You know me too well

You all were so kind in yesterday's comments. Thank you for your never-ending support and votes of confidence.

It's funny how a community of friends, most of whom I have never met in person, know me so well.

Take reader janejane, for example. She wrote:

          Carson.....I have to ask. How did you get the anemometer on top of the pole? 

          I'm picturing a ladder in the bed of the pickup. I'm sure someone besides me has to be wondering.

Since the "ladder on top of the dining room table" trick served me well inside the house, certainly the "ladder in the bed of the pickup" trick 

would help me a) pound the mast into the ground and b) place the anemometer on top. It seemed like such a good idea at the time. 

I drove my truck as close to the pipe fence as possible. Sadly, the driver's side sat about a foot higher than the passenger side, owing to a sand dune along the base of the fence. I contemplated my options:
Bad idea #1. Dig out the sand dune so the truck, ergo the ladder, would not tilt.
Bad idea #2. Place some boards under the passenger-side tires to raise that side of the truck so the ladder would not tilt.
Bad idea #3. Place some boards in the pickup bed under the low side of the ladder so it would not tilt.

About this time, my three consciences came over to remind me that as sole caregiver and feed dispenser at the 7MSN, I was obligated to find a safer solution to my dilemma.

If my calculations were correct, the mast for the weather station would be 10 to 15 feet off the ground, depending on how much wire was left after I ran it through the conduit from the house. And I wanted about 3 feet of mast buried in the ground for stability. I had two 10' lengths of pipe and a connector thingy at my disposal. (This is way too much math for one blog post but I'll get to my point in a minute.)

Somewhere in my overheated delirium (have I mentioned how stinkin' hot it was when I was trying to figure this out?), it dawned on me that since the mast would consist of two pieces of pipe joined by the connector thingy, why not pound in the short piece first, then add the long piece – with the anemometer already attached – on top of it?

In hindsight, this solution is so obvious I can barely stand it. I'm sure Dad would have thought of it in a heartbeat – it took me a whole lot longer.  In this case, the acorn fell a little too far from the tree. But at least it didn't fall off the ladder.

p.s. For those of you who are still shaking your heads over my method for changing the battery in a smoke detector, I offer you this, courtesy of imgace.com:

Makes putting a ladder on top of the dining room table seem positively safe.