Town trip

I broke out of the foothills today, venturing warily some 60 miles south to Fresno. I had to buy some more bricks to finish a project, building a sort of sidewalk around our backup generator. When the clouds gather and we don’t get many kilowatt hours from the sun, we start burning propane.

The Highlander drove well, happy that it had a newly- and properly-installed oil filter. The old one was on so tight I think it must have hurt. I filled the tank at the Costco gas station, feeling lucky to find gasoline at only $3.50 per gallon. On the way to town I saw that diesel fuel was $4.15, but then it’s home heating season in the midwest and east, and that’s what they use. This summer it should drop to below regular gas price. While at Costco, a woman drove up in a Prius. I was going to ask her if the dash display started blinking with the message, “Springtime starts tomorrow — Don’t forget to buy fuel for the season!” But she was bigger than me, and didn’t look too friendly, having to put fuel in her car every month or so. I almost envied her for her fuel-sipping car, but don’t think I could easily haul 70 heavy bricks plus a week’s worth of groceries over our rough road in that little thing.

Tomorrow I get to crawl around in the dirt and lay some more bricks. Yay.