wed jul 1
I fixed the front brake on the motorcycle and then started adjusting the carburetor. The air pilots are easy to get to, but the gas pilots are much harder. I shortened a screwdriver, ground the tip to fit the adjustment screw, and turned the handle down so I could grasp it, only to find that cylinders 2,3 are inaccessible with the air cleaner intact, so I took off the air cleaner. The front tire is flat, so I mounted a hoist from the rafters and lifted the bike onto the dolly in the garage. I got a handful of ‘measurements’ done before it was time to switch gears.
I spent the whole afternoon installing the drawers and doors Mary brought home the other day, and got it all done by 5:00.
No word yet from Bill at vision or Dave at CMF.
I swear I didn’t do anything! The only thing I did was back off the throttle stop, but none of the pilot screws changed. And it seems to run great. Big difference from yesterday. But the front tire is flat, so I cleaned it up, got it re-seated in town, and tried to put it on. But it wouldn’t go because the brakes were frozen, so I ended up doing a brake overhaul on both forks. One of them was pretty bad. I got the wheel on, hoisted the bike down, and started it up. Suddenly, there was nothing more to fix, and it was time to try it out.
I found my helmet and rode up and down the street and came back and checked it out. No problems. So I drove down Fonteyn and headed out the Mud City Loop. I went to the state park up there and took my picture. Then I took French Hill into Johnson and back and then drove the pavement up Cote Hill in 4th gear. It was great. Then I convinced Mary to try it with me, and we went up and down the road and she seems to like it. Who’da thunk it?
I rode to a local state park on my first ride.
No blinkers. No mirrors. No license. But plenty of power.
Mary took the day off and had big plans to put the day to use. My job is to be an enabler.
So I put the mower on the tractor and moved Celia’s black refrigerator from the GH to the garage. It was filthy, and if there is one thing Mary does well, it’s clean, so it didn’t stay filthy for long. While she was doing that, I was putting in the shelves she’d finished in the LR. It doesn’t sound like much work, but there’s a certain amount of suspense involved in actually placing brackets and putting shelves on them, because their heights and lengths were calculated months ago, but never tried out. In the end, everything fit, but I ran out of brackets. I emailed Bill and Guy. She mowed the yard while I finished nailing down the 2nd floor next door. I read for a bit while she pulled weeds and whacked them to boot. I worked on the motorcycle while she slaved in the kitchen. I picked lettuce and made a salad, and she made cod on grits. It was good.
Since I got solar, I’ve been looking for ways to use more electricity, and this baby runs constantly.
USA! USA!
We went to town for supplies for tomorrow’s gathering of 17 people here. Hardware store, farmer’s market, bank, groceries, liquor store. Somewhere in there, we ended up bringing up the rear of the 4th of July parade thru town, and the sidewalks were packed to watch us crawl thru town toward the liquor store. There are a LOT of hugely fat people in this country, and they all watch parades. Back home, I was tasked with putting up the new flag bracket, which was the wrong size for the flag, so I used an obscene amount of tooling to re-shape it. I cooked all the veggies for veggie lasagna while Mary took care of cheese, meat and noodles, and then we assembled them and filled the new refrigerator in the garage. I weeded the ellipse, read a little, and then took another spin on the motorcycle. It amazes me that it runs so well.
Today is Mary’s party, so we had to get ready.
I moved the sawhorses and plywood and set up the porch as a long table. I vacuumed the whole house, chopped vegetables, and cleaned the shop. It’s too bad it takes a party to get me to clean the shop. Mary did all kinds of stuff and cleaned my toilet to boot. One last run into town, and I had a little free time, and I tried to get c3pr to run, in case I had to give a demo. Lets just say it ran poorly. It hung up on Charles, wouldn’t swat, and wouldn’t even start on Jr. It would have been embarrassing if I’d tried to demonstrate it. That said, I can probably fix it when I have time to try. Everyone showed up – 18 in all – and a good time was had by all. Adam’s got a dog. Good conversations with Bill. Chris & Nina. Go-cart was a big hit with the kids, but kind of annoying for the adults. Lots and lots of lasagna, bread, cheesecake and ice cream.
Nina, Charon, dave, Laura, Bill, Teresa, Mary, Adam, Maggie, Chris
It’s the aftermath of yesterday’s party, and it wasn’t bad. I moved all the chairs and she moved all the dishes. Then we kind of sat and did nothing but read. I didn’t feel like getting dirty next door. Waiting on steel for the stairway. Waiting on parts and the DMV for the motorcycle, and Mary gave herself a pedicure. We went to Cajuns for fried food and when we got home, I had the shits. We skipped creemees and cheesecake. I picked up the rest of the stair treads from CMF and I’m hot to trot.
The tip of the iceberg
Up early and left for the DMV. They didn’t have any problem at all and the motorcycle is now registered, licensed, and insured. I felt really good about that.
Grilled cheese sandwich and a perfectly ripe peach.
Then I made wooden templates for the last 4 stairs and ground them to fit.
Leftover lasagna, garden salad, and cheesecake.
I went next door to inspect and plan and ended up ‘doing some doing’ too. I opened the passage left of the stairs and took off some trim and clapboards outside.
I went to town and bought 2×8’s and re-bar, had a grilled cheese on garlic bread and then drilled holes in the spiral treads.
Leftover cod and a movie.
Don’t let it be said that the house was not well insulated.
went to DMV for motorcycle test, but they couldn’t fit me in. Went to he bakery and the kitchen store instead. Groceries and home. I put in re-bar bracing on the spiral and I think the bottom step is going to be good, but the top ones are going to be mushy. I removed all the nails and screws in the metal roofing over Celia’s room and if a bit of wind kicks up tonight, the roof won’t be there in the morning.
The 3 rooflines have minds of their own, and the plan is to make them co-planar.
I cut and pointed a bunch of rebar, but didn’t do any actual welding.
I dug up the tulips from the ellipse, keeping the colors separate. Which is hard, since they’re all the same dead-plant-grey. I think I planted them way too deep.
At the last minute, I decided to bring my bike along today, and the time spent gathering maps, clothes, pumping up the tires, getting water, etc set me back 10 minutes, and I was pretty sure I was going to be late, but I got to the DMV right on time and then scored a passing grade! That’s passing, not perfect. (Do you release your rear brake if you are skidding? I do.) So I am legal to drive. I walked around town and got a pastry and an ice cream cone and then changed clothes to take a bike ride. The plan was to take a back road to rte 12 and then come back, but I missed a turn or two and ended up on a dirt road to heaven, and my legs gave out and I backtracked. The mountain beat me that time. Bad.
I came home, started the mower for Mary, hydrated, and then hauled 2 loads of manure from Juliet’s piles. “Mary broke” the lawnmower and I was unable to fix it. I dragged her over next door and discussed options. We had leftover lasagna and watched the news and a food show.
Today was a frustrating day. I looked at the lawn mower and the wiring and components check out OK. It is missing a bracket that holds the clutch from yanking the cable, though, so I gotta fix it. My battery charger no longer sparks, and I think I blew out my dvm when I tried it in 10A mode. Too bad, too, because that radio shack handset served me well for a quarter century. Plus, the speedometer I bought doesn’t fit, and there’s a crack in the back of the mowing deck. Everything I own seems to be busted.
So we called it a day, cleaned up, and went to the balloon thing in Stowe.
I burnt the peppers on the grill, but they were still pretty good.
Lift-off
I worked on the motorcycle pretty much all day. In an effort to make it legal, I took the rack off and put on the rear blinkers. The problem is that the blinkers in the box didn’t fit in any of the holes on the machine so I re-drilled the holes and then traced and routed and soldered and wrapped and terminaled the wires and hooked it all up and it still doesn’t blink. Deep down, I knew that was going to happen.
Today’s other problem was the speedometer. The old one is stuck at zero, but fits mechanically. The new one doesn’t quite fit, and I don’t totally know that it actually works. So I hooked it up with duct tape and took a test drive and … it doesn’t really work all that well. The needle goes up, but won’t come all the way back down. So pick your poison.
I got on google and found a video that shows how to get the collar off (kind of like opening a tuna fish can with a screwdriver) and I finally got it apart. I ground a nail down square to drive the cog and it turned out that the needle had warped upward and was stuck on the wrong side of the zero post. I bent it with heat and then “closed up my can of tuna.” Tomorrow, I’ll put it back on.
We had a creemee and nachos and a repeat of 60 minutes.
Today, Mary made an egg thingy for breakfast. It was pretty good, but if I were going to make an egg thingy for two, and I had 3 pieces of leftover sausage in the refrigerator to make it with, I’d have used all 3 of them.
It’s the 9th inning. The final lap. The home stretch. Victory is within our grasp! Today is the day! All I have to do is:
Hook the speedometer back up, move the clutch override switch to the brake so the tail light will light up, replace the nut on the headlamp, figure out why the blinkers don’t blink and then gang the tail lights so the extra current trips the timing relay. And then, if you got all that done, you can re-pack the wiring, put on the trim, gas it up, and go get a creemee.
Long story short: I got it all done and then went and got a creemee. I even passed a cop on the way back and I remember thinking to myself: “go ahead, pig, arrest me.” Terrible thing to say.
Because I’m finally legal. I’m allowed to ride it un-inspected for another 9 days, and there’s nothing I know of that’s wrong with it. Except it’s got no mirrors.
So we read and ate grilled chicken and peppers and watched a biking doping documentary.
My first moto-creemee
This morning, I woke up with a crick neck, kind of like a pinched nerve, so I took it easy. (Mary informed me that I slept on my back all night, snoring loudly, with one arm behind my head. That explains it.) I finished installing the LR shelving and it looks good. The garage is a mess, what with all the tools strewn everywhere from the motorcycle, the stairway, and the lawnmower, so every time I went downstairs, I grabbed an armload of tools and started putting everything away. I spread out the bulbs I’d dug up from the ellipse and put air in the tires of the motorcycle. I re-built the support holding up the spiral so that I’ll be able to rotate it as I finish welding it. Then I made a bracket to fix the clutch on the lawn mower and when I got it running, it spewed oil and smoke all over the garage. I needed a metric bolt, so I rode the motorcycle downtown and got a creemee on the way home. Pizza and an NCIS repeat.
I worked on the spiral staircase for most of 2 days, fixing up the spot welding. My pinched nerve is better, but not gone. I had a good exchange about lenses with Bill and we’re on track to seal a deal soon. I bought some 20′ lengths of #5 re-bar and bent them when I backed into a tree in the Hannaford parking lot. Made lamb meatballs yesterday and crab tacos tonight and took a motorcycle ride thru the back roads of Stowe today. Watched a Mel Gibson movie. Cat fight on the Porch and BZ was hot to join the fray and save Lucy from harm.
Keeping the railing from rattling around when I try to attach a handrail.
This morning, I started out thinking I would probably ‘do’ the handrail, but I chickened out and worked next door instead. I really want to feel good about it when I finally try it, because I know I’m going to fuck it up. Next door, I broke thru the ceiling to daylight and then got worried about whether I could get it closed up again. Metal, shingles, nails, boards all removed. Joist placed, roof re-sealed, floor covered. It “won’t leak too bad.” Ate lunch and stepped on BZ in the middle of the room. Went to get the motorcycle inspected and failed due to tires and petcock, so went to S&S and chatted the guy up. Met with roofing guy, who is pretty interesting. Lawn mower smokes so bad Mary won’t mow with it. Lasagna and a gay movie.
The first new rafter was the hardest.
(But not by much)
Today I went to a welding workshop at JSC. Technically, I didn’t learn much, and my welding wasn’t great, (which I’m blaming on the helmet) but it was an interesting challenge to show up, be given a 12″x12″ piece of steel and told to make something out of it. I made a book end that looks a lot like the mysterious monolith on the Led Zeppelin album
Today I fixed the petcock, but I need some gas-proof sealant to put it back together.
I cleaned up the book end, worked on the roof at the green house, and read quite a bit. Finally, the book gets interesting.
Creemee. Nachos. Sunday Morning.mon
This morning I worked hard next door, trying to remove the window in Maggie’s room without destroying it. I didn’t destroy it, but I didn’t get it out, either. There are yet another couple of holes in the house now where the weather can get in. More of the same tomorrow.
I ran out of steam, cleaned up and had lunch and then headed into town. I bought some gasoline-proof goop for the motorcycle petcock, some lumber for the green house and, when I realized that all my rope is holding the spiral staircase together in the garage, I bought some rope to tie the lumber onto the racks. Groceries and a creemee and home, where I sealed the petcock and mounted it back on the tank and left it to dry. The usual leftovers and a movie routine and I’m done.
Holding up the half of the roof that’s not supposed to move while I’m adjusting the other half.
Woke up late and ran out of granola. I started taking apart the lawn mower and decided to power-wash it and got myself wet doing it. I put the gas tank back in and put gas in the tank and started the bike. The idle is unstable, but it runs good. I checked later on it and the tank itself is wet, so either the o-ring leaks even with goop on it, or the tank is rusted through. Shit shit shit. Fuck.
Then I started in on bending the railing. I decided to hang it from the ceiling and let it droop under its own weight. I guess you could say I achieved proof-of concept, because I actually got 1 step bent, but then I adjusted it a little too hard and my spot welds failed and the whole thing clattered to the ground. Not good.
And then Mary called because the tung oil cooker blew up at the mill and could I please come fix it? I did, and did. It may be a house of cards, but they’re glued together.
Mary made a dynamite dish of chicken picata with our first garden beans of the year.
It takes a lot of heat to bend a piece of #9 re-bar.
BZ wanted to sleep on my back last night. No thanks.
Mary was off to cook a batch of tung oil, using the plug I’d fixed yesterday. Apparently, it went fine.
I power-washed the bottom of the lawn mower. Should have finished the job yesterday.
I drained the gas tank and took off the god damned leaking petcock.
I organized the pieces of the staircase that broke, ground back the broken welds, made a better holding jig, clamped everything in place and welded it together. Then I bent 2 more steps worth and set the whole thing on the floor. It appears to be reasonably solid.
I went downtown for replacement plugs for the Mill and a collection of sealing washers for the motorcycle.
I went next door and, thru sheer force of will and a cats claw, I propped up the roof and then took out every fucking board near the window, nail by nail, so I could get the window out in one piece. I did it, but I’m not sure it was worth it.
Read for a bit and had munchiladas and the news. 3 months of paper mail in 1 night.
Why, you might ask, is there even a level in the picture?
I got the whole handrail bent to shape.
I’ve got the lawn mower apart, the piston removed, the belts and gaskets ordered, and now we wait for the UPS guy.
The third time’s the charm, I decided. It’s gotta be, or I’m skunked. So I took another hard look at the petcock and decided that the casting itself is flawed, causing the o-ring to un-seat itself. I fixed this with a 2-step assembly: first seat the o-ring on the petcock, then seat the petcock on the tank. With generous, but tidy, application of sealant all around. So far, it works. I’ll let it dry overnight.
I finished bending the railing for the staircase and had a close call when I leaned against the hot re-bar and burned my arm. It took off the top layer of skin, but the next layer is pretty intact. It could have been much worse. I took off the wood bracing, and now it actually looks like a stairway.
I’ve got the ceiling rafters tacked in place next door and we’ve talked to two roofing guys. They both had good advice, but upshot is that they’ve got to wait for me to finish the prep work before they can give us a real quote.
Camp fire, beer and smores at the Kowalskes’ .
Burned my arm to a crisp leaning on hot re-bar
You have to take the whole thing apart to replace the piston rings.
Not like the motorcycle at all.
sat jul 25
I put the gas tank on and it still doesn’t leak. Keeping my fingers crossed.
I cut the railing verts to length. All 44 of them.
I went to town and got lumber and a trellis for Mary. Big load.
I worked next door. Not a productive day, but I got the rafters notched in Maggie’s room. Part of the problem is the incredible mess. Part is the extension cords. Part is fear of the weather. What I really need is to just get started in the morning and finish it in a day. I trudged back here and sat in a daze on the porch.
I finished my book The Initiate Brother. Meh. Now I need a new book to read. I picked up Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and it looked a little philosophical to me. I sampled Dune, even though I read it 35 years ago.
Sun jul 26
Mary wanted a trellis for her new clematis and even drew what she wanted, so I gathered the materials, confirmed the dimensions with her, and fabricated it. She took one look and said it was too wide. I cut it back and welded on the middle section and she took one look and said the middle was to be rotated 90 deg. Sigh. Finally got it to her liking and, after her plants have grown a little, it will look good.
I cleaned up some of the welds on the staircase and then we went to Craftsbury to pick blueberries. It is always amazing to see how much fruit a well-tended bush can bear. Too bad ours are bare. We came home with 14# of berries.
The creemee stand was packed, but their creemee machine was broken. A peppermint hard ice cream on a waffle cone was a nice change.
mon jul 27
A scorcher. But at least it’s not supposed to rain, so it’s the perfect day to open up the roof, put up rafters, and close it back up. Easier said than done, though, because everything is crooked and the place is filthy. It was a tough day. 1 big bruise, 2 hornet bites, 1 rusty nail in the foot, a stupid mistake, 2 tee shirts, sunburn, and 100,000 trips up and down the ladder. But I got it done. I cleaned up, got on the motorcycle, and put my new petcock to the test. It seemed to be fine. I tellya, riding a motorcycle on a hot day is a great way to cool down. I got an o-ring for the governor, 8-3 wire for the welder, and an ice cream cone. It doesn’t get any better than that. I rode home with the wire slung across my shoulder, looking like a mexican bandito. I relaxed for a while and then googled ‘chili blueberry compote’ and it turned out that nobody, in the history of Google, had ever made a chili blueberry compote. So I’m on my own, and I made a big batch and then spiced it with 4 different flavors. I need to double the chile. Mary made a great dinner and we sat out on the porch and figured out how the phases of the moon work: The bright side grows right to left during a waxing moon.
Nary a right angle in sight.
regular, cayenne, chipotle, crushed red pepper, and tequila flavored blueberry compotes.
tue jul 28
today I bought 2 cameras and a frame grabber for c3pr. I’ve been trying to get this done since we got back from florida, but I never got any traction until Donal sent me to Bill. He walked me thru the whole process and found me some stuff I would never have found. Photonfocus? Navitar? Never heard of them.
The motorcycle is leaking gas again. Bad. And it’s getting a little old. So I took the petcock off and drained the tank. After yesterday’s busy day, I was beat and decided to do nothing physical today. I measured for windows next door and then had an inspiration that will let me get away with cutting only one rafter. Brilliant!
A serious instrument for ambitious projects.
wed jul 29
It was a kid day. Talk about a change of pace.
I measured the windows one last time and loaded up the garbage and we were off to the dump at 10am. We headed to burlington and did some errands and then dropped Mary off at Maggie’s to get her hair cut. I headed to Home depot to get windows. It was a lot more complicated than it looks on paper, but I ordered pretty much what I meant to order and then wolfed – I mean literally wolfed – down a home depot hotdog and a coke. I headed back to Maggie’s and got there 10 minutes early. Mary and the kids were ready to go and we headed for the chocolate factory. Mary needed to eat something and she wolfed – I mean literally wolfed – down half a quesadilla and made me eat the other half. Then we had chocolate class and made 4 big chocolate bars apiece, which we get to take home with us. Upon successful completion of the class, they gave us coupons for an ice cream cone next door, so Me and Sophia had ice cream cones. We headed across town and dropped Mary and Sophia off at the Y for swimming lessons, while Me and Suri went shopping for bread. I parked way the hell away from the store and we walked thru the Macy’s underwear department, the mall, and 2 blocks of rain to get to the market to get the bread. And back. And then back to the Y to watch swimming lessons in this very hot basement pool on this very hot humid wet day. Watching swimming is hot wet work. Then we drove home and decided to have burgers instead of pizzas. Secretly, I was crushed, but didn’t feel like arguing, so I had a beer, a burger, and fries, although I wouldn’t say I wolfed them down. The kids were no worse than usual, but I was basically done being kid-friendly by this time, and all I wanted was to be alone. We got home, I unloaded, and I sat on the porch and read.
Can’t remember the last time we went to burlington and didn’t buy cat food or coffee.
thu july 30
The kids are still here and I’m not sure what the agenda is, but I’ve got work to do. So I went next door, ripped out the remaining old roofing in the new hall and exposed the beams which I decided not to cut. There are half a dozen more rafters to go up and ends to trim. Another hornets nest and a rain storm while the roof was gone. I levelled the ceiling, put on some temporary metal roofing, trimmed some ends, and picked up nails. By now, the kids had been to the store and back, picked beans, washed lettuce, played on the tractor and left for the pool, all with adult supervision, so Mary was shot. I was dead. I cleaned up, read Dune, and ate fruit while sitting down. Mary made beat up chicken and home-made ice cream and I ate it up. The full moon reflecting off the tractor looked like a dashboard light was on, and I was dispatched to investigate.
It’s starting to look level
fri july 31
The kids are still here. Still. Maybe I’m getting used to them.
I welded the left-over cattle corral into a perfect circle for a new and improved compost pile. I got the go-cart going. I weeded the driveway where I park my truck. I turned the rest of the re-bar on the lathe, putting a perfect point on each of them. I read a bunch of Dune, and I said goodbye to the kids. Then I loaded up and went next door to clean up the mess I should have cleaned up long ago. And I broke the broom doing it.
Then I ran out of gas and could barely drag my ass back to my easy chair.
Pizza and house of cards pilot, which wasn’t very good.
It was a blue moon, and the next one is in 3 years. And the next blue moon on a clear night in Vermont will probably not happen in my lifetime.
No wonder that part of the house droops.