turned it and turned it some more, and then put it back together (we manually turned it about 20 times). We took it back outside, tried to start it, the cord pulled once and then it froze again! The starter cord would not pull out!

We went to bed Sunday night with very worried heavy hearts.

Today, Monday morning we tried again. We removed the crank and manually turned it. We turned it 100 times (seriously, we counted!). We put it back together and took it back outside ...

We pulled the starter cord twice before we turned the gas on, everything looked good, we turned the gas on, and then pulled the cord again. The fourth pull it started!!!

We ran it an hour, filled the water tank and got the batteries charged up.

Thank the Gods. I was ready to cry, I was so upset!

I'm sitting here right now with the loud hum of the generator in the background ... what a happy sound :)

Not sure what happened, but we seem to have it fixed. It's actually running smoother now than what it was before.

~*~

Living off grid in the forest is always interesting, sometimes a little scary, but always interesting!