My Week In Review

It’s been a relatively quiet week at the Aerie. Terry and I cleaned out the larger storage unit and have only a few things left in the small one. Those will have to wait until I get some more work done in the basement as there’s little enough room to move about down there with furniture in the way as it is.

Monday and Tuesday I did some work in the basement. Wiring the outlets along the family room walls, installing the second half of the tongue-and-groove wainscoting, running the wires to the breaker box, purchasing the 2 x 4s for the stud walls that still have to be built, etc.

We went over to Wellsboro on Wednesday for diner and then attended the local Audubon Society meeting. They had a speaker discussing the proposed wilderness areas over in the Alleghany national Forest to the west of here. An interesting idea since there are so few acres of wilderness in the east. The major stumbling block appears to be the mineral rights which are still held by private companies and the presence of oil and natural gas in the area. With the price of those commodities rising, it’s unlikely that the rights will be given up cheaply or that the roadless areas in the proposals will remain roadless in the face of exploration. In any event, I made some contacts and expressed my interest in some field trips to learn the area’s birding hot spots, so to speak. Altogether an enjoyable evening.

Thursday was my big day as I finally went up to the Bolt Hole to clear away some of the snow from the Big Storm. Things didn’t go quite as I planned , however:

The Drive Up:

I took a quick trip up to the Adirondack Cabin (The Bolt Hole) on Thursday. I was hoping to beat the forecast snow that was due to a clipper moving along the PA-NY border so I started out at 0430 hours to travel the 240 miles. By the time I got to the Binghamton area I was sure I would beat the weather to the cabin as the forecasters had changed the start of the snow from 0600 to 1000 and I did, arriving at The Bolt Hole at 0830.

I have to admit there was a sh*tload of snow on the ground up there in the northlands. Not as much as over Oswego way but a bunch of it none the less. After nearly a week of sunny days, the four feet that my buddy Mark had reported had fallen was packed down to just about 30 inches. I had come up to gather up some things we left behind in December and to use the snow blower (Craftsman 9-hp with a 28 inch width) to clear my drive to the house and to the garage as well as Mark’s drive.

The Job:

Picture two sides of a rectangle with the corner positioned at my gate. One side goes to the garage, a distance of about 40 yards. The other, longer side goes to the house about 60 yards down that way. Mark’s drive (or at least the part to the collapsed culvert where I would have to stop) is another 50-60 yards or so.

I parked at the gate and trudged to the garage to get to the snow blower. Mark had already cleared the snow off the roof of the garage and it was piled nearly six feet deep between the garage and the barn. Luckily it was only four feet in front of the garage door. I kicked some snow away from the door handle and unlocked and opened the garage to see that beautiful red machine sitting there. Facing the wrong way.

I wrestled the behemoth around so it faced outward, filled the gas tank and plugged the electric start in. Pushed the button and she fired right up. I went to work hoping to get finished before the new snow started to fall—up to 6 inches was the prediction and it was due at any moment.

By 0900 I was slinging snow everywhere. Back and forth I went blowing white powder (it was still powder under a very thin crust) to the side. A few spots had drifted in such a way that the snow was actually above the 24 inch high scoop that feeds the machine and in some spots, like where Mark and I had walked across to the garage or where the street plow had made its deposits, there was a layer of packed snow at the bottom that wanted to lift the machine upward. I guided the machine as slowly as I could keeping it in first or second gear so it would have time to spew the snow to the side before being asked to take another bite. It was a long and noisy job. I went through three tanks of gasoline to get it finished and spent nearly four hours getting it done. Just as I was finishing, more snow started to fall from above. *sigh*

Putting the blower back in the garage, this time facing out, I checked to see what I wanted to load in the truck to take back to PA. I planned on sleeping overnight and shoveling snow off some of the cabin’s roofs before loading up and leaving Friday morning. I backed the truck up to the cabin door and went inside to see what was in there that had to go south.

The Disappointment:

That’s when I discovered the freezer door was ajar and that some mice had discovered the joys of frozen butter and venison meat. Fortuitously, the weather had been so cold that the food in there was still frozen. I put it all into plastic bags which I then placed in five-gallon buckets and covered with snow. I proceeded to put a large pot of snow on the stove so I could heat some water to clean all the mouse turds out of the freezer. But the gas would not light. The propane tanks on the north side of the house were buried in snow and I could only assume the regulator on the tank had sprung a leak in the cold. It happens when the gas is not used during very cold weather. Condensation in the regulator freezes and expands to create a leak. I’ve had it occur on the tanks for the travel trailer. Since it happens outside there is little danger but is a major PITA.

The Return:

The lack of a stove for cooking was the last straw. I could heat the place, as I usually do, with the wood burning stoves (3 of them) and I could cook in the toaster oven and/or microwave (never said it was a primitive cabin), but I had had it up to here. I packed what I could find in the house into the truck, pulled over to the garage and did the same there. Then it was adios. I drove out the gate and headed back to the Aerie in the falling snow. It was 1500 hours when I left the Bolt Hole and I made it back to PA by 1930. The weather wasn’t much of a factor until I got onto Route 6 in Bradford County. There, on some of the higher elevations, the snow had accumulated about an inch or two but then been packed to ice.

The Summary:

I drove almost 240 miles up, walked behind/wrestled a snow blower for four hours, spent an hour packing up the truck, and drove 240 miles back between 0430 and 1930. (I also spoke to the local lumberman about this and that and the other thing for nearly an hour. He complained about lumber prices, the vagaries of the weather (too warm in Dec., too snowy in the beginning of Feb., and, if the forecasts were to be believed, it would thaw too soon for him to get the logs out of the woods), the break downs of equipment he suffered when he could have been harvesting logs, and the skyrocketing price/value of land in the area. We had a good long talk. During which I nodded my head a lot.) I got a good bit of work done that needed to be done. There was still work I wanted to do but I was too ticked off to stay overnight.

Friday morning, Terry drove off to New Jersey for a hen party/stitching class with her lady friends. She was originally going to come back to the Aerie on Sunday night and then drive back to Newark Airport on Wednesday, but the forecast called for icy, snow covered roads and I insisted she stay at her mother’s and not make the drive 250 miles back over the Poconos or up Route 15 where the roads could be quite treacherous. She agreed to that and packed her bags for her trip to Chicago later this week.

So, for now, it’s just me, three cats, a couple of squirrels, and a few hundred birds here at the Aerie waiting for the weather to turn on us—again.