A little December news

TWO WEEKS ago it was the Fourth of July, here it is December, all a mystery to me.

I missed Thanksgiving. I had been on the walking DL for a month or so, then things rapidly progressed to the lying-on-the-basement-couch DL. From there I qualified for the at-least-my-affairs-are-mostly-in-order DL, so yeah, the holiday, I missed it.

The good news is: when you’re under the weather nobody cares if you have a 16-ounce single-malt hot toddy for breakfast. I took full advantage.

Jan Nelson from Seattle arrived in Connecticut yesterday to help brother Jorge transport his belongings home. They have room for a motorcycle in the truck they rented. If I were planning to ride the Arctic again in 2023 I’d throw the 650 piglet aboard and thereby pre-position it in the west. But I’ve been to the Arctic twice on motorcycles, I think I’ll keep the little thumper here in the east and use it up riding the backcountry discovery routes, the MABDR from Pennsylvania south, the NEBDR from Pennsylvania north.

I did haul the piglet home in recent weeks, to get her ready for off-road spring riding. She had snoozed away the pandemic in a spare bay at Daughter #1’s house across town.

Here she is oinking at me through the rear windshield on the ride home.

Here’s a little Montana, one of my favorite places. These are photos I’ve been saving over the summer and fall, construction updates from Robyn Lode, my friend on the high plains in Wheatland County.

Robyn needed additional shop space and a place to park her truck under cover so she built an addition to the shed where she raises sheep. Shed… they call it a shed, it’s a good-sized building, 40′ x 80′, or 3,200 square feet. Robyn made it 50 percent bigger by adding another 20′ x 80 on the north side of the building.

She hired a Hutterite crew to pour the slab and then built the building mostly by herself. She counted on help from her parents now and again, whenever four to six hands were the minimum needed to get a particular phase of the work done.

Robyn also has a new pup, which is not to say a new pet.

This girl, a Pyrenees/Komondor mix, will grow into one of the mighty guard dogs that live out on the prairie year round, ready to defend the herd against wolves, coyotes and bears. There are six guard dogs on the ranch, plus the herding dogs, the border collies Byrdee and Rosie.

The new girl, Chewy (for Chewbacca), is too young to be out in the cold full time so she’s spending her first winter in the shed with the lambs. She’s never petted or treated as a pet dog; the idea is to get her to identify with the livestock; to see herself as their protector.

When I camped on the ranch in 2018 I heard the guard dogs working all night. They might be a half mile away but, man, do they sound impressive when they confront something they don’t like.

My favorite picture of the bunch: Robyn’s mom, Bonny, when she and Robyn finished putting the final piece of metal roof on the addition.

Pioneer women getting the job done!

Here’s the rough framing underneath the roof sheathing.

That’s Robyn on the right, and her friends Theresa and Dan from Seattle. They dropped in for a visit this summer.

Robyn made the 20-foot rafters she needed by doubling-up full-dimension 2 x 6s from a local sawyer.

That’s her original woodworking shop at the far end. She’ll take that wall down when finishing the interior space. The new shop will measure 72′ x 20′.

She had to jack up the wall and support it where she’s joining the two buildings.

Her original woodshop, 20′ x 24′, is on the corner of the sheep shed, as you see here on the right. At left you see the beginnings of the lean-to for getting Robyn’s truck under cover.

There’s the T1-11 wall gone up on the lean-to down at the far end.

After a little bit of paint on the board-and-batten, here she is buttoned up for winter.

The wide open spaces! How I miss the west.

The Lode Ranch takes in about 20 square miles. Four people live there: Robyn, her brother Brad, and their parents, Bonny and Russell.

Here’s Philly, where I’m from. More like 4 people per square yard.

And guess what? You’re not going to like the other three jamokes.

Other things going on lately… Little D1D2 carries this leaf into the house and wants to know why the leaf looks like a tree.

I’m sure she’s never heard of the Fibonacci Sequence, but isn’t it interesting she noticed that the proportions of the leaf are seen in the tree the leaf came from. Nature’s golden ratio.

Kids are good at noticing whereas adults are often set in their ways. In the early part of the last century, Alfred Lothar Wegener was ridiculed by learned men when he suggested South America had once been a part of Africa, because look how nicely they fit together. Every kid who ever looked at a map has noticed that. Later on, all scoffing aside, science notices that, hmm… you know what? these rocks in South Africa and Brazil really are pretty much the same.

This summer I taught the little girl to ride a bike without training wheels. She’s only 3-1/2. It’s so funny to see her pedaling circles in the driveway and giggling away. All you have to do to teach a kid how to ride is get them to stop looking at the bike. If you can get them to lift their eyes they immediately get their balance.

Little pipsqueak thinks she’s ready for a bigger bike now.

Just thought of it, but… her bike and this one both have 16-inch wheels.

This news from Duane in Virginia. He recently traded his Harley Road Glide on an R 1250 GS. Offered me the RG at wholesale, what the BMW dealer was giving him. It was an ultra-low-miles 2017, barely broken in, flawless. All the nice aftermarket upgrades, Ohlin shocks, you name it.

I appreciated the thought but why do I need a better Harley? The one I’ve got will go anywhere. And if it somehow doesn’t come home next time, it had a good life, didn’t owe me a dime.

Duane’s busy farkeling the bike here, engine guards going on. Upon delivery, he always upgrades everything that’s upgradeable: seat, windshield, lights… only the best. If James Bond were to ride an R 1250 GS, Q would be out of job; Bond would have Duane set up the bike for him.

In closing, this malady I’m just getting over (hope I’m getting over) started around the end of September. It had an acute phase at that time, then it went low-level and chronic. I felt fine but had an obvious rasping sound in the lungs for maybe five weeks. I had it on the last three construction trips up to Vermont.

Jonny took these pics. We ran a trailer of materials up one day, then a 15-yard roll off container a day later. That was full of reclaimed lumber that may or may not ever find a use up there; quarter-sawn red cedar from the 1950s that his guys had salvaged off a church in Newport, Rhode Island. That day I sounded as if I were calling geese… honk honk… while we unloaded the container in a snow shower.

The cedar grain is beautifully weathered, what a shame it would be to cut it all up for kindling. But there’s a fair amount of milling involved in salvaging it, too. Most edges were damaged during demolition so you need to snap a chalk line, free-hand the piece through a bandsaw, true the sawn edge with a couple of passes through a jointer, and, finally, rip the opposite edge on a table saw.

I didn’t feel sick while working and sleeping out in the weather this fall, but certainly sounded it. And then about 16 days ago it became acute again and much, much worse than the first go-round in September. I had about a dozen difficult days where I coughed & coughed until I was too exhausted and too sore to cough anymore. Started hugging a pillow like a bypass patient.

Everyone was after me to go to the doctor but NFW am I going to sit in a waiting room giving this to sick people and them giving me whatever they’ve got. When I’m better I’ll see a doctor and we’ll figure out how to avoid round 3. Which is what I did. This morning, in fact. They gave me a chest x-ray and a steroid inhaler, yeah, blah blah.

Will let you know what’s what. In the meantime, what a vicious little bug. Never before had I experienced anything like it.

Here’s hoping you never do.

Tony DePaul, December 1, 2022, Cranston, Rhode Island, USA