There and back again

I drove up to the Bolt Hole Wednesday to drop off a new Craftsman lawnmower. It’s a walk behind, side discharger. I’ve about two acres of lawn when you add it all together and I enjoy the exercise I get from pushing the lawnmower around and around and around. It’s almost a zen-like experience. I had intended to cut the grass but found that the grass hadn’t grown enough to cut so all I did was assemble the machine, add the quart of oil, fill up the gas tank and start the Briggs & Stratton engine. First pull. You gotta love Briggs & Stratton! The 10-year old mower that I have been keeping in the garage up there is falling apart. The wheels are shot, the deck is rusted through and the handle is held together with oak staves and duct tape. But the Briggs & Stratton engine on that sucker starts up first pull every spring despite being in the unheated garage where the temperature can get down to -10 degrees on a cold Adirondack night.

I also had intended to repair the front gate. It had rotted and collapsed when Terry and I were up there on Saturday. But Mark beat me to it. He arrived just after we left on Saturday, saw the mess of gate parts and went to work on the repair. So I’ve got a “new” gate made from recycled parts and a pole from one of the many small fir trees in the area.

I DID get to fill the gas cans (about 12 gallons at $3.10 @--ouch) so when the grass does grow and the ATV comes out of the garage, we’ll have more than enough to haul wood and mow. (The bad news is that it takes me two gallons of gas to make the round trip to the gas station.)

I found the phone line full of static again. Every spring it seems a splice weakens somewhere along the line either under the weight of snow or from a tree branch landing on it somewhere. This static makes any normal conversation on the phone impossible and you can forget about dial-up computer connection. A call to the phone company and they had someone out checking the line and fixing splices so I could get online Wednesday night.

I also got to do a little more diagnostic work on the kitchen sink. I let the water run for about an hour to clear some of the silt and grime out of the pipe lines (something that I need to do every spring) and discovered that the repair I had made back in December had not held. There was water leaking from the J-trap area under the sink. I pulled the pipes apart, rewrapped the fittings with Teflon tape and put it back together. No good. Water was still dripping from the bottom of the J-trap. I felt around all the fittings but they felt dry, so where was the water coming from? There was a puddy-like substance along the side of the J-trap and it felt loose—and wet. I took the pipes apart again and examined the lump of material on the side of the pipe. It looked like old chewing gum (and as a former teacher, I know of which I speak) and it was definitely loose and wet. I peeled it off and found the pipe had a 2 ½ inch long hairline crack.

With the several jobs planned (but not performed) I stayed overnight and headed back to the Aerie Thursday morning.

On my way back to PA today, I stopped at the hardware store and purchased a new J-trap for under the kitchen sink. And some more Teflon tape. When I get back to the Bolt Hole next week, I’ll make the installation.

I really should have taken some pictures…sigh