Cowabunga finis

This morning I officially notified the broker we were giving Cowabunga a pass.  I think he was a little shocked but I told him it had to do with a lack of confidence in owner & mechanic statements regarding condition and maintenance of the boat.  So now we are looking again but it probably will not be a Pearson 303 since the surveyor said this was one of the better 303’s.  Maybe some of those not so desirable Catalinas may not be so undesirable afterall.

We plan on leaving St Petersburg Friday early and make at least south Atlanta and hopefully north Atlanta around Cartersville. Second day will put us in Dayton where we will visit Martha and deliver her some of the items from her house that she asked V for.  Finally, home again to home again on Sunday.

St Petersburg

After a long trip down we made it to St Petersburg to look at the Pearson 303.  The trip was good up to I-10 where the traffic came to a 10 mph speed for 40 miles and then became marginally faster up to the I-275 split.  After that it up to normal FL interstate speeds.  We finally arrived about 1800 hrs – really beat.  This morning we were up and at them for a boat tour at 1100 hrs.  We saw a lot and forgot to ask about a lot.  The boat looks a bit fat or bulky but is livable down below. So we decided to go ahead with the survey and the sea trial.

Later, we went to Verizon to have them check out a android.process.acore issue.  The got nowhere with this but said it might be an app.  When I got home I started with A and deleted all non-essential apps.  Bingo – before I got to B series the issue was gone.  I then started the hotspot and logged in to Allstar and 27225 and had a nice chat with Bill.  Now, I am killing time before bedtime.  So beddy bye for Charlie.

See left arrow-that’s us

Fremont Community Church Thanksgiving Dinner

Yesterday, SAM & I went to volunteer helping FCC with their annual dinner for the community. SAM was in the kitchen and I was out, working alone, setting up 22 tables & eight chairs per table. After a couple of hours some other people came and helped but I was more than 2/3 done with the set up. I was glad for the solitude, low noise and repetitive actions that I could set to a rhythm and carry on. I was not working fast but, like the turtle, I was making slow but steady progress. Meanwhile, SAM, in the kitchen with the myriad of crew was making fantastic progress for the dinner that was set for 300 people. Mind you, we were worker bees and not the leadership but we each chipped in where we could best.

By about 6 PM we had served 150± people and then the work crew went into eat. I sat with a guy, Tom, from Orland and we had a great chat about working at International Harvestor, Tokheim, Zollenger and Magnavox. We came home with a few helpings of turkey, corn, beans and mash potatoes. All the guests went home with all they wanted too. We all had a great time listening to the quartet of men. The base was especially appreciated as it reminded me of my Grandpa V.O. Lyons a Christian mentor and Gideon.

Snow Cone Warning

Beautiful weather and finished wood

We finished the last of dead Ash trees yesterday amid the most beautiful mid-60’s temperatures with a West wind of 8 knots. We have done about 6 cords of wood and sold 4+ cords and kept 1.5 cords for use by ourselves. The neighbor who has cut his Ash trees said I could cut up the ones on the ground and share wood with him. So, sometime in mid-December I will start cutting again for the exercise. The leaves are stilll falling and I picked up a load yesterday too. I guesstimate another 2 loads and then I can drain the oil and put fresh in for next years use. I usually change oil every year, needed or not, because I have cleaned the interior of engines and seen what gunky oil does. I use about 4 gallons per year and need to get some more 5W-20 and some straight 30W.

This morning it is 35°F with West Winds at 12 kt. I was not prepared for the shock of going out into that wind. I have been looking for my PLB for several days now and fear it it has disappeared in the movement of desks and furniture. It is a pretty expensive device so I really do not want to lose it. Today we are volunteering at FCC to help setup the Fremont Community Thanksgiving dinner. We leave in about an hour so I had better get cracking. Moore later.

Cutting wood, splitting wood, delivering wood

Ok, I am getting in shape again. Every day has been a early rise and down to the wood pile for the last week. I spend about 3 hours cutting and splitting wood and all this work requires local delivery so we are handeling wood several times per piece. All this work for $90 per cord (4’x4’x8′ stack). I was cutting them to 22″ and was asked to supply them in 16″ length and small split. However, the latest customer wants large pieces and up to 24″ long – this is a no brainer and I love this customer. Cut to 24″ and then quartered, wow, what a deal for me. They want another cord asap. We have kept only one cord for ourselves in the event of an emergency. In our fireplace this would last about three weeks. I do have a small wood stove that would stretch this to about 6 weeks and keep the main basement area warm enough to keep the pipes from freezing. I would guess in an emergency we would drain the running water system so we could heat only a very small area and isolate the rest of the house.

Today, we were down at the burn pile next to the lake and cleaned up all the bark and sticks we picked up when the dead Ash trees fell. This made a pretty good fire for some hours and I hated to see the BTU’s go up in smoke. The small sticks would be good kindling to start fires.

Trumped

Today I awoke and started to prepare the day. A quick check of the email was absent any political emails. I new this could not be good news so I checked further and found out we are Trumped. After that the day became one of the usual routine. I made my Oatmeal with rasians and nuts plus some other items of interest and started the coffee. However, I had little interest in my usual morning routine.

I quickly dressed for the 40’s and headed to the barn to get out the chainsaw. I filled the oil and gas tanks and headed for the woods to cut the downed tree that we felled this summer. I prepared a 16″ stick to use as a cutoff measurement and started to cut. I had the 15″ diameter tree cut up in reasonably quick order at 16″± lengths. I was starting to get a little tired by the time SAM arrived but continued to cut a few of the bigger limbs and cleared a path to get the logs out of the woods: That is when disaster struck. I was cutting a 6″ limb that had been on the ground for some years and was pretty rotten and hit a 3/4″ steel pipe that was laying on the log. Well, that was the end of wood cutting for the moment, so I took the saw into the barn and sharpened it – after removing the tightly held shavings that filled the left side teeth.

By this time SAM was rolling the logs out of the woods so i pitched in to help. In no time at all we had got them all out of the woods and I started the splitter and we went to work splitting all the wood. By noon we had a full truck full of finely split wood that SAM had carefully placed. The truck was fully loaded that is for sure. We drove it up top and went inside for lunch. The lunch was high carb for me and a salad for SAM and after a while I went back out to unload the truck. By the time it was mostly unloaded (almost exactly a Rank) SAM came out and we finished and went down to to the woods to finish splitting and loading what we had cut up in 16″ lengths. As we were finishing us Mike of Fox Lane Farms arrived and we helped him load the wood he had bought from us. We had a great chat while working. The good news is he wants more wood so that will about wrap up our wood cutting for this year.

A day in the life of….

SAM & I spent the day from sunrise to sunset splitting the wood from the dead Ash trees we were forced to cut. To me it is so sad to see a tree that has weathered many a storm standing dead. I love trees and wood and lumber. My grandfather was a lumberman and had a lumber yard and mill operation. I spent my childhood roaming the mill and remember quite vividly laying on the pine boards smelling the pitch.

I also remember getting a box car of lumber packed to the top with all sorts of boards. I will not bore anyone with the types and dimensions nor with the smells inside the car when we opened it on a hot summer day. However, I will tell you of the pleasures and terrors of a little kid, maybe eight years old or less who because of his size, had the pleasure of sliding down the lumber with his back to the top of the boxcar and stomach to the wood clear to the front of the car. I would then push out the boards so “the hands” could get a hold of them. In a short time there was enough space to turn around and I could breath again. Of course, there were the hands that wished to terrorize the kid and would push boards back on me to trap me. I remember them well but they are all gone now.

Tomorrow will be a very full day in the cold weather. We will cut some new logs that are 16″ or less and then split them to fulfil a customer complaint of too long firewood. We thought we were doing him a favor since were selling by the rank and not the cord. So basically he was getting a 22″ wide stack instead of the 16″ stack. However, he is returning 1/3 cord that was over 20″ long. More on this tomorrow.

Work, work, work

Taken in October of 2016