9/10-12/02 I went up to the property for 3 days: Tuesday through Thursday.

I arrived at 12:45, it was a pleasant 68 degrees, and there was no frog on the padlock. Things were dry but there was evidence of a big rain not too long ago. The water from the roof had broken through the diversion trough that usually sent it over the cliff, and it had run down the roadway to the door of the trailer. It eroded a fair sized ditch, but nothing that I had to repair. I was still able to drive the pickup up to the building with no problem. After moving in and having lunch, I unloaded six sacks of mortar mix and brought it into the building.

The next project was to dismantle the old scaffold still up at the peak on the inside of the southwest wall. I rigged a bridle of 3/4 inch rope over the B and D purlins with a shackle in the middle. Then I ran a rope through the shackle and tied it to the center of the 11 foot plank in the center of the scaffold. I tightened this rope and snubbed it off at the bottom around the loft support column to take the weight of the plank. Then, from ladders, I went up and removed the joist hanger nails from the Z-brackets holding up the plank. Finally, by gently relaxing the snubbing around the loft column, I slowly lowered the plank to the floor. It's nice having gravity work for me like that rather than against me.

During this work, Scruffy visited me quite a few times for peanuts. After I went in for dinner, he came to the trailer a few more times for more.

On Wednesday, I lowered the plank and bracket from the west end of the old scaffold using some of the same rigging from the day before. During this work, I was visited by four jays, including my friend Scruffy. The other birds seem to pick on Scruffy so I try to give him special treatment.

I did some measurement and discovered that the plank I had just lowered from the old scaffold would reach from the bracket on the outside to the projecting end of a wall log at the west corner. I rigged two ropes up, hanging from pulleys in the hooks on the grid A and grid B purlins. I fastened one rope to each end of the plank I had just lowered and set the plank on the window ledge ready to raise it up into place on the outside.

Just as I started raising the plank, Russ Christensen, the building inspector stopped by. He was pleased to see that I was still making progress, but he told me that I should renew my building permit because they were going to change the rules. They were going to start charging $1100 per year to renew, and were going to try to force people to finish their projects within 18 months. He said he had argued on behalf of builders like me but he thought the rule change was going to happen anyway. If they do start charging me that much, I will have to give some serious thought to having a contractor finish up the job. Even though I don't like that idea, there are aspects of it that are appealing. We'll see what happens.

After Russ left, I finished raising the plank into position. The sun was hot and was blazing directly on the plank. When I went up to remove the rigging, I felt tired, weak, and hot, and I didn't feel comfortable on that plank. It is about 25 feet off the ground and from up there, you look down over the edge of the cliff which goes down another 22 feet, so it seems pretty high. It's always a little unnerving to me to get on a scaffold plank like that before the handrail is in place. Maybe Russ' news had demoralized me, or maybe I hadn't gotten enough sleep, but I decided to quit working for the day at 4:30. I just didn't feel like installing the handrail in that hot sun. I fed the jays a bunch more peanuts, and went up and checked on the spring before I went in for the night. Even though I felt emotionally drained for some reason, it felt very good and relaxing just to sit and talk to Scruffy as he took peanuts out of my hand. The weather was perfect, the setting is beautiful, the project is all I could hope for, and it just felt good to sit there and enjoy it all. It is clear that I am not going to finish chinking before it starts freezing, so I rationalized that it was OK to goof off every once in a while and put the work off until tomorrow.

On Thursday morning, I took some pictures of the walls now that the chinking was dry and nice and white. I also fed Scruffy a bunch more peanuts, fixed the drainage ditch, and replaced four burnt out light bulbs in the crawl space. Then I went up and installed the handrail on the west end of the scaffold. It is amazing how much difference it makes in how it feels to walk on that plank. It is the same plank that seemed scary before, but with the handrail, it is like walking on a floor in an ordinary room with a great view. With that done, I locked up, had lunch, and left for home at 1:30.

9/13/02 Sent a check for $44.50 to the building department and a letter requesting an extension to my building permit.