2/19-21/07 Andrew and I went up to the property for 3 days: Monday through Wednesday.

Andrew was on mid-Winter break and had to be back for a basketball game on Wednesday evening so we went a day earlier than usual. I had a bed liner installed in my new pickup Monday afternoon so we didn't arrive at the property until 5:00 PM.

It was snowing in the pass on the way over and it was raining when we arrived. We were able to get moved in while it was still light. The water was running dangerously slowly. It took about three minutes to fill a gallon jug. If it ran much slower it would freeze up and be a big problem. We knew we would have to do something about it in the morning.

Andrew and I played some cards in the trailer in the evening and I think he beat me at every game. We couldn't find Andrew's cell phone even though we knew it had to be in the trailer. We looked everywhere but couldn't find it. We gave up looking and decided we'd look some more in the morning.

On Tuesday morning we went right to work looking for where the hose was pinched. I had a suspicion that it was under some trees that had fallen across the hose line so I fueled up the chainsaw and took it into the woods with us. I wanted to find the hose under the snow so I dug a trench perpendicular to the direction of the hose hoping to uncover it. I dug about 10 or 15 feet of trench through the snow, which was about 3 feet deep and very stiff and icy. I didn't find the hose and decided that I was wasting my digging time. I could be following the hose from a known point instead and either discover the pinch or prove that it wasn't pinched in that section.

So we abandoned that trench and went up the hill looking for a known position of the hose. I spotted a sinkhole in the snow that had been melted from the heat of the hose. I started digging a trench from there uncovering the hose as I went. It was round and healthy for the twenty or thirty feet I uncovered. But when I got near to where we had dug the first trench, I uncovered the tree branch that was pinching off the hose.

I got the hose loose and squeezed the pinched section so it was round again and we went down and checked the water flow. We saw that it was now running at full blast so we had found the major obstruction. I think that now it will be safe until spring. At least I hope so.

At lunch time, we found Andrew's cell phone. It had fallen under the mattress of my bed while I was making it up. The mystery was solved. We had forgotten to bring the chess set and we wanted to play. We decided that we could make a chess set. So while Andrew drew the chess board on a piece of paper, I went up to the cabin to see what I could find that would serve as chessmen.

I brought back a bunch of things I thought might work. We used yellow wire nuts for pawns. We duct taped machine screws to washers to serve as bishops. Half inch hex nuts were the rooks. We used some kind of air fittings with a flange for knights. The queens were big 3/4" hex nuts. One king was a screw-type fuse and the other king was a big cap nut. One of the sets was marked with pieces of duct tape to set it off from the other set.

This set worked great. Andrew beat me at one game with a stealth move and then I beat him in two more games.

After the games we went to work sanding the four logs in the loft wall. About 3:00, just as we were starting, the power failed so we couldn't use the power sander or the vacuum. We sanded them by hand and just let the dust fall. I did some scraping on the next log down. By the time we finished, it was too dark to see without lights so we went in for the day.

We were just making plans for how to cook our dinner without a microwave oven when the power came back on at 4:55. We played another game of chess which ended up a draw with only a king apiece left on the board. I went back up to the cabin and swept and vacuumed the floor and wall to be ready to varnish the next morning.

It was about 32 degrees and it snowed lightly all day. After dinner, Andrew and I played again and got three more stalemates. He is getting pretty hard to beat.

On Wednesday morning, we slept in. I got up before Andrew and went up and varnished the four logs and the sides of the window frames. It was 30 degrees out so the snow was frozen stiff. After I cleaned out my brush, I locked up the cabin and went down to the trailer for breakfast. Andrew fixed the oatmeal for us.

When we packed up to leave, I couldn't find the camera. I looked everywhere in the trailer, then I looked in the cabin and even the privy. Finally after convincing myself that it wasn't in the trailer, yet that was the last place I had seen it, I went down to the pickup and opened my bag back up. I took everything out and found the camera at the bottom of the bag. It had been covered up by my dirty clothes bag so I didn't see it in there when I packed. We were finally ready to leave right about at noon. We ate lunch at Zeke's on the way back. We didn't get a whole lot of work done but we had fun.