10/24-26/06 I went up to the property for 3 days: Tuesday through Thursday.

There was snow on the ground above 2500 feet and it was snowing very lightly at the pass. I arrived at 1:40. It was just slightly raining when I got there but it stopped shortly after..

After moving in, I started making an antifreeze IV setup. I got fed up with jury rigging the 12-volt power to the water pump just to pump antifreeze into the trailer plumbing, so I decided to use gravity and make a hanging bottle just like an IV bottle.

First I cleaned out a 10 foot length of garden hose. I clamped a male hose fitting on one end. Then I took the lid of an antifreeze bottle and cut two holes in it: one big enough to take the other end of the garden hose and another smaller hole to take a plastic tube. With the hose and the tube fitting snugly in these holes, I wrapped a piece of duct tape around the lid so that it stuck up and formed a dam all around the top of the lid. Then I mixed up some JB Weld and poured it into the dam. I also used some electrical conduit cement and sealed up the hose and tube on the inside of the lid. Then I hung the thing over the tailgate of the pickup so it would cure.

Using the template I made last week, I sawed and chiseled the end of the newel post so that it would fit into the hole in the tread. I also did some cutting of the tread to make the hole smoother and rounder. Then, for the first time, I assembled both the tread and the newel post in their final places. I was pleased with how they fit. I could see that the lower bolt for the CB66 was even with the top half of the tread, so I had to figure out some way to place the bolt, since both wood pieces had to be in place before the bolts could be inserted. I decided that the way to do it was to chisel out a chunk of the tread at the very end so that the bolt could be inserted. Then, the chunk of wood could be replaced and fastened with a screw. It seemed like a good plan.

On Wednesday, I used the half-inch drill and a 5/8ths augur bit and drilled the two bolt holes in the newel post. I chiseled out the chunk of the tread and put the whole thing together. The other side of the hole in the tread didn't leave quite enough gap to take the nut, so I used Rasputin to enlarge the hole a little and true it up so that the nut slipped in easily. Then I put the whole thing together and inserted the bolts. There was enough clearance on the inside to get the open end wrench in there to tighten up the lower nut. The upper one was no problem.

I had to cut away some of the chunk of the tread I had chiseled out to make room for the bolt head, but once I did that, the chunk went right back into the tread concealing the bolt head and looking like it had never come out. I was super happy with how it turned out.

I decided to stain the newel post right away so while it was firmly bolted in place, I used a couple of scrapers to prepare it for stain. The post has a lot of raised knots and it has a lot of other irregularities so it was hard to scrape. I started by using a straight scraper and doing what I could easily do with that. Then I switched to a small-radius (maybe 5/16") convex scraper. This would get into the concavities and around the knots. It was a pretty hard job and took me over an hour.

When I finished, I took the newel post out again so I could stain the whole post and so that I can shim the tread underneath. Then I stained the post. I fed the one chipmunk who was now tame several times during the day.

On Thursday morning, I finished making my antifreeze IV rig. Using a nice long red cord I had, I made a mesh around an antifreeze jug by tying 16 bowlines in the cord. The mesh is tight enough to stay permanently around the jug and it has a knot in the center of the very bottom of the jug where I attach a dog-leash clip. I got the ladder out and attached a pulley high up under the snow shed roof over the water connection on the trailer. I ran a long length of the red cord through the pulley with the clip tied to one end.

I got the hose assembly and found that the JB Weld had cured nicely and the hose and the tube were attached firmly and they looked tight. I was ready to give the trailer an IV infusion of antifreeze. I poured a gallon of antifreeze into the mesh-covered jug and screwed on the cap with the hose and tube coming out of it. I threaded the small tube into the mesh so that the end of it would be sticking up when the jug was tipped upside down.

I attached the end of the hose to the water connection on the trailer, fastened the clip to the mesh at the bottom of the jug, and pulled on the other end of the cord to raise the jug up above the trailer suspended underneath the snowshed roof. Then I went inside and turned on each faucet in turn until antifreeze came running out. It worked like a charm. I left the cord, pulley, and clip in place so it will be ready for next year, and I stowed the IV jug and hose in the cabin so it will also be ready. I am glad that I now have an easy, foolproof method of winterizing that doesn't depend on having electrical power of any kind.

During the work, one jay showed up for peanuts one time. That was the only gray jay I saw all week. I left for home at 1:20.