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small number would haunt me
Friday, November 25 2022
location: rural Hurley Township, Ulster County, NY
After gathering some white ash from along the Stick Trail near its north end, I left for the cabin in Subaru Forester without Gretchen or the dogs. It's easier to be there completely by myself, though it's so rare to do so that I would keep thinking that the dogs were there with me, perhaps just in the other room, the whole time.
On the way, I stopped at the Home Depot in Amsterdam to get some 3/16 inch wire rope so I could secure the dock in place without leaving the come-along out in the weather all winter. I then got some groceries at Hannaford, and an Impossible Whopper with no mayonnaise and a large order of fries (since I didn't have the dogs with me, I only got one of the latter). I was hungry and didn't care if the french fries had catsup, so I ate them whle driving and then ate the burger too.
Conditions were relatively warm and slushy at the cabin when I arrived. After turning up the heat and starting a fire, I went directly to the lake and used the wire rope to secure the large fully-floating section of dock to a hemlock slightly uphill from it. This allowed me to detach the come-along. To remove slack from the new cable, I'd bought the biggest turnbuckle Home Depot sells, which was rated at only 250 pounds. That small number would haunt me for the rest of the evening. What if a heavy load of snow on the dock introduced a larger horizontal force than that?
Back at the cabin, I started drinking well before sundown, and with the early arrival of darkness, I crawled off to bed, hoping the cannabis I'd eaten would kick in (it never did). At some point I woke up and thought it was maybe 4:00am, but it was only 10:00pm.
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