First thing in the
morning raked over Kate & Dan’s driveway, filling in the grove left by dragging one
of the stumps there yesterday. Then
tackled the much more serious furrows in the Triangle Square Circle driveway. Spent the remainder of the morning doing
errands between Salisbury and Middlebury.
After lunch, began moving rocks and dirt and more rocks for the top
section of the walkway. I can attest
that swinging a pickax into Leicester soil for a few minutes gives you a terrific
workout. After shoveling and picking
rocks all afternoon, Chree is doing Naproxen with a Beefeaters chaser
tonight. Unfortunately, the area where
the natural slope is most out of sync with the desired 1:8 walkway slope is at
the very beginning of the walkway. We
managed to excavate the first, worst 12 feet in four hours of very heavy labor. Afterwards Chree took a cold shower (saying
something about the sight of my well muscled sweaty body…) and the dogs and I
hit the lake.
Chree and I spent the
morning and early afternoon dragging a couple of stumps and five truck-loads of
brush from the house site over to our bonfire spot (future leach field
site). Also dragged five spruce logs off
the house site over to the campfire area… and punctured the left rear tire in
the Ranger, but that’s another story. Once
that was done and the new growth hacked down, the house site was fairly well
cleaned up, at least enough to put stakes in the ground (for the umpteen
zillionth time) to mark the corners of the future house. We checked the bearing for true south by using
the azimuth of the sun at the proper time (11:56 exactly for this date and
location). Our original desire was to
have the house oriented exactly north / south / east / west. But true south is a lot more east than we
thought, so after scratching bug bites our heads for awhile, we decided
to turn the house 25 degrees clockwise, i.e., the south-facing wall will
actually be aimed towards 205 vice 180 degrees true. Once the house corner stakes were in the
ground (no mean feat given the abundance of rocks, all located exactly where
each stake needed to go) and checked for reasonable squareness, we had to
decide the house base elevation (top of the foundation walls). Further scratching of bug bites finally
resulted in a nail being driven into the large hemlock at the northwest corner
of the car turnaround area, said nail denoting the house base elevation… at
least in present-day theory. All of the
aforementioned work needed doing in order to decide exactly where (location and
elevation) the wooden walkway will begin.
Had to turn on Delores’ air conditioner mid-afternoon to make her
habitable for the dogs, even after they spent a joyful half hour in the lake. Delores has a slightly rounded top and the AC
condensate drain is, of course, on the starboard side, which means the condensate
drips right onto the middle of the main entry stairs… and anyone entering or
leaving the RV. Some engineer was really
not thinking too straight the day he/she/it did that design!
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Turned the refrigerator
back off and defrosted / aired out / thoroughly scrubbed (with bleach) the
freezer compartment. Not exactly
springtime fresh, but at least we eliminated the gag reflex upon opening the
freezer. Chree learned how to use the
radial arm saw (and still has all her fingers, so the teacher must have done an
okay job). Together (Chree sawing, me
removing nails and drilling holes) we manufactured 100 2x6x7½″ blocks that will
be the footers underneath the 4x4 in-ground posts that will support the wooden
walkway. Went up to Junction Auto to
retrieve the Ranger. Turns out that the
new right front wheel bearing was manufactured poorly, so that it didn’t sit
against the wheel hub tightly enough to preserve the vacuum needed to actuate
the 4WD. Ford sent a replacement bearing
and paid Junction Auto to install it, so no charge to me. I’ll take back half of the nasty things I’ve
said about Ford Motor Company products in the last two weeks. Of course the Check Engine light did come
back on three miles after I left Junction Auto…
To Fern Lake with
Chree and the dogs (Geisha & Shlomo) via an overnight stop at Frank &
Fran’s (Chree’s parents) in Old Saybrook, CT, then a nice lunch with Alverta in
South Burlington, and finally a call at Pete’s RV to retrieve Delores and our
new Lifan Energy Storm 3600 inverter generator.
The RV repair bill was $500 less than expected. That’s the good news. The bad news is that someone (NOT me!) put Delores’
auxiliary battery switch into the O•F•F position during her stay at the repair
shop, which cut power to the
refrigerator for a sufficient amount of time for everything in the freezer to
thaw and spoil. Nothing like the smell
of rotten chicken mixed with rancid Ben & Jerry’s to give you that Welcome
Home feeling! That and the fact that
vandals have once again made off with the Triangle Square Circle driveway
sign. At least they had to break the
sign in order to steal it this time, as my anti-theft modifications worked at
least somewhat. Great consolation!
Left Essex Junction (where the Burlington area train station is located) at
9 am aboard Amtrak’s The Vermonter. Due
to the 90°+ outside air temperature potentially warping the tracks, the train
was restricted to 30 mph for much of the trip to New York, where we finally
arrived 12 interminable hours later. And
we were lucky! There was a trackside
fire in Connecticut that stopped all train movements… just after we went
through! The rest of the trip to
Washington was at normal speeds, but we didn’t get to Union Station until 1 am…
which is an hour after Washington’s Metro (subway system) closes down for the
night. Consequently, Chree had to drive
into downtown DC to retrieve my sore butt sorry self. We finally arrived home at 2 o’clock, three
hours later than expected when I booked the tickets.
Secured the site for a
week-long absence, then took Delores to Kampersville for her mid-summer $15 constitutional,
from there to Agway in Middlebury to top off the propane tank, then up to South
Burlington to offload laundry and perishable food at Alverta’s, and finally
over to Pete’s RV… where the list of maintenance items needing attention grows
ever longer: roof leak repair / resealing, stove exhaust hood resealing,
transmission fluid top-off (and where, pray tell, did all the transmission
fluid go to????), Vermont State inspection, window blind replacement, and dead
generator removal. Too bad Tasi is in
Africa for three months, could have used him as collateral for the repair bill. Dinner at Bove's with Alverta... always a treat!
Spent most of the day
scrubbing Delores from stem to stern and back again by the southern route. Everything that doesn’t move got a good cleaning…
and even some things that were moving too slowly to get out of the way in
time. Filthy doesn’t even begin to
describe interior conditions too long neglected. Attempted to repair the bedroom window shade
that broke last week on one of my “lucky” days.
No joy: the operating mechanism (some very thin string) broke again as
soon as I tested the “repaired” shade.
Another item for Pete’s RV to charge a fortune to fix. Took the Ranger to Junction Auto
mid-afternoon so they can repair the 4WD while I’m in Virginia. Met Perry there, who gave me a ride back to
Fern Lake… and suggested some ways that I might correct the warped door problem
on the shed. It sure is nice having a
building construction expert in the family!
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