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Tuesday, May 31, 2016

THE SAGA OF THE COSTCO WINDCATCHER





As we were leaving my sister Harriet’s house one day last summer, Mike noticed the windcatcher in her front flower bed. “That’s cool!” he exclaimed. “Let’s get one for the farm.”

“Oh, but there’s a problem,” I said. Harriet had told me that it kept coming apart in the middle.

“I can fix it,” Mike said.

Let’s see, long story short, on his first trip he super-glued it. A few days later Harriet messaged that it had come apart again. This only served to strengthen Mike’s resolve. Now it was him against the windcatcher, and he meant to win. On the next trip, he took his drill, but the windcatcher broke his bit. This meant war! Mike borrowed a super-duper bit from a friend and was then able to drill a hole and insert a screw. And that worked. Now Harriet can see the beautiful windcatcher whirling outside her living room window.

By way of thanks for the fix, Harriet gifted Mike with this year’s windcatcher from Costco. (Apparently Costco offers a new design every year.) So, we assembled and installed it, but to our dismay it refused to whirl. It took a 15 mph gust to turn that thing, which Mike deemed unacceptable. So, we carried it back to Costco and they gladly exchanged it, even though we had already tossed the box. It was around Mother’s Day, and they didn’t have any in stock, but the customer service person said they would receive a shipment of 120 sometime after May 20. So, before we came back to the homestead, we picked up our Windcatcher at Costco, and today Mike assembled and installed it.
 
And here it is. It whirls gently in the breeze and with gusto when the wind picks up. We planted it firmly where we can watch it and where it’s not in the way of the mowing.

The sun is warm but the breeze sometimes feels like it comes off snowy mountains. The forecast is for the upcoming weekend to be hot, but I notice they keep pushing the hot days out a bit and trimming degrees off the predicted highs. KW

2 comments:

  1. That's a pretty neat thing! What's it made out of?

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  2. It's a lightweight metal.

    Interestingly, the first unit was of better quality, Mike said. These units are manufactured for Costco. Maybe they re-ordered and the units were hastily manufactured.

    We asked the customer service person if many of these had been returned. She said not this year, but they got a lot of last year's model back. That's the one that Harriet has.

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