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40 minute drive to Home Depot
Saturday, August 21 2021
location: 800 feet west of Woodworth Lake, Fulton County, NY
I'd heard the Lake Edward loons again last night, and their calls were enough to get Neville barking. At some point one of them sounded closer, like maybe he or she had flown to Lake Edward.
I'd forgotten to bring any sort of caffeine with me to the cabin, so the plan was to venture at some point into one of the nearby rust-belt cities of the Mohawk Valley to get electrical supplies and caffeine and also to stop by fellow homeowners' association member Brandon's house in Gloversville to retrieve some large parcels Gretchen had delivered there. First, though I wanted to take the second kayak down to the lake and go for a paddle.
I carried the GreenWorks chainsaw in one hand and the kayak either on my head or in my other hand (that how lightweight they are). This made it so that I could clear things that had fallen across the trail to the lake on the way down. The biggest of these was medium-sized beech that had snapped off high on the tree and was still hung up in a way that became dangerous as I began to cut the many small supporting limbs.
Down at the lake, I put the kayak in and paddled clockwise around it, checking out the docks I passed a long the way. I could hear voices coming from Joel's cabin; he's our neighbor to the northeast, across the lake from our cabin. The only other evidence of neighbors was a few scattered gunshots from someone's camp not too far from the cabin. Such shooting is much more sporadic and short-lived than the far more annoying gunfire that happens at the bus turnaround back in Hurley.
The dogs had abandoned me when I'd spent too long clearing fallen limbs out of the trail. But they were waiting for me back at the house when I returned.
I thought I'd do a little initial work on the electrical wiring project so I'd have a sense of what I needed to buy before driving off to get supplies. I had some 14/2, 12/2, and even 10/3 romex cable, and a I had a few electrical boxes, though nowhere near as many as I needed. I ran some wire down one of the chases connecting the basement to the attic (they looked to be two inch PVC pipe), which was so easy that all I had to do was push the cable in from the top. After doing a bit of that and then taking measurements and doing calculations, I knew what I'd need: a Sharpie marker, about a dozen electrical boxes, at least 100 feet more 12/2 romex, probably 100 feet of 14/2 romex, and maybe some better drill bits for getting through instances of thick carpentry with my battery-powered Ryobi impact driver.
There may not be electricity or running water at the cabin, but at least there is internet in the form of a clear AT&T cell tower signal, at least on the cabin's upstairs. This made it easy for me to plan the drive I intended to take today. I needed electrical supplies, and I could've just gone to some True Value store nearby, but I would be buying a lot of stuff, so I wanted a big box discount. The nearest Lowes and Home Depot were in Amsterdam, a nearly 40-minute drive away over the non-intuitive local road network. Driving there gave me yet another view of the area, though I'm still finding it impossible to learn how the Gloversville-area geography is put together.
At the Home Depot, I got 250 feet of 14-2 and 250 feet of 12-2 AWG romex and all the other things I mentioned earlier. Then I asked Google for the nearest Burger King near me. It was less than a third of a mile away. There I got a big cup of coffee, a large order of fries, and an Impossible Whopper, forgetting to tell them to leave out the mayonnaise. It was too depressing to eat at the Burger King or in its puddle-filled parking lot, but on the drive to my next destination (Brandon's house in Gloversville), I found a suitably pleasant place with a large, mostly empty parking lot: Mountain Valley Hospice. I quickly devoured the fries, which I shared with the dogs, and then ate the Whopper, which didn't seem to contain any lettuce, though it had gobs of non-vegan mayonnaise.
Brandon's house was a perfectly good one with a yard full of various flowers instead of grass. There were three large boxes on the porch, all of which were addressed to Gretchen. As I was loading these into (and on top of) the Subaru, Brandon returned from wherever he'd been and we chatted briefly. Brandon became a real estate agent in Gloversville as a way to deal with losing his production job during the pandemic. He now owns at least two houses in Gloversville as well as a large forested parcel on Hines Pond (part of the Woodworth Lake constellation), and this one we were standing outside of was one he'd bought for $24,000 in 2018. (Anyone looking to step into the bottom of a housing market could do worse than Gloversville!)
Back at the cabin, I unloaded the boxes and electrical supplies and gradually ramped up my electrical work. The half-inch spade bits I'd bought made holes large enough for two 12-2 AWG romex cables, though it was a little tight that way. I had to make two separate circuits: one for the bedroom and one for the bathroom, with the hope that there was already an existing lighting circuit for the bedroom. Much of the bedroom was still uninsulated, but the wall between it and the bathroom had temporary insulation in it (the idea being that the bedroom could overwinter in an unfinished state and then, when it was finished, this insulation could be moved to the outside walls). As for the bathroom, it had thick insulation in its exterior wall and ceiling. all of which got in the way of drilling holes and running wire. Because the unfinished bedroom was in an essentially uninsulated attic, it got hot up there in the afternoon, and soon I was drenched in sweat, hating whatever decision we'd made to have me do this work. I'm not a professional electrician, of course, and most of what I know about household wiring were things I'd learned in a high school electricity & electronics shop class. But there are things I don't know, such as how high to place electrical outlets above the floor and how close to the outlet box to staple the cable. So it was handy to have some exposed wiring installed by a professional for me to model.
I'd been working at this for about two hours when a couple four wheelers (in Appalachia this term is pronounced "fuah whullers") rolled up in the driveway with shouts of "Gretchen and Gus, are you home?," causing Neville to begin barking. I went out to see who my visitors were and recognized Claudia, the wife of our neighbor Joel and a skinny teenage boy. Neville was still barking after Claudia and the teen got off their vehicles, but Ramona soon had her nose of Claudia's skirt. Claudia insisted on hugging me even after I warned her how sweaty and gross I was.
Claudia and the lad had apparently been aware I'd come to the cabin, and were there to see how we were doing and to invite us to dinner at her place, where there would be "steak and chicken." I agreed to come, but added that I don't eat meat. Claudia asked if I could eat vegetables and pasta, and I said that that would be great. She said I should come over at around 5:30pm and that I could take a shower if I wanted to.
It seemed fitting to give Claudia and the lad a tour of the cabin, which is looking amazing considering that the site was just a clearing in the forest at the beginning of May.
Once my visitors were gone, I was pissed at myself for having said yes to a social call. And then I looked at the time and saw it was already after 5:00pm. I'd been thinking I should go down to the lake to clean up, but there was no time for that now. Fortunately, at the time there was a temporary brook running just south of the cabin, and I could use this to rinse the sweat and stank out of my clothes, armpits, and other hot spots. I then loaded up the dogs and drove over to Joel & Claudia's cabin.
At first it was just Joel and me talking in the parking area, and then others in the homeowners' association began to arrive; it seems Claudia had driven around to everyone's cabin inviting anyone who was around to come over for dinner. We stood there for awhile talking about things like getting by on a generator (one of the families there is off-grid and has a generator, which I've heard humming away near the northeast end of Hines Pond. Eventually Joel fetched me a beer; it was a Sierra Nevada Hazy Little Thing, my current beer of choice. Then, while the teens (and Ramona) went down to the dock and the adults sat around the fire pit, I chatted with Joel about a little artificial stony brook he installed below his eaves to mitigate the erosion from rain coming off his roof.
Later, the woman from the house with the generator at the northeast end of Hines Pond gave me a tour of Joel & Claudia's cabin. Neither Gretchen nor I are much into the log cabin æsthetic, but I had to admit that it was amazing inside, particularly the use of large forked tree trunks as structural supports, giving the interior a whimsical feel, as though it had been engineered by hobbits. There were a couple little elderly dogs in the cabin at the time and they were being kept there because of how mean they would be to Ramona and Neville were they to get out.
In addition to the slabs of steak (there didn't actually appear to be chicken), Claudia had made asparagus, potatoes, mushrooms, and pasta, all of which were hits among the non-vegetarians present (everyone but me). I'd thought it would be counterproductive to specify the details of my food regime, so the things I was eating weren't actually vegan; Claudia mentioned at some point that she'd used butter. Still, eating the pasta with the mushrooms was similar to other quality vegan meals I'd had. I also drank red wine. And kept pouring refills of the glass from the bottle. I wasn't the only one drinking, but I was probably drinking more than anyone else there.
Towards the end of the meal, as the dishes were being piled up, I asked if anything was to be done with a big meaty bone that Joel had leftover from his steak. I said I'd like to give it to one of my dogs, and Joel said sure. Neville managed to first nibble all the meat off it and then eat the bone itself; it took him about a half hour. As for Ramona, there were no other bones, but I managed to find some gristle and other beef scraps for her.
Later I was over at the fire pit, where Ramona and Neville decided to sit on a chair with a soft foam cushion. I was pretty drunk by this point and wandered over to sit at the picnic table with the teenagers and one of the adults, which might've been alarming for them, since I was now the one drunk guy at the party. When I finally wanted to drive home, Claudia insisted on driving my Subaru back to my cabin and riding back to her cabin doubled-up on a four-wheeler.
Me in the kayak this morning.
The new railing for the upstairs loft and stairs. Note the unnecessary caps on the newels making it hard to set things on top of them.
The new woodstove, not quite connected to the chimney, on the bluestone slab we brought up last week.
Looking at the west end of Woodworth Lake. The white object on the shoreline is a large boulder, and our dock will be adjacent to it. Click to enlarge.
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