OVER Friday, Saturday, and a little bit of yesterday we got a 12′ x 18′ camping lean-to mostly built. In the home stretch we sustained a casualty. There’s Adam, Jonny’s partner in the construction trades, leaving bloody paw prints on the rafters.
That drip edge is razor sharp. He ripped his right index finger to the bone, a real gusher.
I’ve got a first aid kit down here, fella… Want to climb down, see if we can wrap some tape around the leak? Maybe get it stopped?
No, he wants to finish what he’s doing first.
Later on he climbs down, leaving more paw prints as he descends the rafter strapping.
We rode up north Thursday, Jonny, Adam, and me. Friday was mostly about lugging building materials through the woods, the three of us.
This is early Friday… the first materials drop from the lumberyard in Ludlow.
Floor joists, rafters, five-quarter decking… Every stick had to be lugged 340 feet into the woods. Uphill all the way.
Elevation gain from the road to the lean-to must be at least 60 feet. By Sunday morning the tops of our shoulders were raw. Farther south I was feeling it in the quads, hamstrings and glutes.
Adam can’t get enough of carrying heavy things around on uneven terrain. After lugging lumber up the hill all day look how happy he is lugging firewood down the hill as we head back to camp.
We camped at Coolidge State Park, not far from the work site.
It’s a 20-minute ride over in the morning. Actually, it’s a 20-minute ride over in the evening as well. I wonder if they planned it that way?
We could have camped on the land Jonny and Jenna bought but, you know, the state park’s cheap, $19 a night. Comes with hot showers and cast iron fire-pit grills to cook on.
Adam likes to tend the fire. The more roaring a fire, the better.
I felled a dry, dead beech and he lugged it out to the truck in 5-foot lengths. It’s a really dense hardwood, lots of BTUs. Makes nice coals.
There he goes again, two at a time… They only weigh 100 pounds each. He runs ’em 100 yards down the hill to the truck. Just getting warmed up, the brute.
Snack time, keep us all moving… Newtons, a greasy dry sausage, trail mix…
We ate like pigs. Ate like pigs and probably shed weight.
We started out with two coolers full of food plus a 20-gallon bin of dry stuff.
Went through lots of eggs, macaroni salad, burgers, sausages, oatmeal, potato chips, bagels, bread, turkey, cheese, triscuits, apples, nectarines, plums, blueberries, blackberries, raspberries, strawberries, bananas…
Keep the working slobs fueled up…
Speaking of fuel, I really like this butane-powered framing nailer of Jonny’s. Had never used one before.
All my nailers are pneumatic. Now I’m spoiled. Next time I’m dragging an air hose around behind me I’ll be thinking what an intolerable pain in the ass this is.
I didn’t work on the deck, Jonny and Adam banged that out while I was lugging materials off the road. And just off the road, maybe 75 feet, got a stockpile going there. As needed it went up the hill over the next two days.
This was Friday afternoon, deck finished.
Time to start working on walls…
Ridge joist going up, rafters…
For two nights the sleeping weather was wonderful, temps in the mid-30s.
Saturday night was more like 50. Not ideal for me. I like the brisk air at night.
Sunday gets here, Adam starts bleeding, it starts raining, metal roof gets slippery, we call it quits. Never did get the front roof on. We’ll go back up a few weekends from now and finish the job.
The driveway contractor’s supposed to be on task by then, but who knows? It would be nice to be able to get the truck off the road. If only so as not to have to carry things so far.
This is what they call a town road in Vermont. If you want a parking space, get out your chainsaw and the loppers and clear one.
Tony DePaul, October 4, 2021, Cranston, Rhode Island, USA
Finally got to see the VT images on my new phone. What an experience, Tony. If a nasty gash won’t kill ya, an infection can. Hope his hand has healed. Oops. All those haitches.
Very enjoyable to see the progress made. Maybe I have read that the woods can cause some men to become possessed by lumberjacks.
Looking forward to the next installment.
Thanks, Alix. We’ll be heading back up there one of these weekends soon, need to put the rest of the roof on. I’m looking forward to a few nights of truly frosty camping, Vermont in November, & with a bit of elevation.
All I could think of was one of those military-style cargo helicopters dropping the completed lean-to on the site; just searching for alternatives. You can tell the pix sequence is by a once and future reporter – a lead with the Bloody Hand gets everyone’s attention. The log-carrying was bad enough when there was just one – but two? Oh, that’s right – that part was downhill. Nice menu, but where was the Spam?
Ha! That picture did jump out as an attention-getter. I liked that Adam was underexposed in the image, the eye goes right to the paw print instead of the anonymous man who left it.
You guys are too hard core, mountain men. That’s young man stuff. Old dogs need power equipment, like a 4WD tractor with a grapple on it to haul all that stuff to the top!
There must be plenty of tractors in the general area. Sure would have been nice for a friendly neighbor to notice our labors and offer a motorized assist. But you can sit on that road for days before you see anyone go by.
Great work. Good time of the year to be humping lumber through the woods. Nice and cool. Hope the digit is ok.
Mosquitos have all but died off, that was nice. They were bad when I was up there solo for five days in August, hunting for the survey pins. https://www.tonydepaul.net/so-that-was-vermont/
I dig eating pig newton’s! And working construction in the woods. Looks like a wonderful encampment rising up.
When the house is up you’ll have to come visit and ski Vermont, bud. I’m told that plenty of skiers from the west can’t get over the terrain available here at much lower elevations.
I know that to be true on hiking trails. In the west you have to go up at least another 8,000 feet to experience anything like the knife edge trail between Baxter and Pamola peaks in Maine.
Handy men in their element. Looks like a beautiful spot. Whereabouts is it in Vermont?
Hey! Good to hear from you, Tim. Thanks for reading.
It’s in Reading, a little town in Windsor County. Not far from Okemo and Killington. Jenna and Jonny are up there skiing all winter anyway, decided they should buy a place of their own. So this year they’re building just a driveway and the lean-to, a place to park the travel van and camp out. Next year, a 2-car garage with a studio apartment over it. In 2023 they’ll probably start on the house.
That’s a lot of hard work, but it must be so satisfying to see it all coming together. I hope you’ll send pix when it’s completed. And that Adam is something else, lugging all that lumber and working while bleeding.
We wanted him to get stitches in VT, he said he would here in RI and then didn’t. Here’s hoping he didn’t cut anything besides meat, the meathead.
Jonny ignored a badly cut finger once, ended up having surgery to repair a tendon and had to stay off construction sites for 14 weeks. Paperwork only, doctor’s orders.
Yes, I know from personal experience, injuries can be worse than they appear to be. Here’s hoping he’s okay.
“ Saturday night was more like 50. Not ideal for me. I like the brisk air at night.”
LOL, 50F is not brisk? We had a cool front come through yesterday, low tonight might be 69F. Feels like winter.
Ha! Well, I own only one sleeping bag and it’s rated for zero degrees. Actually, I find it comfortable well below zero. On a 50-degree night the bag’s too warm for me even if I unzip it, open it up and use it just as a blanket.
I’m exhausted looking at the pictures! It’s gotta be those fig newtons – are they the cookies of supermen?
Clearly, yes. I miss the days when your younger bruiser would stop by the house for tea and newtons. Now he’s about to become a married man. Time zips right by, doesn’t it?
This sounds right up your alley, sleeping outdoors and using brains and brawn constructing things. Didn’t like the accident description, but I’m glad you three were together.
We wanted to take him to Ludlow to get him stitched up, he wouldn’t hear of it.
I love to watch other people lug big things these days. We use the service Rent Sons to get beefy young men to show up at our house and tote our big plants outside when we get to RI and back inside when we leave for Florida. Moving stuff in houses is probably the only job that will never be automated!
Haha! I don’t doubt it, Pam. Galoots are in no immediate danger from AI.
Bleeding and dying on the job. Isn’t that karoshi?
Ah. We lose face.