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driving in the daytime with no rain back from the cabin
Sunday, October 24 2021
location: 800 feet west of Woodworth Lake, Fulton County, NY
It was another frosty morning in the Adirondacks, though this time I quickly built up a nice fire in the woodstove and fired up the generator so I could run the boiler and grind more coffee. I checked my messages and learned that Powerful had indeed received his new heart last night and that the replacement had gone smoothly. As you might imagine, switching out a heart is an especially traumatic operation, so Powerful was still under heavy sedation and would remain in intensive care for days.
My main chore in the cabin today was to dig out the grout (and some thinset) from the edge of the tile I'd laid in the first floor bathroom so it would have a little room for movement and then to apply a bead of caulk around the parts of the edge likely to get splashed with water (particularly near the tub and sink, but also in the narrow gap between the tile of the bathroom hickory flooring of the hallway). This was a messy job and generated a lot of caulk-besmirched paper towels, all of which I buried in a mass grave under the leaves near the propane tank.
After that, I gathered up a heavy bag of tools and hardware and walked with the dogs down to the dock to do some work there. The day was a little warmer than it had been yesterday, and it was also sunny, so conditions were okay for working outside even though temperatures were in the low 50s.
My main goal today was to add another joist to the two-joist sixteen by three foot structure that will eventually be the fixed (fully non-floating) part of the dock. Since the existing joists were joined in four places by three-foot cross-members, to get a third joist between them, I would need to notch two of the cross-members (while also notching the new joist in two places) so that the notches would snug together in the places where they crossed each other to form a flat surface for the decking. I'd only brought a battery-powered chainsaw for making the cuts, so they were a bit rough. But they were also tight, and required some serious banging to force the lumber together. Even so, I was unable to get the joist to go that last quarter inch into one of the cross-members. I judged this good enough by the relaxed standards of dock-building.
I then secured both ends of the new joist with two four inch by 3/8 inch carriage bolts on each end. But, since this is a dock subject to constant movement, I further secured the joist with four angle irons secured by twelve 5/16 inch carriage bolts. This required drilling out especially big holes for the bases of the carriage bolts where they secured two angle irons on the joist. Otherwise I'd have that "steel mushroom" problem I'd encountered last time I worked on the dock. To fix all of that, I'd bought some 3/8 inch hex bolts (that is, bolts without little square wood-biting bases under the heads and heads that were hexagonal instead of round) and replaced all the problematic carriage bolts.
At some point I took a break, cracked open a sixteen ounce World Gone Hazy IPA, and decided to go for a little paddle on the lake. Ramona was eager to go, though she was a bit awkward boarding from the tree dock. And then I could feel the boat trembling because she was, either from nervousness, the cold, or some mix of both. So I only paddled about a hundred feet from the shore. Off on the east side of the lake I could see that same pair of gay bufflehead ducks I'd seen yesterday. Meanwhile Neville had arrived at the tree dock and started whimpering, so I paddled back and put the canoe away for the week.
The last chore back at the cabin was to touch up the paint in the bathroom where I'd torn apart and repaired the wall at the sink and toilet paper holder. Eric the Painter had left some yellow paint in a plastic-wrapped paint roller that Gretchen had wisely hoarded for just this sort of use.
I packed up and left the cabin a little after 4:00pm, meaning I would be home a little before 6:00pm, just around sunset. The Bolt was fully charged and my kidneys were in their late-afternoon lull, so I didn't have to stop anywhere along the way. It was nice to drive in daylight without any rain for the first time in weeks. It was also great to not have had to drive anywhere from the cabin at all on this particular visit.
Back home in Hurley, I found Gretchen in bed, where she'd spent most of the day, unwinding after all the driving and stress of Powerful's heart transplant.
Ramona in the great room of the cabin this afternoon.
Click to enlarge.
Neville missed the boat and started to whimper. Here you can see him at the mostly-submerged tree dock. Ramona and I only went a little ways out onto the lake because she was shivering.
Click to enlarge.
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