Being the Wall Spring artesians have managed to encrustate over their twenty-some years to the point where if one is particularly hopeful one might assume that scraping out the pipes would restore flow [as opposed to the less hopeful view that with those holes poked in it + a dozen or so years of intervening drought the aquifer had simply subsided] to something like

1990’s levels I’ve been engaged since early summer in trying to lure Dan Trampe back up to do something about it…and last week was finally The Week.

Though as aforementioned and as turned out not quite Monday but Tuesday morning when, three hours out of Mound House, Omar and Francisco showed up in two impressive trucks from Carson Pump, one pulling a massive compressor and the other a flatbed trailerload of 4” pipe with which they proceeded to brush and flush out the 365′ ‘upper’ well and then

Wednesday first thing,

while I amused myself with trips to the burn pile and over to Parker to exercise the Chevy, squeezed in next to the house to do the same [more easily, except for the setup]

for the house well.   A consummation long awaited whose results will be…well, we’ll see.

With the diesels down the road and house water temporarily disconnected I luxuriated

in the quiet while packing, loading,

bathing [not entirely satisfactorily] out of a bucket and went away

in the morning.

Pounded down the pavements to be in Benicia by two o’clock

where someone had stolen the cover off the ’45.

 

I came up on the very cherry very fast Karmann Ghia above below Truckee, but she was chasing a black Challenger and no way could I catch them.

M