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Remember how hot it was in Georgia, for those of you who followed our Drift Away blog?  Please note that it's May in the mountains in upstate New York.

Yes.  93 degrees on the 21st.  Of course, the humidity is a mere 50%, and so it felt cool to us.

The cabin that Pam and I are renting is only about a mile from where we're going to build.  Like there, here we have no cell service and no cable TV.  We also have no telephone and not even dial-up internet.  That changed today.

We drove down to our property this morning to plant our mailbox.  Pam's mom and step-dad are next door, so Pam went over to do some laundry.  We found out that Pam's mom ordered Hughes Net satellite internet service based on some research I had done for her, and the installer was arriving that morning.  I placed a hasty telephone call to Hughes Net and arranged to have him install ours as well.  The installation company is out of Utica and is over an hour drive away.  Why not do two installs for the travel time of one?

The installer's name was also Dave and was a good guy.  After setting up the in-laws, I had him follow me to our place.  There is no way to find the driveway unless you know exactly where it is.  There's no mailbox, no newspaper holders, no driveway reflectors... no nothing, and you can't even see the driveway unless you know exactly where it is.  You drive off the road on faith that there's something there.

Within a short time, he had the Hughes Net dish installed, the modem set up, and even reset my Linksys router for me so the wireless works.

Of course, when he did that, he also disabled all the security I had set up, and that means that all my neighbors will be able to log on to my unsecure connection until I fix it.  That's very low on my list of priorities since we have no neighbors.

I will now be able to update this blog with some regularity, perhaps even everyday as I did with our Drift Away blog.

By the way, the dogs are fascinated by living in Bleecker.  They've always been in a controlled environment.  Either on leashes, or voice command.  They've never been free.  Here they are, and they're having a tough time adjusting to it.

Ruby and Chevy, the pitbulls, don't stray much more than a hundred feet or so from the house.  The creek is very enticing, however.  Water and sticks.  It doesn't get much better than that for Ruby.

So tomorrow's task will be telephone.  I'll let you know what I did and how it worked out tomorrow.

Too Many Projects to Count

Pam and I are renting a little camp about a mile from where we're going to build.  While most of our efforts will be directed towards our own place, we're working around the camp to make it nice.  It's been unoccupied for a couple of years and looks it.  And because it's a camp, maintenance has been put off.

The first job was to replace the faucet in the bathroom.  The washerless faucet was dripping real good and I picked up a replacement at Home Cheapo for $19.

You might notice that the throne is a throne, raised up a foot or so.  The camp was built on a slab.

This is the old, nasty leaking faucet.

This kind of a project might be a fun one to blog about on Drift Away, our old trawler, because nothing is ever easy on a boat.  But in a house, it's a pretty mundane project.  The only exciting part was trying to get the hot water hose connected so it didn't leak.  Someone cross threaded the plastic nut and I had a heck of a time getting it on straight.

The next job was to install a screen door.  I wanted the old fashioned wooden kind with a spring that makes the door bang everytime it shuts.  It does, I'm pleased to say.

Yeah, I'll be cleaning up that mess soon.

Pam was heading down the mountain to see her friend Kim.  I asked where she wanted the screen house we bought.  She indicated a spot that's the only somewhat level place on the property, but it was covered in scrub pines. I needed to cut them all down.  The camp's owner has a couple of gizmos that look like weed whackers, but with blades instead of nylon lines.  The one with a circular saw on the end was broken, but after some effort I got the other to start.  It didn't cut worth a crap, but I worked at it, basically using it like an ax to chop down the little trees.  After a couple of hours it ran out of gas.  I set it down to let it cool and while I waited, I examined the blade closely.  The cutting edge was blunt and dull, but the back edge seemed sharp... it was mounted upside down!  I removed it and flipped it, filled it was gas, and it cut like a charm.  Soon I had a place big enough for the 10 x 10 screen house.

I was so ambitious at this point that I decided to attack all the scrub pines growing on the south side of the camp where all the windows are.  I got them all except for the biggest ones.  It was then that my father-in-law Earl showed up with his chainsaw, and I had most of the rest cut in short order.  I was exhausted and had to stop.   While Earl and I were enjoying victory beers, I glanced at the instructions for assembling the screen house.

"Do you want help with that?" asked Earl.

I wasn't going to tackle any more project, but decided that it would be a nice surprise for Pam if it was up when she returned.  Within a couple of hours, we had the screen house up and were enjoying victory beers in it.

Earl left, and shortly thereafter Pam returned and was pleasantly surprised.  We spent the rest of the evening enjoying sitting out in the screen house, bothered only by the black flies who were trapped inside when we put it up.  When they die off, it will be nice in there.

Today, I'm heading off the mountain to get into cell phone range to call Verizon tech support.  I had called them a couple of days ago to tell them that I had no service, even though I'm supposedly only four miles from a cell tower.  Kristen said that coverage here is "spotty" and she'll have an engineer check it out and get back to me.  Well, yesterday she called and left a message on my cell phone that it appears that I might have a problem with my Jet Pack because there's no activity on it and they can't connect to it.  Well duh.  I told her it works fine if I drive off the mountain and sit in a parking lot someplace, but not on the mountain.  Of course they can't connect to it.  So this should be a fun call.  But at least I can update the blog while I'm sitting in the Walmart parking lot.

Bleecker Assembly Project Number One - the Grill

It was chilly when we awoke yesterday.  Chilly as in below freezing.  Welcome to Bleecker.

The bedroom is upstairs.  Heat rises.  Sunshine is warm.

We have a nesting pair of Gray Catbirds just outside our windows.

Olivia, our German Shorthaired Pointer birddog, actually quivers with excitement when she sees them.  It's pretty funny to watch.

The cabin hadn't been lived in for a couple of years (for you Drift Away followers, are you noticing a pattern here?) and we have a lot of clean up to do.  Dust and mouse droppings mostly. I expect the mice will move out because of the dogs.  I hope they do, anyway.

The hats are part of a collection of the places we've been.  I'm not a hat collector, really, but bald guys need to cover our noggins.

Pam is doing a wonderful job of making our little place cozy.

There it is.  Bleecker Assembly Project Number One.

The first thing to do is to scatter the parts all over the yard.  Then, read the "directions".  I say this with derision because, like all assembly instructions, you really can't tell which way is up on most parts.  I had to remove and reinstall several parts.  It was such frustrating work that I started consuming victory beers before comletion of the project, something I rarely did on Drift Away.

Black Flies were swarming all over me.  I lit two Tiki torches, a citrinella candle, and doused myself in insect repellent.  This had the odd effect of attracting more Black Flies.

The finished product.

I fired it up to burn off the factory paint and gunk, which stunk up the yard pretty good.  This attracted more Black Flies.

I had to retreat inside the cabin at this point.  Today, we're off to Home Cheapo to buy a new bathroom faucet a toilet flapper valve to fix very minor leaks, but which make the well pump kick on every ten or fifteen minutes.

We're also shopping for a screen house for the yard.

We arrived in Bleecker mid-afternoon.  After several days of packing and driving, both we and the dogs
had enough.  We spent the night at Pam’s folks house and relaxed.  The next day, Friday, we tackled the cabin.

The “driveway” is no more than a rutted path through the woods.  If you didn’t know exactly where to
look, you would never find it.  The Kia Sorento has great ground clearance, but the hitch on the U-Haul
trailer was only a few inches off the ground.  I knew I’d never be able to get in there, but dad-in-law
Earl’s truck could, so we jacked the U-haul off Audrey the Kia and put it on the truck.  Earl towed it over to the cabin’s driveway and surprisingly decided to back it down the narrow, twisty one tenth of a mile long road.   He did it well, much better than I could have.  It would have taken me several days to back down there.  Pam followed in Audrey while I gave directions to Earl.  He really didn’t need them, but it made me feel useful.

Here’s our first view of the cabin.

It’s certainly very rustic, and like many Adirondack cabins is a work in process, but it will suit our needs well.  It’s less than a mile from our property.  We unloaded the trailer into the cabin, which was a much easier process than loading it.

I like how the owner made clearance for the ceiling fan over the stairway.

The back of the cabin.  I called the owner and left a message asking if it would be OK to cut the small
trees growing up around it.

The dogs were exhausted.  For the first time, Olivia was able to run free all day long, which she did.  As a hunting dog, she had plenty of things to hunt.  Rodents and small birds, mostly.  I don’t know what she’s going to do when she sees a bear or deer.

We awoke early.  It was chilly, much cooler than the Georgia and Florida weather we left.

That’s right.  28 degrees outside.  I cleared boxes away from the woodstove and started a fire to take the chill off.

I have no internet access here at all.  No cell service, no cable TV, no telephone lines, no nothing.
Verizon claims there’s a cell tower only four miles away, but even on the second floor of the cabin I get zero bars.  I’ll call them today to see if I can get an answer.

Pam is off to the city (Gloversville, population 15,000) to pick up some odds and ends.  I set up a little
table in the spare bedroom, which is now a storeroom, to use for an office.  I set up my laptop so I can write this blog in MS Word and then just copy and paste it while sitting in Audrey where there’s cell service.

The rest of today will be more unpacking and getting ourselves set up in the cabin, and then we’ll figure out what we’re doing with this.

This is our land, just down the road from our cabin.  I need a bulldozer.

Lost. I need my Chartplotter.

When Pam and I cruise on our trawler, the ICW (Intracoastal Waterway) basically follows natural and manmade rivers and canals down the east coast, occasionally crossing bays or venturing out into the ocean.  It can often be confusing when one or more waterways intersect and buoys and day markers are seemingly scattered willy nilly about.  To find our way, we have both a chartplotter (sort of like a car GPS) and paper charts (nautical maps).  Pam steers and uses the chart plotter, and I navigate with paper charts.  Between the two of us, we've only gotten off course a couple of times.

Well, yesterday we got an early 8 AM start from North Carolina.  That's pretty amazing for us because we walk three dogs, get breakfast, drink coffee, check Al Gore's internets, pack up, and walk the dogs.  We were underway and making good time and decided to push on straight for Bleecker, getting us there around 10 PM we figured.  We can only run at 60 MPH because of the heavy U-Haul trailer.  It gets a little squirrely faster than that.  Yes, everyone passes us, in all lanes.  Even little old blue haired ladies in Buicks.

Our timing was perfect.  We hit Washington DC well after the morning rush hour, and before lunch traffic.  We passed Baltimore after the lunch crowd and well before the evening rush.  And then it happened.  I was supposed to leave the I-95 channel and take a starboard exit to the Jersey Turnpike and the Delaware Bridge.  I did not.  The road was five lanes wide.  Three ran up I-95 to Philadelphia, and two went to the Delaware Bay Bridge and the New Jersey Turnpike.  I was in the third lane from the left, the right most Philadelphia bound lane, clearly marked I-95.  After a quick discussion, it was decided I needed to get my ass over one lane and head towards the bridge.  I looked in my mirror for an opening to shift right, but there were cars were in a long line, drafting each other NASCAR style.  I swear a few even flipped me off when they saw me look in the mirror.  We were on our way to Philadelphia.

After a friendly debate about who's fault it was, complete with salty sailor words not fit for little ears, our paper chart navigation system shut down.  Shut down as in "Go anywhere you want to go."

Before long, we were smack in Philadelphia area traffic at rush hour.  Everything was gridlocked.  To make a long, boring story short, we're now in a Quality Inn in New Jersey after our paper chart navigation system rebooted.

I'm still not sure what happened.  Clearly, after three years of living aboard a boat that travels at 9 MPH, we're out of our element now.  But I-95 runs all the way to NYC, then Stamford and Boston.  You can theoretically just stay on I-95 all the way and sooner or later find a sign for the New York Thruway.

Pam looked at the road atlas and said we could take I-76 to I-295 to I-95 and then the New Jersey Turnpike.  We took I-76 to I-295 SOUTH/I-95 NORTH.  What??  Then there was a sign saying END I-95.  Insert salty sailor word here.  What to do now?  We then saw a sign for the Jersey Turnpike, so we stayed on I-295 south.  It picked up another version of I-95 again as well as the Jersey Turnpike.  That's when we'd had enough and stopped for the day.

Of course, we didn't stop like normal folks.  I saw one of those blue exit signs that said Comfort Inn.  Perfect.  So I got off exit 8B.  No Comfort Inn.  After some struggle turning the U-Haul around and making an illegal left turn in a right turn only lane, we got back on I-295.  As we passed the exit AFTER exit 8B, I saw a Comfort Inn sign.  Nice.  Let's put the blue service information signs an exit before where the service really is.

How can there be two I-95s?   One that goes to Philadelphia, and another to New Jersey?  Why are Philadelphia drivers among the most obnoxious I've ever encountered and, even though your left blinker is on because you're in an exit only lane they refuse to let you merge into their lane (thank you out-of-Philadelphia driver for letting me merge).

Arrrr.  I can't wait to get to Bleecker and the quiet, peaceful, no traffic mountains, and to get that U-Haul unloaded and off the car.  Sadly, I think the box with the alcohol in it is all the way in the front, on the bottom.

Used Shipping Containers

I was intending to build a 10 x something building to use for storage.  It would have to be big enough to hold a whole bunch of our stuff plus a Miata.  While daydreaming at 60 MPH on I-95, ignoring all those honking horns and finger signals, I thought about buying a used shipping container.  Last night, at our motel in Brunswick Georgia, I googled a few sites.   I found a 10 x 40 for $2,400.  I emailed them asking about shipping costs to Bleecker.  They answered me today.  $1,000 on a roll-off, $650 if I can get it off myself.

I have access to a backhoe.  If that would lift it, I could use that.

A shipping container would be perfect, I think, for storing goods unattended in the Adirondacks in the winter.  They're waterproof, mouse proof, and bear proof.  The fact that they're ugly doesn't matter much to me.  I'll spray it forest green and paint pansies on the sides.

I emailed them back asking about the weight of the container, and then will figure out if the backhoe will lift it.

In moving news, this morning we picked up our diesel generator (thanks Geoff, Linda, and Dick!) and then went to our storage unit and unloaded that.  Our 6 x 12 trailer is loaded to the max.  I'm pretty sure we've exceeded our maximum tongue weight.  The aft end of the Kia is sagging pretty low, and the U-Haul trailer's hitch is about 2 inches off the ground.   Our cruising speed is only 60 MPH, which you might think sounds slow, but is much faster than the 1,643 miles we cruised at 9 MPH on our boat.

We're now in North Carolina, and will make Delaware tomorrow if we take it easy, and Bleecker on Thursday.  We're anxious to see what our newly logged property looks like and what kind of view, if any, we have.  We're also eager to see what the cabin we rented looks like, since we rented it sight unseen.

I think having a cruising mindset makes you unafraid to just jump in to test the waters.  You look at your chart and the available information around you and make your best judgement call.  You're also completely unafraid to change course if that-a-way looks interesting.

This should be interesting.

Loading Up and Moving North

My wife and I unloaded our belongings off our much loved trawler Drift Away.  It's amazing the things you accumulate when you live aboard a boat.  We filled up a good portion of our 6 x 12 U-Haul trailer. And we still have to stop in Brunswick to pick up a diesel generator and a lot more stuff in our storage unit there.

Our tow vehicle is our mountain car, a 2013 all wheel drive Kia Sorento, with a 276 HP six cylinder engine. 

It pulls the trailer effortlessly.  Our 30 MPG highway mileage is now 16.5 MPG, however.  Wait until we load another couple of thousand pounds in there.

One of the first things we'll be building on our land is a 10 x 20 storage shed to hold our stuff.  That will eliminate our two storage units and $200 a month.

I was daydreaming while driving on I-95 (I know.  Fair warning.  At least I'm not texting) and I wonder how much a used container costs?  Or perhaps an old trailer from a tractor-trailer?  We have plenty of woods and ten acres to hide it on, so looks doesn't matter.  Mouse proof, waterproof matters.  I'll have to look into it.