2/17-19/09 I went up to the property for 3 days: Tuesday through Thursday.

The drive over seemed like it took only ten minutes. I had a lot on my mind dealing with a teen-age related problem. I arrived at 12:25, very happy to be in the serenity of the mountains. There had been about an inch of new snow on top of the frozen old snow that was by now melted down to only 18 inches or so. Bert and Ernie greeted me as soon as I got parked.

After lunch, I pumped up the wheelbarrow tire with a pump I had brought with me. I decided to use the wheelbarrow to haul firewood from a pile behind the privy to the cabin where I split it. I learned the tire was flat when we poured concrete for the stairs on 8/25/08 and it was about time to get it pumped up.

Next I did a huge amount of snow shoveling. Mike had not plowed the driveway very close to the wand which is screwed to the gate post, and he hadn't plowed the corner to allow for driving in from the west. Since that is the only reasonable approach for the scout bus, a big bunch of snow had to go. Since the weather was slightly above freezing, and the driveway was in bright sunshine, and since I don't expect that Mike will be back to plow again this season, I decided to shovel it by hand.

The snow was frozen too hard to use my big aluminum grain scoop, so I used a square shovel. I could drive the shovel a ways straight down into the snow to outline a block, and then drive it horizontally into the bank and break off neat, nearly perfect, rectangular blocks of frozen snow. I cleared the snowplow berm for about 15 or 20 feet along the road and then along the side of the driveway about 5 feet from the gate post and then tapering to zero about 10 feet further in. I took my time so I didn't stress my knee or work up too much of a sweat so I thoroughly enjoyed the work. There is real good access to the driveway now.

Bert and Ernie came back while I was shoveling, but I didn't stop for dog biscuits. I didn't want to spoil them.

Next I took the chainsaw and wheelbarrow up to the privy and bucked up a lot of firewood. I wheelbarrowed it to the cabin which worked pretty well after I repaired a lot of potholes in the snow trail. I should have done that first. It would have made that first trip a lot easier. With all the wood hauled, I split quite a bunch of it and brought it up onto the back porch. I definitely worked up a sweat doing that job.

On Wednesday morning, I built a fire first thing using the wood I had cut. There was some pine but mostly fir so the fir burned pretty well and warmed the place up pretty quickly. I split some more wood and while I was doing that, Bert and Ernie showed up again and I treated them again.

While the cabin was warming up, I started feeding a 100 ft. coil of 14-2 wire through the EMT elbow in the Grid E1 corner of the loft ceiling and from there through a hole through the birdblock. That's the same thing I had done last week with the 50 ft. coil which was too short.

Then I got the ladder out and used it to string the wire through knockout holes in the rafters over the front porch. I strung the wire almost all the way to the Grid G3 corner where the flood light goes. I decided to mount the flood light under the Grid G purlin just outside the Grid G3 PSL. Now that I have those hole saws, the installation in a log is pretty easy.

Since I can't reach the flood light site from the porch, I needed to rig up a scaffold. I decided to hang chain loops from the purlin and then run planks through the loops and rest the other ends on the porch.

I was down in the crawlspace getting the chains when the clinic called. This was a pre-arranged call for them to give me the final instructions before my knee surgery scheduled for Friday. They are going to trim a torn meniscus in my right knee and that should make my work a lot more pleasant from then on.

I adjusted the chain loops so that the planks were lying on the plane of the deck, and then I screwed the planks to the deck so that the whole thing wouldn't sway when I was on it. Then I screwed three short planks crosswise and laid a small sheet of plywood on that. That gave me a nice stable platform to work from but it was a little unnerving being so high. I got my lineman's belt out and fastened it to the rope rail around the porch. I could tell that this was going to be way too awkward because I had to make many trips from the scaffold to the cabin to install the fixture. Instead, I got a sturdy rope and rigged up a rope rail around the makeshift scaffold. That not only provides a psychological crutch which relieved my fear, but it really would hold me if I fell against it.

Using the scaffold, I finished stringing the wire, used the hole saws and chisels to cut the recesses, used an augur to bore the hole through the log for the wire, stained the newly cut wood, installed the electrical box, and installed the fixture and lamps. It's great fun to do a project like this after having gained enough experience to do most parts of it right the first time and to sort of know what I am doing. Wiring will be one among many skills that I will finally get good at about the time I am done doing it.

Some time during the work, Larry stopped by for a visit and to catch up on my progress. We had a nice chat in front of the wood stove and worked on the world's problems. Obviously, with the world in it's current state, we didn't get them all solved.

No sooner had Larry left, but Karen Arnold and her sister stopped in for a short visit. They were riding by on their bicycles and had seen me hanging out in space on my scaffolding working on the light fixture.

After they left, I finished up the work on the light and then dismantled my scaffold and put away the pieces.

On Thursday morning, I built another fire in the stove and started out by installing the temporary porcelain fixture I had brought with me in the hall. Then I went into the loft and fed the rest of the 100 ft coil of wire down through the corner of the loft wall and down into the loft floor. Next I went down and using a couple of tall stools, I stapled the wire along a joist over to the plate above box N. I ran the wire down through a hole in the plate and cut it to length while it was dangling alongside box N.

With the wire finally ready to hook up, I flipped off the breaker for circuit number 6 and finished wiring up box N. Before I screwed the cover plate on, I flipped the breaker back on and tried the switch. I was very pleased to see the flood lights come on. I was feeling very happy while I screwed the plate on.

Just as I finished that, Phil and Jeannie Leatherman stopped by. They hadn't seen the cabin in the daylight so the view from the windows and the sunlight streaming in were new to them. We had a nice visit. They brought a couple water jugs with them and filled them up from my spigot. By the time they left, it was time for me to close up, have lunch, and head for home. I left at 1:30.

2/21/09 Decided to install a motion sensing light over the crawlspace door. That will complete all the ideas for lighting outside and on the first floor that I have entertained. It gives me a sense of closure which feels good.