Waterford Tugboat Rally

Friday was a great day.  Pam and I drove to Waterford, NY where I grew up.  There, we met my childhood friends Bob and Bob, and their wives Linda and Karen.  Bob and Linda and Pam and I went to the tugboat rally, but were disappointed.  The event was three day starting on Friday, but on Friday hardly any boats were there, and those that were, were setting up.  But still, being all a happy sort, we looked at what was there and then headed to McGrievie's for dinner.

These are photos from the day.

A tiny tug!

The Onrust.

Hey, goldenrod are flowers too!

Cohoes-Lansingburgh bridge.

Inside the Onrust.  Notice the pegs.

This is the old, now abandoned Champlain Canal.  The old tow path is now a hiking and biking trail.

And after a two hour drive back to Bleecker, we were met with this beautiful starry sky...

Today it is back to strip the form off little-pump-house-wall-number-three and to build little-pump-house-wall-number-four form.

Slip Form Walls

Pam and I have decided to build a stone house.  Not only because of the economy of it, but because we have the natural resources readily at hand.

We're building a small 8 x 8 shed to house the shallow well pump, which is a temporary pump until we build the house and install our deep well pump.  We decided to practice stone wall building on this tiny structure.  It is a good thing we're practicing.

In a nutshell, you build a wooden frame, fill it with rocks, and dump in cement.  Like this.

We put big rocks on the bottom, and go smaller as we go up.  Pam mixed the cement and I am the placer of the stones.

For a high stone wall, like our house, there would be two forms, with one placed above the other, raising the wall to whatever height is desired.  Well, we'll see how that goes.  One thing we're not lacking is rocks.

Sasquatch Easter Eggs

Our friendly neighborhood Sasquatch has been leaving us things. At our rental cabin, it leaves Pam gifts of food, like a mighty fine back half of a squirrel bitten cleanly in half and with the guts removed for her convenience. On our property, it has left me two bungee cords and an assortment of washers, three point hitch locking pin, barrel nut, and a hose clamp (all round things).

Pam is incredibly observant. She was checking the game trail that both deer and Sasquatch use, and called me down.

The first pic is from standing on the game trail and looking towards the woods. The third is a log (from which it can sit and watch us clearly) with an "A" stick structure behind it, which we see frequently. The fourth? A fuel filter. Yep. That's right. It smelled of diesel, and would have come from a John Deere, White, or Allis Chalmers tractor. I have a gas powered 1952 Ferguson TO-30 so it isn't mine.

I've decided to start referring to Sasquatch things left for us to find, things not in plain sight, as "Easter Eggs".

Infrasound, Eye Shine, Weird Lights In The Sky

First, let me start off that I am NOT saying that the following is Sasquatch. I think it is a strange atmospheric phenomenon following a Sasquatch visit. Coincidence.

September 4, 2015; Pam and I drove to Whitehall, NY to be interviewed about our Sasquatch experiences for a documentary. It was a lot of fun. We gave them about 45 minutes of interview, which will have to be cut way down to fit in their other interviewees.

When we got home, it was dark. Thankfully, Pam left cabin lights on. It is pitch black here at night. She was leading me to the cabin door (I'm night blind) when she stopped dead (I walked into her) and yelled "David! Its right here! Something big is in the bushes!" Being night blind, I couldn't see anything, and being 65, I couldn't hear anything. But then I saw bright red eye shine, so bright that it is easy to see how some people thing that Sasquatch can emit light from their eyes. I only saw one, the other hidden by something, and then it turned its head and was gone.

In the cabin, Pam said the stars were very bright, so I went back outside to take star photos. Each was five seconds in duration. They were all normal, except this one.

No, I have no idea what it is. I do NOT believe that Sasquatch turn into orbs of light and fly off in UFOs, but the coincidence here was startling, and amusing. To me anyway.

Here are two close cropped pics from the above photo;

I think it must be some kind of strange electrical phenomenon.

Saturday night, I was sitting home alone, Pam off horseback riding. Suddenly, the cabin started to shake and I barely could hear a very, very low noise of some sort. I called my friend Bill who lives about five miles from here. His house didn't shake, so no earthquake. Infrasound maybe?

Infrasound is low frequency sound that is lower than a human's ability to hear, below 20 Hz. For a person to detect infrasound, the sound generated must be very high. Many animals are capable of infrasound and use it to either stun prey or to communicate. These include whales, elephants, alligators, hippopotamus, rhinoceros, and giraffes. And Sasquatch.

Yesterday, September 6^th, I was putting things in the backseat of my car to leave the property we're building on and to head to the cabin we rent for the night. There in the back seat was boxed leftovers from the night before. I wasn't going to eat it, so I opened the container and placed it on top of our grill, putting it about five feet off the ground.

Today, I arrived at the property. The container was right where I left it on the grill, but the steak was gone. Whatever got it could reach up at least five feet, ruling out every area creature except one.

The Slip Form Wall

Pam and  I started on the little foundation for our little 8x8 pump house next to the well.  It will hold our shallow well pump, replacing the hand pump on the well head there now, and eventually that too will be replaced with a deep well pump.

We started by picking up Earl's very heavy antique cement mixer.

I had already made the forms.  Yeah, its sloppy, but I didn't want to cut perfectly good 1x10 boards that would be used for four tiny foundation walls for a shed.  So they'll have ridges.

With slip form, you simply pile in the rocks and cement.  We piled on the rocks and then the cement.  We did it backwards, and you shall see the result.  But this was our first wall and a learning one.

The top was poured and screed.  Looks pretty good, eh?

Pam poured the excess cement on the ground.  I later found a Sasquatch print in it.  Amazingly, it is the same size as Pam's foot.  What are the odds of that?

and here is the wall with the forms removed.  You can see a lot of gaps in the cement.   Careful as I was, I didn't get enough cement down around the rocks.  Next time, we'll pour the cement in and then push in the rocks, and when I take the forms off, take a hammer and chip off the cement stuck to the outside of the face rocks.

As bad as it looks, we were smart enough to start with the wall in the back, the one no one will see but us.

The Generator, Blueberry Pie, and Raspberry Pierogis!

First, the generator.   I'm getting nowhere with this.  It runs great, a Yanmar diesel.  It generates power for anywhere from a minute to a few hours and then quits.

As those of you know from my Drift Away blog, I'm not afraid to tackle things I know little to nothing about.  But I don't know where to start with this.  I called a generator repair place here in Fulton County and he said he wasn't interested and was too busy anyway.  Ideas, anyone?

Friend Bill and I were at our Amish sawmill on Friday.  They sell baked goods and such on Fridays and Saturdays, and I scored a blueberry pie!  This was tonight's dinner.

The blueberry pie was followed by homemade pierogis, by Pamela.  She recently returned from Connecticut and the family's Polish mother was visiting from Poland.  She couldn't speak a word of English, but she managed to show Pam how to make pierogis!  Stuffed with raspberries!

Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm... are these good!

Isn't it great when your kids grow up and move out on their own, and you can have blueberry pie for dinner and raspberry pierogis for dessert?  No worries about setting a good example.

Framing The Pump House

I've started framing the pump house, and what I'm doing is overkill.  But this is practice for the house.  And part of the fun, for me, is figuring out how to do things without researching it.  As many of you know, I research  stuff to death, much to the dismay of my family.  But this is something that isn't really that important, and that I want to try to figure out on my own.

Even though this little shed is only 8 x 8, I wanted to practice tongue and groove.  How to do it?  I set my circular saw for 2", and cut into the rough cut 4 x 4s.  I put the cuts as close together as I could.

I then took a cold chisel and split off the wedges, and then used a wood chisel to clean up the cut.  This is what I wound up with.

And this is the first gable end wall.

A close-up of the gable.

Of course, I don't need to go through all of this for such a little shed, but it is practice and it is fun.  Next will be building a slip form foundation.  Yes, slip form on this tiny wall, but it is good practice for the house next year.

Victory beer!  Actually, six of them!