4/10-12/12 I went up to Camp Serendipity for 3 days this week: Tuesday through Thursday.

I tried to visit Claude McVey on my way but couldn't get an answer on his phone. I did some shopping in Woodinville and then proceeded on to Skykomish to return a book to Marilyn. I learned from a text message from Ellen that there had been a big fire next door to Marilyn and George's house early that morning.

When I arrived at Marilyn's, there was a fire truck, half-a-dozen or more firefighters, a TV news truck and crew, and a smoldering mess where the Whistle Stop Tavern had been. Marilyn got a telephone call right after she greeted me and let me into her house. Her TV was on and showing an interview on Channel 7 with her and George. I watched that until she was off the phone. Then we went outside and looked at the scene. The TV crew engaged her in another interview which I recorded with my camera. You can see the video on YouTube.

After leaving Skykomish, I proceeded on to Camp Serendipity. I arrived at 1:30 and was promptly greeted by Bert and Ernie. We went up to the cabin where they got their usual hugs and biscuits.

Over the past several weeks I had been leaving the thermostats set lower and lower each time just to see what the effect would be. Two weeks prior they had been set at 53º and the cabin had been comfortable when I arrived. Last week they had been set at 50º and it was a little chilly when I moved in. I set the thermostats back up to 60º as I usually do, but I also lit a fire in the stove to take the chill off.

Before I had my lunch, I decided to move my cooking and eating venue from the loft to the first floor. Now that all the cabinets were installed, I had a place to store the food, utensils, etc. All I needed to do was to jury rig some counter tops. I first cut big sheets of cardboard to cover all the cabinet units. Then I lay scrap pieces of particle board that I had lying around on top of the cardboard. That way, the top drawers of the cabinets wouldn't get contaminated by falling debris and I would have a nice working surface.

When that was done, I carried the microwave, the hotplate, the TV set, the DVDs, the teapot, the food, and a bunch of other stuff that would allow me to cook and eat downstairs. Then I fixed and ate my lunch for the first time in the dining room downstairs while I watched my Great Courses videos. That was a major milestone in my living conditions up at Camp Serendipity.

After lunch and a nap, I removed the foam blocks from the vents in the crawl space. I figured that there was no longer a risk of the pipes freezing down there. There was still plenty of water getting into the crawl space so I decided to work on the drainage problem before I got started on the ceiling boards.

On Wednesday I strung drop cords and a trouble light under the porch so I could work on enlarging the drainage hole I had started in the rock. I put on my dirty Carhartts, my kneepads, respirator, my hearing muffs, and my phone, got my Bulldog with the new long bits, and went under the porch and resumed drilling through the rock.

The new long bits worked great. I deepened the channel below the 5" diameter hole I had started and sloped it up to the back trying to get it low enough to drain the pool of water up there, which was full of water at the moment. I was glad the pool was full because that way I knew exactly what it would take to drain it.

During the work, Bert came by so I took a break to give him his hugs and a couple of biscuits. Ernie wasn't around so he missed out.

The drilling through the rock went pretty well. I got the channel cut back far enough to intersect with the top level of the pool of water. That allowed water to flow, or seep, down my channel and soak up the otherwise dry powdered rock the drill was producing. I could see that this water was going to have to be captured somehow and routed through a pipe to go beyond the foundation, otherwise it would just collect in another pool right up against the foundation where it would find its way into the crawl space another way.

I did some chiseling of a channel down the face of the cliff all the while thinking about how I was going to collect the water and get it into a pipe. I didn't figure that out, but at least I know better what I am up against.

I went up on top and checked the pool and found that it was about three inches deep. That meant that I needed to lower my channel, or at least the back end of it, down another 3 inches.

I had made the channel by drilling two parallel half-inch holes separated by about an inch, or less, and then I had used the long cold chisel bit to break away the rock above and between the holes. This worked pretty well until near the back, the rock formed a smooth surface sloping up away from me so that I couldn't get either the chisel bit or the drill bit to take a bite and start cutting. They would just slip up away from the rock.

It was while I was dealing with this frustration that I got a phone call from a philosopher friend in Arizona. It was time for lunch anyway and I was pretty fatigued, so I stopped work, went into the cabin and had a nice long phone conversation before I had my lunch and a nap.

After lunch, I decided to try a suggestion that Dave had given me. One of his projects is restoring an old wood boat and it is common for him to remove and replace hull planks. His suggestion was for me to remove one of the deck planks so I could work on the drainage channel from the top.

I looked the situation over and discovered that there was a short plank spanning only two joists that looked like it would allow me good access if I removed the plank. Since it was fastened down with only 4 screws, I decided to remove it.

I started by drilling out the dowels that were glued in the screw holes. These came out pretty nicely with the help of a narrow chisel and a pocket knife. But then I couldn't seat the Phillips screwdriver because of the sawdust in the hole. The holes were over an inch deep and I tried several ways of removing the sawdust, all to no avail. Finally I cut some narrow strips of masking tape, draped the tape over the end of a screwdriver, stuck it down into the holes, and retrieved and removed a little bit of sawdust each time. After a lot of work, I was able to get one screw backed out.

The second one I worked on I could never get the screwdriver to hold, so I decided to drill it out instead. I drilled into the screw with a couple different size bits, and of course ruined forever my chances of backing the screw out with a screwdriver. I couldn't really see how this was working, but I don't think I removed the head of the screw.

After taking the same sort of approach to the others, I was able to extract one more screw, and I started drilling out the fourth screw with the same disappointing results. Both screws that remained went into the same joist, which happens to be a 4x4. I decided to use a crowbar or a wedge and simply force the screws out by brute force and awkwardness.

After trying to approach it from the top, I decided to go down under the porch and see if I couldn't force the plank loose from down there.

I felt really stupid when I got under the porch and looked at that plank. It was not positioned at all above my channel. Even if I were able to remove the plank, I wouldn't be able to do any chiseling from there anyway. The plank that would have to be removed was the next one over and that one spanned four or five joists so I would have to remove eight or ten screws. Worse, the projecting wall log from the Grid 1 wall goes right over the top of where I would have to chisel and that would make it almost unworkable even if I removed the long plank.

Disheartened, I got two new screws, a dowel, and some glue and repaired the damage I had done to that short plank, all for nothing.

In this state of mind, I went back down under and tried to do some more chiseling. I didn't make any progress against that stubborn sloping face. I was physically beat and quit for the day.

On Thursday morning after breakfast, I went under the porch with a hammer and several chisels. I succeeded in breaking away part of that sloping piece of rock so that I might be able to drill into it. But I quit cutting rock at that point because I had another problem to attend to.

For some reason the electric heater in the bedroom had failed, as if the power had gone off. That had happened before when I had moved the heater, but it had started working again so I left it alone. Now I decided to do a better diagnosis to see what was wrong.

I took the heater off the wall and opened up the electrical connection boxes and unplugged the power connector from the heater. I checked the voltages with my meter and learned that the female side of the connector was energized.

It looked like the insulator around one of the female connector sockets was a little discolored. That indicated that the failure was probably in that connection. I turned off the breaker and did a little scraping of the contacts for this connector and tried the heater again.

What I found was that the failure was intermittent and I could affect it by wiggling the connector plug. If the heater wasn't working, I could get it to work by wiggling the plug. If it was working, I could get it to fail by wiggling the plug again.

Next, I got out the owner's manual for the heater and learned that it had a 2 year warranty. Then I spent a lot of time going through the records I have at the cabin trying to determine when I had bought and installed the heaters. After quite a while I discovered that the heaters were still under warranty.

I called the number I found in the manual, and after a considerable discussion of my problem, they told me that they would put a new plug assembly in the mail and that I should get it in a few days. That gave me a wonderful feeling. I had solved the problem in one phone call and all I had to do was to wait for the part and replace it at my next opportunity.

On that happy note, I had my lunch, watched another lecture on DVD, and left for home at 12:45.