Day 108 November 17, 2001

Wow. That's all I can say. Laurie, Darrin S and Butchie were here today and we got a ton of work done. Butchie and I got up early and went to pick up the rented bucket truck. The guys said he would be there at 8 but only his assistant showed up and he rolled in at 8:30. He gave me a quick briefing and off I went without even so much as a license plate on the tired old rented bucket truck. Up at the hill, I positioned the truck in front of the log gable and climbed in the bucket, which had 6 inches of chain saw chips in the bottom. I slowly ascended and quickly realized this machine was a little rough around the edges. The hydraulics work off a PTO so the truck's engine remains on. The bucket is "controlled" by a joystick which manipulates a hydraulic valve and a trigger that engages the hydraulic pump system. The joystick is stiff and sticky, partly due to the cold temperatures increasing the viscosity of the hydraulic fluid and partly because its old and crappy. So it was a challenge to get the bucket to go exactly where you want it to. I can deal with that. What I didn't expect was for the joystick to stick as I was trying to go a little to the right causing the boom and bucket to swing quickly 180 degrees to the right, just missing hitting the backhoe's boom. Scared the heck out of me. It unstuck on its own. After that I was very careful to physically return the joystick to the neutral position. Once the hydraulic oil warmed up, it got a little better but my confidence in the truck was not high. Good thing I was relying on it to keep me 25 feet off the ground. So we snapped some chalk lines and trimmed the rakes. We cut and installed the rake boards (fascia). They look awesome. They meet nicely at the top. We then did something crazy. We put in one of the big trapezoidal windows. Its so cool I can't believe its mine! It was getting dark so we left the other one for tomorrow. We moved all the equipment to the other end of the house and set up the lights. We trimmed the rakes and put up the fascia. By now it was cold. We were all pretty much numb. We wrapped up late and went to the diner to celebrate. After dinner we came back to camp and built a large fire. There was a big meteor shower due at 4:30 AM and Butchie suggested we get up to see it. We would need a fire to make us think we were warm. We turned in exhausted. At 4:30 we got up and went outside. It was pretty cool. Butchie counted 66 shooting stars within a short period of time. I, however, was back inside in bed before that period of time was up.

12 hours, sunny and cool.