Our first stop was to check out my sisters boat which she leaves parked at her friends house in West Tisbury...the gas cans were still full and her battery was still in the boat, it is 8 degrees with 12 " of snow on the ground......will this boat run in the spring? ...probably not....
We empty the fuel out of the two five gallon gas cans, but we cannot run it now there is no access to water...lets keep our fingers crossed...although I am sure that won't help.We don't remove the battery because her friend is in Puerto Rico for the winter and all the buildings are locked up so there is no way to leave it, it looks like she may be buying a battery in the spring..^%$&^#@@@
Our next stop is Our friend Johns house. We dropped in on him last night and he asked us to help him with a project. A tree limb has fallen in the parking lot of Alleys General Store ( this is the oldest continually running mercantile in the country) his family owned it for generations and he still sorts the mail over there, but it was sold to the Marthas Vineyard Preservation Trust years ago...it is a very eclectic and cool place, although the prices are a bit steep... the last time this Homelite chainsaw was run was the last time we ran it....we cut some bushes on the side of his house with it...he says 5 years ago, I will bet it is closer to 10 years ago. See the picture to the right , if you look closely you can see our clotherpin repair.....Mr. Fix-it first checks to see if there is fuel in it, there doesn't appear to be. He then checks and fills the bar oil. The throttle lever is flopping around so we have to improvise....to hold the throttle open we stick a clothespin to prop open the throttle...Mr. Fix-it tries to pull it over, it sputters several times then it catches., and then it stalls...finally it is running but the chain is not spinning. One side of the chain is free but the other side is rusted to bar, we pry it out with a screwdriver and work the chain back and forth until it is free. Mr. Fix-it takes the handle apart and finds that the throttle cable has come undone...thankfully it is not broken. He reattaches it and puts it back together. Now for a test run, John gets a piece of wood....it starts very slowly to cut through and continues very slowly.....the chain is so dull that it is smoking, it will not cut. The fallen tree over at Alleys will not be cut today. It is Sunday on Marthas Vineyard and the old adage is "Slow down you're on-island".....meaning nothing is open today so you won't get a new chain and you won't get anyone th sharpen your old one....not today and maybe not anytime soon. Islanders march to their own drummers.
LIVE GOOD,
deb
