word mining central
Day 502:
Decided I needed a break from all this aboveground stuff to go do some mining below ground.
It’s a relief to be out of the sun and away from the duckens, smacking rocks apart and finding valuable bits.
Plus I found some diamond, and that always makes me happy. I’m getting ever closer to my dream of wool socks, especially now that I know how to make a rail system to get me there.
Day 501: the cart now travels from place to place on the rails I set using the power of red rock, some coal dust, some clay, and the occasional nudge by me as I climb in.
It’s good enough.
It’s nice to sit down and let something else move for a change.
It’s also nice that my cart is moving slowly enough that I’m not convinced I’m going to die any second, because I have absolutely no steering mechanism, seat belt, HANS device, or anything else to keep me from being splattered all over a hillside.
So now I’m wondering: do I build some indoors? Well, in-mine, anyway?
Day 500:
Earthwork on one end. Then three lengths of red-torch-powered golden rail. Then some regular rail, from here to the southern door (all of this being outdoors). Then some red-torch-powered golden rail again so that there’s power to send the cart back, and some more earthwork to keep the cart from flying off the rail at the other end.
Should be all set, right?
Well, upon applying cart to rail, the power worked — and the cart took off without me. It made it all the way to the other door, which was fantastic! Except I wasn’t in it and now it was traveling far away from me and that was not the point of the exercise.
Then it bounced off the earthwork at the other end, hit the powered rail again, and sailed back to me… but before I could get in or stop it, it bounced off the earthwork, hit the powered rail again, and took off again.
By the time it was on its third trip I had un-powered the rail.
Back to the drawing board.
Day 499:
Making wire is annoying.
I gave up on it pretty fast.
Turns out a paste of red rock dust and just a pinch of clay works almost as well and does not involved me trying to roll thin bits of hot gold with a rolling pin.
Which as you imagine didn’t work out all that well.
But extruders are difficult to come by out here in the land of no power tools, and while I tried to get the duckens in my bedroom to yank on the two ends of a poorly-rolled chunk of gold, they were having none of it.
So electrical paste it is. Now I just have to figure out how to make it at scale without getting shocked to death.
Alex, the protagonist of Twain’s Treasure, is a liar. And if I could see ghosts and they constantly got me in trouble I would be a liar too. After all, who believes a kid who says he can see ghosts? We’ve got medication and counseling and all kinds of other ways to deal with supposed paranormal sightings.
The only problem is that Alex’s best and only friend in town, Bones, is crazy for paranormal activity stories, shows, books, even conventions. And Alex has been lying about his ability to see ghosts for a long long time, even to his best friend.
Alex might have gotten away with his lies if it weren’t for one Samuel Clemens, supreme haunt of the library in Hannibal MO.
This book was ten times more delightful than I expected, and was chock full of facts about Mark Twain and the town of Hannibal. It reminded me Richard Peck’s The Ghost Belonged to Me only updated and, honestly, a bit more interesting. Definitely one to recommend to middle grades (and old fogies like me still reading them in their 40s).