1/13-15/10 I went up to Camp Serendipity for 3 days: Wednesday through Friday.

There was about 4 inches of new snow that was the consistency of mashed potatoes on the ground. The driveway had not been plowed but I had no trouble driving in. I had brought a big heavy oak dining room table with me that Almitra gave us so I used 4wd to turn the truck around so I could back up to a snowbank up near the trailer in order to unload the table.

Bert and Ernie were right there to greet me. It was not raining but it seemed to be threatening to, so right after the hugs and dog biscuits, I set to work moving the table up to the cabin. I started out by carrying the two heavy leaves up to the cabin separately. Then I moved the table itself.

I had the table tightly wrapped in two thicknesses of blue tarp, so to unload it, I just slipped it out of the truck bed so that it was upside down on the snowbank with the tarp serving as a sliding surface. Then using a stout rope tied to the legs, I slid the table up the roadway up to the big pile of snow that had slid off the cabin roof.

To slide the table, I stood with my back uphill and pulled up on the rope. Sometimes the table would just slide over the snow for a foot or two. Other times, the table top would dive under the snow and get stuck. In those cases, I simply pushed the snow away from the table top with my boot and sort of formed a snow ramp for the top to climb up on. It really was pretty easy.

When I got to the big snow pile, I could see that there was a danger of the table sliding over the edge of the cliff. So I attached another rope to the Grid G3 PSL and ran the other end through a loop I tied in the table-pulling rope. The loop sort of acted like a pulley which gave me nearly a 2 to 1 mechanical advantage. More importantly, the rigging kept the table from sliding backward and off the cliff.

After moving the table six or eight feet this way, I could see that I had a straight shot to pull the table the rest of the way with the crane. So I powered the crane winch up, freewheeled the hook down to the table, and used the crane to pull the table all the way up to the upper roadway just under the crane boom.

Then I re-rigged the rope attached to the table so that I could lift the table straight up onto the porch. I lifted it upside down and moved it onto the porch under both railing ropes. It just barely fit, but that's all that counts. In no time I had it on the porch, unwrapped from its tarp, and from there, I moved it into the cabin.

In the process of moving the table, I was visited by a fairly big flock of gray jays. I think it was the same flock as the last time. There were about six or eight birds and each one took peanuts from my hand only once. They didn't come back several times for more like the old flocks used to do. This is a different MO than I am used to.

With the table safely moved, I moved my gear in, turned the truck around again, had lunch, built a fire in the wood stove, and went to work. I got a bunch of firewood from a stack up by the salt lick. Then I rebuilt the tread-holding jigs for the next level, and I removed the next temporary tread to make room for the 10th permanent tread. By that time I was pretty tired and decided to call it a day.

On Thursday I was visited by Bert and Ernie again. Then I went through the entire sequence of steps to make and install the 10th tread. Everything went smoothly. In fact this time, the tread fit on the very first try so I didn't have to take it down and re-work the notch like I had had to do on all the previous treads. I did have to shim both sides of it on the bottom, though, but I was able to do that without taking the tread down from the tread-holding jigs.

Before I quit for the day, I rebuilt the tread-holding jigs to be ready for the 11th tread. It rained lightly off and on all day but it didn't warm up much.

On Friday morning, I solved a problem that has annoyed me for a long time, and I was very happy with how simple the solution is. The problem is that the laces on my Sorel boots come out of the top eyelets so that I have to re-string them whenever I put them on. A long time ago I had solved this problem by tying a plastic ring on each end of each shoestring. The ring prevented the string from going back out the holes. But the rings not only looked a little silly, but they also would catch on things and eventually got broken off.

I just started wearing a brand new pair of Sorels and the laces are long and slippery so they come out of the eyelets too easily. But I solved the problem by tying the two ends of the laces together after I had tied the regular bow knot to tighten the boots. To untie the boot, I simply pull on the knotted ends of the strings which undoes the bow knot. There is plenty of slack in the strings so that the boot opens up completely even though the strings are still tied together. There is also an extra overhand knot in the strings, but that doesn't bother anything. When I tie them back up, this overhand knot is the start of the bow knot and the strings being tied together doesn't interfere with tying the bows at all.

With this solution, I can slip the Sorels on without tying the strings at all if I want and the strings will not come out of the eyelets. Or, if I want to tie them, it is no problem as I just described above. This may not be a problem to anyone else in the world, but it was for me and I was very happy to come across a really neat solution.

Bert and Ernie came to visit not long after I got my boots on, and then I went out to work. It was snowing huge flakes and there wasn't a breath of wind. So the snow was accumulating on the tree branches and it was absolutely beautiful. I went in and got the camera to take some pictures. I made one video of the snowflakes from outside with the Camp Serendipity sign as a prominent feature. Then I went inside and made a second video showing the staircase, the new table, the inside of the cabin, and the view from the front window of the big snowflakes falling. I couldn't think of anything to say that wasn't obvious, so both videos are silent movies.

Next, I cleared the tools off the staircase, and scraped and sanded the top four treads so they were ready for varnish. I vacuumed the treads, swept and vacuumed the floor, and then varnished the top four treads. I was very happy with how the staircase looked. Then I washed out my brush, closed up, had lunch, and left for home at 1:20. Unfortunately I forgot the camera so I will have to wait until next week to get the videos up on the web site.