Labor Day 2026: Fun on the Ranch

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It’s Labor Day in the US and I’m not working. Not for Redgate, at least. I’m not even traveling today, which is something that happens all too often on holidays.

Today I’m going to be working on the ranch, catching up on a few things. I was up in the air last week, trying to replace a pulley. The bolt in this pulley sheared off. Both ends and the nuts were still there, somewhat rusted to the side. The wheel and middle were on the ground.

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This lasted 15 years, which is good. Bad that this was 30ft in the air at the top of a building. And I was it Scotland when it broke.

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My daughter secure the door, so she could get hay out. I had to rent a lift last week as this couldn’t wait until Labor Day. We had a spare and I ordered another one as well. I got up in the air and unbolted this and replaced it with a new one.

While I was up there, I took the opportunity to replace the lifting cable. This had broken near the bottom a few years ago and I added a new section, but it didn’t go up and down smoothly. Since I had the lift, I was up here, undoing the stays for the cable on the left and then running it down 30ft to the bottom of the door.

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My daughter had noticed part of the upper cable was also worn, so I ended up replacing that since I had the lift. My wife also asked that we tighten down the straps on this end of the building, as they were looser than others. We replaced the roof last year, and if you want to see part of this, I have a video of us pulling this section over the frame.

It was a long, hard 24 hours of having the lift and being up in the air for 8-9 hours while working on a Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning.

I’m sure I have something else in store for today just as hard. It’s a wild life for a database professional who lives on a ranch.

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