Pulling the ripcord. Major life change

Cheering you both on Shawn- I think a lot of us are. 

grover said:

Cheering you both on Shawn- I think a lot of us are. 

Thanks very much. It means a lot.

Funny things when you move this far. I hardly hear from the people who were my really close friends but I get plenty of calls or messages from people who I wasn't as close with.

In reply to ShawnG :

I can relate to this.  

Been a long time but here's an update.

Winter is done and I've been getting busier in the shop. 5 jobs in progress and a couple more waiting to come in. I'm Polaris certified now so hopefully that brings more powersports business my way.

We're getting our seedlings started in the greenhouse, trying for an early season this year.

Had a win this week, brought home an import 14x40 lathe for the shop. Quality seems good, it's barely been used and it was about half the price of a new one.

It's the same style as the Grizzly G4003 and the PM1340GH just with a bit more swing.

We've got some brand new baby chicks and the potatoes and onions are in the ground.

"House of Tools" disappeared years ago, but they did bring in decent Taiwan-made machinery.  I have a "Force International" 12x36 that was originally sold through them - I got many replacement parts for it from Grizzly.

grover said:

Cheering you both on Shawn- I think a lot of us are. 

totally

AngryCorvair (Forum Supporter) said:

grover said:

Cheering you both on Shawn- I think a lot of us are. 

totally

Thanks everyone. 

Had a customer bring me a 2008 Ultra Classis for some brake work today!

Funny thing, I lived on the coast my whole life, never worked on a boat. I moved to the middle of the flat, bald prairie and two guys have brought me boats to fix. Lol.

In reply to SkinnyG (Forum Supporter) :

I worked for KMS Tools when we bought what was left of House Of Tools.

Oh right, I forgot about that.

Another late update.

The repair shop business is going gangbusters. I've had to register to collect provincial and federal tax now. I'm also fully insured.

This is good because we've had a really long, wet spring which has set the garden back a month.

Got a call from a neighbor to remove some bees from their shed.

Opened the wall to find this:

Remnants of old colonies. put the good comb into frames, swept all the bees into a brood box, hoping i had the queen and closed it up.

Came back tonight and everyone had moved into the box so I did something right.

Strapped it up and drove home! Yay, free bees!

Glad to see things are working out for you!

Thanks, love following this thread.

In reply to ShawnG :

What will happen if you didn't get the Queen?

AngryCorvair (Forum Supporter) said:

In reply to ShawnG :

What will happen if you didn't get the Queen?

The bees will go find her, wherever she ends up. I'd have had a box with no bees in it and a ball of bees somewhere else.

If you get the queen in the box they will all stay with her. You'll see them at the entrance with their butts facing out, fanning their wings to send the queen smell out and let the others know where to find her.

These bees hadn't set up housekeeping long enough for her to start laying eggs, not any that I could find anyway.

If you find comb with fresh eggs, the workers can use those to make a new queen in case you damage her doing the cut-out. Since I didn't see any eggs, I had to be careful moving everyone.

You can also end up with a laying worker when there's no queen.

This is a worker bee who lays eggs. Problem is, those eggs won't become worker bees, just drones.

Only the queen can make new worker bees.

The drones are all male, their only job is to eat, grow up and procreate with the queen. After that, they just sit around, eating and taking up space so the workers drag them out of the hive to die in the wilderness.

All the workers are female bees.

So, since everyone moved into the box, we know you got the Queen even though you didn't specifically identify her on "moving day", yes?

very cool, thank you for updating this thread.

In reply to AngryCorvair (Forum Supporter) :

Yes, you got it.

The queen is bigger and longer. 

It can still be hard to find her in the tens of thousands of bees in a colony.

In reply to ShawnG :

Bees are super cool. Do yall have hive beetles up there? 

In reply to grover :

Not sure. Either I don't have them or I'm not seeing any on inspection. Or my bees are dealing with them.

Found a fair amount of wax moth larvae in the old comb I took out.

Update. 

From what I found, we don't have small hive beetle in Saskatchewan-yet-.

I'm sure it's coming.

Small update.

I'm in the middle of a road trip back to B.C. to pick up some Model A parts and see some friends. 

My life may be about to get busier and weirder again.

More details later if things happen. 

I'm back and life has indeed gotten weird again.

One of my customers is flying me out to Vancouver for a week to set up a shop in his garage and start making regular trips to take care of his cars.

Apparently he is dissatisfied with the service he's currently receiving.

This all starts mid-September.

It's like the Mafia. Once you're in, you're in for life. 

ShawnG said:

One of my customers is flying me out to Vancouver for a week to set up a shop in his garage and start making regular trips to take care of his cars.

you're not alone. One of my hot rod buddies from back in MD moved to TX a few years ago to do his own thing. Now it seems he's spending about 1 week per month back in MD at a small shop that specializes in E types.

It's pretty common in the machining industry right now as well..

Glad things are still working out for you in the sticks, though!

I find myself thinking often about this thread in my daily goings-on.  glad to hear everything is going well.  I think a week in Vancouver every once in a while will only make you appreciate the slow life even more :)