The morning Bryan and I dropped off Dave’s A/C I brought back his partly used Installation Kit* as ours, belatedly shipped, had gone missing somewhere out in Fedex world. It was cool enough to allow us our last lunch on the porch with B, who was barely down the road before

UPS pulled in with the bit we needed to get the cable through the wall, “out for delivery” since Thursday, almost but not quite too late .  I contemplated laddering up to finish the run around

the corner and under the eaves but, already diminished from heat and an incoming cold, postponed the inevitable as at least the coax was no longer being crushed between doors.

The next few days the weather trended towards more seasonable livability as the moon,

full when I arrived in May, was filling out again just in time to leave.

The temps – low nineties – became temporarily more typical for late June, as were the skies.

Last things; our restored address** was returned to its accustomed post out on the road

but despite more forgiving temperatures afternoon walks remained abbreviated as the colds

took holds…the winds, however,

picked up, bringing first dust and then, surprisingly, rain on the tin one eve.

Low energies and expectations so slowed things that I was still laboriously packing when the

Install Kit finally arrived in Gerlach Friday*** afternoon, necessitating a trip in

for that, the Post Office and so, returning with grommets

in hand, the cable was affixed, sealed and coiled inside…phew.

A last evening, supermoon waning, next heat wave on the horizon…

Saturday, after a shortened inspection of Storm Queen, last stuff stuffed into the Taco

and one false start [returned from the gate to retrieve a camera left by the pond on the glider]

we were gone at 8:25.  Phew.

*The cryptic Starlink website lacks any “what’s in the box” info so although each element comes most elegantly packaged our install proceeded in fits bits and starts.  The first arrival contained everything needed to easily get us set up and running; dish, router, connections, tripod mount and 100′ of cable. As Dave had highly recommended the “Volcano Mount” that box came next with said mount [very classy but unnecessary as the tripod worked fine on our porch roof], some nice lagbolts [“], a box of cable clips and most curiously a nylon backpack to carry the dish around in. Once we had those it was obvious we needed the “Installation Kit” for the bits to penetrate the wall [not metal or masonry], clips for 9′ [WTF?] of cable, a device to thread said cable through the wall and, most essential in our case at that point, grommets and silicon to seal said wall. We used everything from the first box, the cable clips from the second, and [having borrowed Dave’s drill bits] just grommets and sealer from the last minute last delivery…also of course had to have something to penetrate our corrugated metal siding, sold separately.  But all’s swell that ends swell, eh?

Oh yes.

**Repainted in the last days by L.

***The day we’d originally intended to leave.