The Dark Days Are Done

Building season is here!!! Time to move past the travel fluff pieces and put my back into it. It was a long time coming.

I got back to town in early March and immediately hiked a mile  through the snow to see how my little slice of heaven held up through the winter.  I reviewed the security cameras SD cards to see what happened while I was gone. I am batting about 250 with trail cams. I really haven’t experienced any that are trouble free only one kind of works if I don’t ask too much of it. Anyway, the images I did get, showed almost constant snow on the ground but no big dumps. That’s important because now I don’t have to spend time this summer fixing snowload damage like I did last summer. Still, Winter really wore out its welcome before it finally gave way to Spring. Somewhere in there the road finally melted out and dried up enough to drive on in Mid April.  Spring stayed cold and wet making the road impassable more often than not well into May. It is still jacket wearing weather, at least in the morning. It feels like the rain has finally gone away for the summer.

There really wasn’t much to do for those couple of months though. When my world gets wet my only accomplishments are tracking mud all over the place. There isn’t much to do once the sun goes down so to save electricity I just go to bed early. Like before 7. The biggest challenge I have and the one that keeps me up nights is wondering if I am going to have enough electricity for the cabin. I have gotten used to using electricity only when absolutely necessary. It isn’t a problem in the summer because I get 12+ hours of sunlight in the summer so there is plenty for the fridge and a light or two. When I got back in March, I was only getting a few hours sun hidden by overcast skies. Very little electricity was getting made and stored. From October to April, the Sun doesn’t hit the solar panels until mid-morning and when the sun finally lights up the panels, there isn’t enough time left to fully charge the batteries before it sets again. The cold nights sap the battery capacity and each night my very inefficient refrigerator sucks out what’s left of the electricity I was able to store. As you can imagine, electricity is a valuable commodity. Going to bed at 7pm saves electricity to keep the fridge running long enough so that it stays cold until the power comes back on. I have loads of the external USB battery packs I try to keep charged up so I don’t kill my phone laying in bed watching Max, Prime and Hulu. 

By The Way. I rarely find much of interest on Prime or Max anymore, but here are some recommendations for Hulu:

• Mr InBetween: Very Dark and Violent but ranks up there with The Wire, Breaking Bad, Homocide Life: Life on the Street for being great at everything. Writing acting, story lines, etc.
• DeadBeat: A pretty funny quirky series about a NYC Slacker that can reluctantly see ghosts.
• Quick Draw: This is from the beginning days of Hulu. A really funny series set in the old west
• Welcome to Flatch: adapted from the British series “This Country”. Kind of a more family friendly version of Letterkenny. It takes a while to get use to the weird humor but its worth the wait.
• The Rookie. An ABC series that is getting rebroadcast on Hulu. It is inspired by the the true story of 40+ year old man starting his second career as a LA Police Officer.
• The Bear: A restaurant themed series that just dropped its second season (if that’s what they are called on streaming TV). Really entertaining but gritty.
• What we Do In The Shadows. Base on the movie of the same name, it is super funny if you have a twisted and/or dirty sense of humor. I am eager for the next season to pop up any day now

I am pretty happy with Hulu, almost enough that I might drop one of the other services. I don’t have netflix but when I did, I really liked the Derry Girls. Super funny series about growing up in Northern Ireland during the 90’s. At first the accent is hard to understand but its worth the effort. Similar but it might be hard to find is a short lived series by the same creator called “London Irish”. Kind of like if “Friends” and “Its Always Sunny in Philadelphia” had an Irish Stepchild.

When May finally brought some dry weather, I took advantage of the soft dirt and started a new solar panel rack. I found a much sunnier part of the property and with my new Lithium batteries I am hoping for a few extra hours of electricity generation when the dark winter days come back around. I dug some deep holes, lugged up 15 sacks of concrete and some posts. The posts are in place now and I have hillbilly engineered racks that will let me adjust the angle of the sun to match the season. I haven’t attached anything yet because I need more anchors to keep the panels from flying away in the wind. Plus, I still need a hundred feet of fat super expensive electric wire to connect to the electric box. Not to mention a cabin to house the electric box so no more procrastinating on putting nail to board if I want to keep my phone charged next winter.

I also have to backfill the dirt around the foundation. I am not really supposed to do it before I have the floor poured, I don’t really know why, especially with all the rebar I have threaded through the footer and walls. The styrofoam walls are are not supposed to be exposed to the weather for as long as they have. I had to use really heavy and sticky rolls of waterproofing. Not a one man job usually but I got it put on over a few days. The cool mornings helped because the sticky stuff gets impossibly gooey. I ruined about a quarter of the roll because 2 bits touched and could never be untouched. The waterproofing isn’t supposed to be exposed to the weather either so backfilling has started. I am not sure where I cam going to find enough dirt because the dirt that was there went to making a dent into filling the pit of despair (the trash filled mine canyon at the bottom of the property) and that’s not coming back.I have enough to make it easier to climb to the cabin floor and that’s fine for now.

On the building front, I spent days and days trying to find four corners of the cabin that were square, I had my first lumber delivery. The joists and plywood floor the floor. That is all in and I am ready to put up walls. I have taken a few weeks off from building to sit down and finalize where the openings for doors and windows go and making some final adjustments to the cabin design.

I think summer is finally here to stay. I have my list of windows to order and am ready to load up my trailer with Home Depot lumber and get started. It will not be long before the walls go up. I think. Now that I have started there is no turning back. A wet winter up here would destroy all the wood if I don’t have a closed in and waterproof cabin by October. Come to think of it, I am starting to sound like one of those home builder shows working against some dramatic deadline. In my case, its real. I promise to keep you apprised of all the excitement.

While you await the next exciting installment, I have been spending some of the free time I’ve gained from my superlative procrastination talent by updating the Photography page. You might find some cool stuff even if you have been keeping up with the pictures previously.

 

 

 

 

The long road to summer

 

See You Next Time