A Week I soon Hope To Forget

Early last week Pat and I started running sheet rock to the observatory which sounds easy but entails a ton of work,

any trip to town starts with warming up the the Rodeo then a 3 mile run to the storage building where we warm up the truck for the 17 mile trip into Grand Marais.

The return trip has the added fun of repacking everything from the truck into the Rodeo then unpacking into the observatory, we have then handled the sheet rock 3 times and still need to hang it.

The transfer at the storage building

Looking out the warm room door.

The last part of the week we traveled into the cities to do our seasonal pack up and storing of all the Christmas stuff along with buying up items on our shopping list which included a large load of steel needed to build a new snow drag for smoothing out our road.

We also went on a big date, if you can call a movie showing Friday afternoon a date,(I know I can). The movie of choice was True Grit which we both thought was great. And Saturday night found us at Chuck's 50th birthday party, I tell you it's was just one social event after another in the city.

Back to God's Country Monday and the start of a very expensive and unusually cruel week.

After unloading the steel in Dean's shop I then had snow to plow at the storage building where I'm running out of room to pile it, the day ended with snow removal off the cabin roof.

Tuesday started before dawn with the above mentioned work just to get to town,

it's Cook County commissioners meeting day.

To do this right I need to be in town by 7:30 for breakfast at a restaurant called "South of the Border" (south of the Canadian border not Mexican food) The meeting had a 8:30 kickoff and lasted to around noon then I had a few stops before heading back, during my running around town I was lucky enough to receive a no seat belt ticket.

SOB breakfast $10.00

gas for the pickup $70.00

seat belt ticket $115.00

sub sandwich $10.00

My Tuesday total $205.00

The best part is,

the seat belt tickets base fine is $25.00 but there's $90.00 State Surcharge and Law Library fee for the total of $115.00 and the officer telling me the ticket is for my safety.

At this rate I can't afford to go to town.

Wednesday was cheaper,

I wore my seat belt and headed back into town, our sign company had the new truck door signs ready and she installed them. I then had one stop at the lumber yard and one stop over at Dean's where I was talked into snowmobiling Thursday, he wanted to pack a trail to a secret trout lake for the opener this weekend.

Wednesday total

$120.00

Thursday

For all you readers who know Dean (our project tree hating dirt contractor) if he ever wants you to go snowmobiling with him run, I mean run away as fast and as far you can.

I trail ride up here but I like trails about 12 feet wide and nicely groomed, Dean's trail was about 6 feet wide, covered in fallen tress and waist deep snow.

I knew I was in trouble when he packed the chainsaw and large scoop shovel into the truck to go on our little trip.

After unloading everything at the starting point he strapped the shovel on his sled and the chainsaw to mine and off we went with Dean in the lead. The very first obstacle is a small open water creek not more the 10 yards from the truck.

Dean shot through the creek with a big splash and was gone in a flash, I started my sled hit the gas, cleared the creek and got stuck just on the other side and I mean stuck. So here I am, 650 pound sled buried to the seat, the truck is only 40 yards away but on the other side of the creek, I don't have a key for the truck and all I have to dig out the snowmobile is a chainsaw.

The word screwed came to mind.

Dean showed back up after awhile because the trail was blocked by downed trees that apparently were to much for his shovel, after digging out my sled we headed up to the first blockage, after sawing past that batch of trees we took off again.

We continued riding getting stuck and sawing trees for the next 2 hours, the perfect sport for 2 fat men over 50 and in all this fun I lost my brand new eye glasses, I do mean new had em 2 weeks.

Thursdays Total

Glasses $ 275.00

Beside all this fun it snowed hard all day Thursday and won't be done till noon today (Friday)

so I have more snow to plow and remove, the weeks money total was $600.00 along with a new 8" snow total and I'm so sore from the snowmobiling I can hardly move, I think I'm going to add brandy to my coffee and baileys and stay close to home.

This kind of week would have killed a normal man.