4/30-5/2/13 I went up to Camp Serendipity for 3 days: Tuesday through Thursday.

I stopped at Priscilla's first, to help her with a few things, and then I proceeded on to Monroe where I visited with Uncle Charles. I arrived at Camp Serendipity at 1:15.

After lunch I took my usual nap. About the time I was going to wake up anyway, Earl knocked on the front door and woke me up. I went down, let him in, and we had a nice long chat. It was a little chilly in the cabin because I had turned up the thermostats only an hour earlier. I got a bundle of firewood and lit a fire in the wood stove. In no time we had to move our chairs because it got too warm near the stove.

I was pleased to see how effectively Earl is keeping his Parkinson's symptoms under control. After a fairly long visit inside, we went outside and talked about the winter ice storm and how to deal with all the downed trees and slash it left behind.

After Earl left, I went to work and cleaned out the utility room. My project for this week was to install the flooring in that room, and the room was piled high with stuff. Most of my hand tools were stored in there along with some extra lumber, my work clothes, boots and shoes, extra paint, ladders, and what-not. There was also a small heavy table and a big super-heavy drafting table. I moved everything out except for the two tables.

The plan was to push the tables back against the wall, install the flooring up to them, and then move the tables over onto the new flooring in order to finish the job. The tables could also serve as working surfaces for cutting the flooring material.

After everything but the tables was moved out, I vacuumed the utility room floor so it was ready to receive the flooring.

On Wednesday I started the day by taking the bottle of urine I had produced over night, along with a couple scoops of wood ashes from the stove, up to the giant sequoia grove and used it to fertilize Brian. I have decided to do that for each tree starting with those that seemed to need it most.

Since I was going into the woods anyway, I decided to water all the sequoias too. I turned on the hose spigot and went into the woods expecting to fill my buckets. But there was no water running out the end of the hose. It was either frozen or pinched off.

After checking, I found that a big pine tree that had fallen across the trail to the privy had pinched the hose under some pretty big branches. I got my axe and cut a bunch of big branches off the tree trunk and freed up the hose. It had been pinched flat so I worked on trying to make it round again. I got it so that it was at least open.

But back in the woods, there was still no water. I opened one joint and found that there was plenty of pressure and flow there. And from there to the end of the hose there were no more pinches. I figured it must be that it was frozen. The temperature was 30º outside but it looked like it was going to be a sunny day. I decided just to wait and let it thaw out.

I went back in and started laying flooring in the utility room. It went pretty smoothly because by now I know what I am doing and have the techniques down.

After about an hour, I went back out to the woods and found that the water was now running. I watered all 11 surviving sequoia trees. I finished in time to lay a little more flooring before I quit for lunch and a nap.

It took the rest of the afternoon to finish the flooring job. It was touch and go because I barely had enough flooring material. This was the same material I had used in the front entry room and in the bathroom so I had a number of full panels and a bunch of remnants from the other two rooms. Those remnants included the remains of some stupid mistakes, like getting left and right mixed up and cutting the hole for the toilet in the wrong place in a nice full sheet. There were also two full sheets with just a couple inches cut off the long side of each one. These were the result of cutting those small strips to fit up against the bathtub.

When I reached the point of needing the last six sheets, I found that I had only five full sheets left. I did some careful measuring and inventorying and figured out a way to piece together the remnants of what I had in order to cover the entire floor. I succeeded, but there wasn't much scrap left when I finished.

One trick that I learned and had to use quite a bit was to re-make, or reconfigure some of the panels. Each normal panel has an overlap on two adjacent edges and an underlap on the other two edges. In laying a panel, each overlap mates with an underlap and sticks tightly to it as soon as they touch. The mating surfaces are coated with a super strong contact adhesive.

What I discovered was that the panels are made of two separate layers, the one on top glued to the one on the bottom. The two layers are offset in two directions and that is what forms the overlaps and underlaps. And, I discovered—actually I read about it in the instructions—that the glue joint can be released by heating the material.

It didn't take me long to learn how much heat to apply with a propane torch in order to soften the bottom layer so that it could be easily cut with a utility knife. And then the two layers could be separated simply by pulling them apart. When the parts cooled, the glue was just as active and sticky as before.

I used this technique primarily to change an underlap edge to an overlap edge so that I could fit a remnant scrap piece into where I needed a piece. I kept most of those scrap fittings under where the washer and dryer will go so that even if they are visible, they won't be spotted. I was very happy to have been able to complete the job.

After dinner, while I was relaxing out on the porch, on Dave's Adirondack chair, with a glass of Jack Daniels Old No. 7, I momentarily saw a black bear lope gracefully out of the road ditch and disappear into the neighbor's woods across the road. It happened so fast that I only got a glimpse of him.

At first, I thought it was Bert, but by the time it disappeared into the trees it was clear that it was not Bert. Bert does not lope like that. Instead he walks on those extra long skinny legs and sniffs everything as he walks. The bear, on the other hand, loped in long smooth graceful bounds a lot faster than Bert walks. The bear was also stubbier in shape with wide haunches. Bert looks very skinny in comparison. Also, Bert has a lot of grey around his face and underbelly. The bear was a solid glistening black all over. Anyway it was fun to have seen it. I think this is only the second time I have seen a bear although I know they are around all the time they aren't hibernating.

On Thursday morning, I tested the AFCI and GFCI breakers and recorded the septic pump counter. The reading was 49. That meant it ran twice last month which is pretty much the average reading. That means that I run 600 gallons of water down my drains each month.

Next, I went into the woods and treated Andrew with my urine/ash fertilizer mix. I took an axe with me because there was still one fairly big tree across the trail going up to Andrew that I hadn't cleared away before. I cut the tree away from the trail and it is now open all the way.

Back in the cabin, I put things back into the utility room and then spent the rest of the morning composing a script for a new video that I intend to make some day. I left for home at 1:00 glad to have completed all the flooring over the entire first floor. I think I'll hold off on flooring the loft until I install the ceilings on the inside. I'll have to set up scaffolding up there and I would rather have it resting on the subfloor than the finished floor.