6/29-7/1/04 I went up to the property for 3 days: Tuesday through Thursday.

I had a lot of errands and chores to do before I left so I didn't arrive until 3:30 PM. One of the errands was to stop at Home Depot and buy a small belt sander. John had suggested that this might be a better tool for stripping the logs than what I had been using. The salesman convinced me that the Makita was the one to buy.

There was a little green frog in the gate lock can when I opened it. John had also suggested that I set up a bunch of cans and try to attract more frogs. This seemed like a good idea to me and I decided to set up at least some before I left because I wouldn't be back for several weeks due to my prostate surgery recovery.

I went up to the spring and re-routed the hose to the copper pipe. When I unrolled the copper pipe, I had left the hose attached and since the hose and the pipe took different routes, the hose looped up around a tree. I shut the valve off at the trailer so the hose wouldn't drain, then I disconnected the hose from the copper pipe, dragged it around to more or less follow the new route for the copper pipe, and hooked it back up.

When I went into the cabin, I discovered that PR was not home but a little brown bat was flying around inside the building. He went someplace out of sight as soon as I came in. The peanuts were still on the floor so the bat had evidently found a way to get in that was too small for the pack rats. This presented a new problem I wasn't sure how to deal with. I was concerned that the bat would be trapped inside with no food or water and would die in the weeks to come when I wouldn't be up there.

I opened the front door and most of the windows in the hopes that I could get the bat to fly out. I couldn't see where he was and I never did see him fly again. I left the door and windows open while I worked but I didn't know if he left or not.

I tried the new sander on the logs and found that it will be a better tool for some of the work but it won't replace any of the other tools I use. The best sequence is still the planer first, then the scraper for what the planer missed, then the gouge, then the belt sander, and finally the palm orbital sander. I got some work done on the logs and window between Grids A3 and B3 while I was doing the experimenting.

In the evening I got a call from Earl. He told me about a TV show he had just seen on PBS about a resourceful guy named Dick Proneke (spelling is only a guess) who built a log house in Alaska and videotaped his work. The show is titled "Alone in the Wilderness". It sounded interesting so I will have to watch for another showing.

I told Earl about seeing the bat and he said that if the bat found a way in, he will be able to find his way out the same way. I don't have to worry about him being trapped but I will have to worry about how to evict him. I guess I'll have to hire him as another security consultant to replace PR now that he is off the payroll.

On Wednesday I was greeted by two very scruffy looking gray jays. I think they must be a nesting pair that has been preoccupied with those responsibilities. They seemed to be very skinny, disheveled, hungry and in a hurry to get their peanuts and leave. There were a lot of fresh deer tracks on the roadway up to the cabin. One set was from a pretty big animal. Inside the cabin, I checked on PR and he was not in his quarters. I took a long ladder outside and plugged up his entryway with a board. Ellen had convinced me that it was time to evict him from that cavity since he was making a stinking mess out of it. And now that he has been replaced in his security consultant role by someone who can find even smaller holes, it seemed time to let him go. I'll sort of miss him.

I spent most of the day planing, scraping, gouging, and sanding all the logs and the window frame between Grids A3 and B3 including the B3 PSL. When I finished, I broomed all the chips and dust from the surfaces so they are ready for varnish.

I also made two frog houses from International Coffees coffee cans and short lengths of 1 1/2" galvanized pipes. I put a little chunk of rebar inside each can because it seems to me that the frogs like the metal padlock and the rebar inside the can on the gate. I was just about to set the frog houses up at about 5:30 when it started pouring rain. Instead I got out of the rain and quit for the day.

On Thursday morning my fingers and knuckles were pretty sore from the woodworking and my right elbow was showing symptoms of tennis elbow again. I guess prostate surgery is nature's way of getting me to lay off for a while so my hand and elbow can heal, hopefully avoiding repetitive stress injury. I hope they can heal completely in the time I will be recovering.

The first thing I did was to set up the two new frog houses. I decided to set them up down by the gate so that I would be varying as few parameters as possible to see if the frogs would move in. If they do move in, then I will set up some more in different locations and made with wood posts instead of pipes to see which ones work and which ones don't. If they work I'll eventually do what John suggested and set up dozens, or even hundreds, of frog houses all over the place. As John said, maybe they can do the job that my failed bat houses didn't do. Anything to make a dent in the West Nile threat.

While I was setting up the frog houses, I fed the same pair of scruffy jays. They seemed to be in just as much of a hurry to grab the peanuts and run as they were the day before.

Next I varnished all the surfaces I had prepared. When I finished, I had to stand back and admire that corner of the dining room. All the logs in that corner from ceiling to floor are varnished even though the new ones will need two more coats. So except for the chinking, it looks pretty much like the final result. I am very pleased and happy with how it looks.

After cleaning out my brush, I took a pruning shear and a buck saw up to the spring. On the way, I clipped a lot of the brush away from the trail. The foliage was all soaking wet from the rain so if I hadn't clipped it, I would have gotten soaked just walking on the trail. The branches being wet made them sag even more over the trail so it ended up that the clipping job made the trail nice and open again.

When I got to the water line, I used the clipper and the buck saw to clear branches that were over the creek bed that were in the way for rolling out the water pipe. I unrolled the pipe so there was only one and a half turns left. Then I went down and got a new 60-foot coil of 1" copper pipe up and sweated it on to the end of the water line. First, I used the torch to remove the hose adapter from the end of the water line and sweated it onto the end of the new coil.

I had a real hard time trying to get the end of the water line to go into the coupler on the new coil. I wrestled with it for quite a while trying to jockey the heavy coil to line it up correctly. I just couldn't get it to work so I figured that the end of the water line pipe must not be round. In desperation, I cut off six inches or so of the water pipe, cleaned it up, fluxed both parts and then had no problem getting the pipe to go all the way into the coupler. I also had no problem sweating the two pipes together. It was only after I picked up all my tools to leave that I noticed that there was a solidified drop of solder on the bottom of the old solder joint on the six-inch piece I had cut off. I felt pretty stupid when I realized that was why I couldn't get that pipe to go into the coupler. I should have known better because that has happened to me before. Next time maybe I'll remember and save all that trouble.

I went back to the cabin and got the post hole digger. I used it to clear debris out of the creek bed so I could unroll the copper pipe some more. I got about 15 more feet unrolled into the creek bed. I still need to do some more work on it to get the pipe lower, but at least the pipe is laid out pretty much the way it should be. My plan is to get the pipe as low as I can and then build a series of rock dams so that the creek bed will silt in. That will reduce erosion as well as cover up my water line so that it will be even less likely to freeze up.

Before I left, I rolled up two long sections of hose that were no longer being used and brought them down to the cabin. I set them out on the upper roadway where they will get pretty hot in the sun and hopefully dry out pretty well on the inside.

Since I would be gone for at least 3 weeks, I shut off the water valve supplying the trailer and opened the trailer water drain and the water heater popoff valve. I figured the less water stagnating in the pipes during that time the better. I opened the other valve wide open so that water was flowing full blast through the water line and hose and into the creek. That should flush out the new water line coil and keep it fresh. I left for home at 2:30 feeling a little bad that I wouldn't be back for a while.