12 October 2012
Took
Dolores up to Kampersville for her final $15 purging of the season, then ran
though the RV winterization checklist in record time. Had her snuggled under the big blue tarp and
was on the road south by noon plus 15.
Stopped at Giddings Equipment en route to offer personal condolences to
Bob and discuss the reincarnation of my tractor. That was quite the fire; there was nothing
left of the Kubota maintenance building but four totally gutted walls. Arrived back in Springfield just after 9:30
pm, having fought my way through rush hour traffic in Morristown, New Jersey
(of all places) and a major disturbance in the Force caused by an accident on
I-95 just north of Philadelphia.
11 October 2012
Spent the morning and early afternoon loading
stuffing the van. Moved Hopea Kanootti
into the shed and rigged up a two fold purchase (block and tackle) to hoist her
up, up and out of the way. Ran errands
in Middlebury (most important of which was getting some more Ben &
Jerry’s 5/16″ choker chains at
Champlain Valley Equipment) en route to Lynne & Perry’s, where Perry and I
moved a new 400 pound woodstove from the back of his pickup into his
basement. Good thing we’re both kinda
strong! While we were working on that
little project Bob Giddings called. His
maintenance shop burned to the ground at noon today… with my new tractor in
pieces inside when the fire started.
Bob’s people managed to drag all the major components out of the
building before the fire got to them, but it’s going to be awhile before they
can put ‘er back together again. Perry
and I then drove over to ∆□Ο to load my radial arm saw into the van.
I knew the saw table was just a smidgeon too long to fit athwart ships,
but the van was so full that the saw wouldn’t fit with the table fore and aft. “Why don’t we just cut an inch off each end
of the table?”, said my brilliant brother-in-law. Duh!!!!
(…and why didn’t ole sawdust-for-brains think of that solution two years
ago????) Sawing done, the saw fit
perfectly in the space remaining.
10 October 2012
Spent most of the day packing up all the stuff in
the shed and RV that has to go back to Virginia this trip and verifying that my
inventory spreadsheet accurately shows what will be left behind and, more
importantly, what will need to be brought back next spring. Late morning took
my credit application down to Giddings in Pittsford… and got a call from Bob a
few hours later saying I had been approved for the Kubota financing program.
9 October 2012
.JPG)
.JPG)
Let the church bells ring! Sing out loudly and joyfully! Start the parade! Got an email this morning from Chree saying she was fine with my buying, not only a new Toyota Tacoma pickup truck, but also the Kubota loader / backhoe / skidder that I described in the 4 October blog posting. Then Jody Baynes called and said that he took my sawmill quality logs to a different mill, where they not only were paying $35 more per thousand board feet, but were using the International ¼ Scale (which favors the logger) instead of the Scribner Scale (which favors the mill for smaller diameter logs) to calculate the yield from the load. What a great day!!!! On the way from picking up the carpet shampooer from Lynne & Perry’s, spotted a couple of trailers beside the road with a For Sale sign on one of them. Unfortunately, the 16′ tandem axle trailer that I would have wanted was not for sale, and the one that was for sale was too lightly built for what I will need. On a sad note, the carpet shampooer quit sucking while I was cleaning the RV carpets, so had to turn off the furnace and open the windows and main cabin door all day to dry the place out. Got the toe caps on the wood walkway between the third and Halfway There landings. Because I had plenty of lumber to work with, had minimal trouble cutting the triple compound angle today (of course). Late afternoon went down to Pittsford where Bob Giddings (the owner of Giddings Equipment) and I negotiated over the B3200 tractor, reached agreement for a few hundred less than I had expected to pay, and started the procurement paperwork process. Did I mention that this was a REALLY GREAT DAY?!?!
8 October 2012
Knew I had just enough 2x4x12’s for the railing between
the third walkway landing and the Halfway There landing, with maybe two inches
to spare. Where the last two pieces of
railing in that section joined was a three axis compound joint… never an easy
task. Must have walked up and down the
walkway between that joint and the radial arm saw a dozen times, cutting the
angles wrong and wrong again.
Ultimately, the last piece of wood became too short to use, so I gave up
in disgust until next spring. Someone is
NOT a happy camper!!!! At noon tried to
send a simple email to Chree and Verizon, in their infinite big-brother-is-watching
wisdom, declared it to be spam and refused to send it. Then, when I tried to protest that decision
via their spamdetector.update@verizon.net email address, I kept getting a
message that that address was invalid.
So I spent an hour online chatting with some techie in India, who, after
taking control of my computer, was completely unable to replicate the
problems. As soon as we hung up (you guessed
it!) any email I sent to Chree was declared spam anew. Needless to say, the Riunite Lambrusco is
taking a serious hit tonight.
7 October 2012
The cold front that rolled through yesterday brought fall with it. Early this morning, dressed quite comfortably for moderate exertion with a tee-shirt, a long-sleeve running shirt, and a sweatshirt, I stopped down to see Merry for a moment… who (being a real Vermonter) was dressed only in a short-sleeve golf shirt (and pants), and had nary a goose bump. Completed building the Halfway There bench by 9 o’clock, then started putting railing caps on the walkway section between the third landing and the current end of the road. At noon I delivered another utensils drawer mouse to the Silver Lake parking lot tree stump. Finished the railing caps early afternoon and was just about to break out the generator and belt sander when it started to sprinkle. Using electrical tools in the rain = not smart, so inventoried, stacked and covered the walkway construction lumber that will winter over. That done, it was still drizzling, so decided to bring the canoe and kayak up from the waterfront for winter storage. Problem: how do you carry a 17′ canoe in a pickup truck with a 6′ bed? Answer: by constructing a “bed extension” out of some 2x4’s and 2x6x12’s. That done, drove the Ranger (with my bicycle in back) down to the public access landing at the southern end of Fern Lake, bicycled back to ∆□Ο, paddled Hopea Kanootti down to the landing and loaded her onto the truck (secured with my new ratchet straps), drove back to ∆□Ο, then repeated the process for the kayak. At dusk, Marty, Heather, Graham, and Gabby came up for a walkway tour.
6 October 2012
5 October 2012
4 October 2012
ANOTHER nasty, rainy day was forecast… and proved
true in the morning. Finalized the
design for the walkway Halfway There bench seat and landing, drew up the “cut
list” (i.e., a list with the dimensions of the bench building materials that
need to be cut from longer / wider stock), then went down to Giddings Equipment
and Manufacturing in Pittsford. Spent an
enjoyable hour there with the owner, Bob Giddings, drooling over Kubota loader
/ backhoe tractors. He made me an offer that
I just might not be able to refuse on a 2012 Kubota B3200 HSD (32 horsepower
with hydrostatic drive) tractor with a BH77 backhoe (means it can dig a hole 7.7 feet deep) with a 16” wide
bucket and mechanical thumb, a LA504 loader with a much more rugged and wider
(60”) upgrade from the standard bucket, a three-point frame (for skidding
logs), and 42″ pallet forks (for carrying / stacking logs). And, as I’m sure you were
wondering, the difference between having green paint vice orange paint on a
tractor? Pretty close to $10,000! I did
pass on the $8,000 enclosed cab with heat and air conditioning. Back to dull old walkway building in the
afternoon in spite of the intermittent drizzle.
Put in the third in-ground post for the 15° bend and the first of the two angled posts
that will support the bench backrest, along with the two long stringers that
connect those two posts. Digging in the mud is sooooo therapeutic!
3 October 2012
…and speaking of no good, rotten, slimy illegitimate
male offspring of female canines: the Triangle Square Circle driveway sign has
been stolen once again. Not only is the
sign gone, but so is the bracket that attached the sign to the post, which
means that the SOB had the very special Allen wrench that is needed to undo the
security bolts that were holding the bracket in place. To add insult to injury, Marty & Merry’s
Jelly Bean Place driveway sign was bent beyond recognition, but not stolen, as
they had the foresight to have the attaching bolts tack-welded in place. The State Police said they would put out a
press release… As it was another totally
rainy, nasty day, spent some quality time this afternoon at the local John
Deere dealer drooling all over myself.
Does anyone have $35,000 they would like to contribute to the
Doug-Needs-A-Backhoe fund? On a positive
note, for a grand total of $13.55 and an hour of my time, there is now a light
over the workbench in the shed upper level, which will make working at that
bench a lot less touchy-feely. Late
afternoon I noticed that Marty & Merry had returned from their latest foray
south, so stopped down to say hello and commiserate about the driveway sign
theft / damage. They left last Friday before Dolores and I got back to Fern
Lake, so we haven’t seen each other for almost a month. One thing led to another and ended up taking down
to their place an excellent 2005 DeLormier Cabernet Sauvignon (to ease our
collective pain) and the beef stew dinner I had planned to serve them in the RV
tomorrow night. Another great evening, in spite of the signage issue and
weather.
2 October 2012
Installed the last two sets of longitudinals and the
final 24 feet of deck boards in the long section between the third landing and
the 15° bend that is at the
walkway halfway point. Some of the deck
boards that I put on today are a bit slimy from sitting stacked on top of one
another under a tarp for the past many weeks. Was maneuvering the hand truck
late afternoon, stepped on one of the slimy illegitimate sons, and took a
tumble… right off the walkway. Never
fear, the hand truck landed on top of me, so it came through undamaged.
Though it was only a couple of feet to the ground, I can tell already that
there will be some sore spots tomorrow.
1 October 2012
Another nasty, rainy day. Reinstalled the Triangle Square Circle
driveway sign. Any bets as to how long
this one lasts???? Spent most of the day
updating my computer inventory of the “stuff” in the RV and shed, and thinking
(ad nauseum) that all the items marked for return to Virginia are not going to
fit into, or even onto, the van. Some
hard decisions in the forecast for the next couple of weeks. Goodro Lumber delivered a few more pressure
treated 2x4’s and 4x4’s, the materials needed to finish the walkway to the
halfway point. The lake temperature is
down to 64°, which is a tad
unfortunate as the dock steps blew back over into the lake while I was in
Calais… and they can’t be raised without going chest-deep into the water. Mr. Happy isn’t going to be when that day
comes…
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)