Working in the rain
It’s been raining most of the time since I arrived. I think I used up all the glorious weather on the way out here. Perhaps I was blessed by the magic bakery truck as I left Madison.
Um, no comment.
Unfortunately I took very few photos of people in Buffalo. Well, very few that I would ever share with anyone. Sorry Cynthia. Sorry Dick. I did, however, get re-amazed at the variety and quality of Buffalo architecture. You’d walk down the street and there would be some cool little detail like this one on a building:
This is just under some window. How great is that??!
After leaving Buffalo I made my way across the lower part of the state to the finger lakes region to visit my old bud Judi.
That’s her on the right. On the left is a friend of hers from the University that joined us on a walk one bright morning. Judi has great wall signs around her house.
We ate very well too. For instance, here’s some raspberry sorbet with mango on the side. See, eating well is something that’s fun and easy to do at home!!
After Alfred, it was back on the big roads and on up to way Upstate NY to visit Lyons and Laura & family at a YMCA camp in Lake George.
That was one fast bike. It stayed with me the whole trip.
Lyons & Co. were staying at the Silver Bay YMCA, an amazing turn of the century place. Laura’s parents actually met at this camp and had their very first kiss on the dock. How many first kisses happened at this place? Too many to count, but looking at the leadership groups filled with teens running around and it makes me happy to think that they’re still happening. One night we were walking back to the cabin and we decided to look at the chapel. Someone was playing a duet with violin and piano up on the altar… no audience, just the two of them focused on the music. It’s that kind of place.
The cabins are the old time Adirondack style that you see throughout new england. Spartan, uneven, cobbled together, charming in every way. The group buildings are large, magnificant structures from the CCC era.
We sailed,
That’s David in the foreground and Laura and Eliot in the other boat. David is a great kid that Lyons and Laura had fostered along with his sister Kat a few years back.
We jumped off of rocks just to prove that the youngsters got nothing on us old fogies. And we didn’t break anything at all.
Laura organized us into a tennis tournament (I didn’t win is all you really need to know), and we spent a good amount of time at the archery range. It’s summer camp!!!
It was hard to leave, but there’s places to go, so off I went. After a night in Northfield with my folks (sorry no photos there either) I finally drove in through the light rain to Newport.
And it’s been raining off and on since then, with a good break for the wooden boat show.
I’ve been building (as usual), but my workshop is in the side yard behind the cool old trailer. With the rain, I’ve had to rig up a tarp and it’s worked quite well.
It’s been interesting using all hand tools, and I particularly like the contrast of using nice planes and Japanese chisels in this primitive location. I don’t have any of my power tools here other than a few cordless drills, so it’s all sawing, planing, chiseling by hand. [Ok, I confess I tried to use Kurt's 18v cordless saws... word to the wise, Ryobi cordless saws are only good for the lightest duty work. They have no guts at all. Bottom line, I did it all by hand.]
I re-did the ladder to my loft first. The old ladder was very much like a normal ladder but with square rungs with the edges pointing up. They hurt my tender little footsies, so I wanted something with wide, horizontal treads. I used some old boards from out back to make this whole thing, which meant dimensioning all the lumber myself. Have you ever tried to rip a 9′ long 2″ thick board using a japanese saw? Well, it’s slow going matey, and you have to do some serious planing when you’re done to straighten up that edge. 8 hours later, though, I had myself a good ladder to the loft and my feet sing a song of thanks to me every night before bed. No glue, just tight joints and screws.
Today I actually sprung for new pine and made some much needed bookshelves. Same deal, no glue. And not being able to leave well enough alone, I put a few little details in like having the shelves slightly proud of the side members and beveling their edges. As long as you’re making it by hand, might as well make it nice.
That’s it for now. 2 good days in the “shop” and I am SO READY for power tools.