Almost Done Mudding & Taping and Still Married

I guess we can put sheetrock mudding, taping and sanding on our resume, even though we never want to do it again.

Pat read the book on drywall so that made her foreman,

and as a foreman, all she demanded was her own way all the time and a work pace that would have killed a normal man.

I have to say it's looking pretty good but it's fussy work with a lot of drying time between coats of mud broken up only with sanding, lots of sanding.

We also had a visitor.

Jane Howard is a writer for our local paper, The Cook County News Herald, and she came out to do some research, and take a ride, on tracked vehicles. There is a very fine line between breaking trail in really deep snow and possibly getting stuck and we put the tracks to a real test.

The results even shocked me! I have just under a 1000 miles on the tracks, but never really put them through snow as deep as we did for Jane. We picked some roads that have not been plowed or driven on all winter and were close to the storage building in case things went bad.

Well some of the snow we drove over was waist deep and we were able to break trail without

working the truck hard or ever feeling like it was close to getting stuck. It was very impressive and exceeded all my expectations.

Photo Jane Howard CCNH

I have to make a trip to the cities this weekend so I'll look for the paint, counter top, lighting and carpet. When I get back up I have a little plaster touch up then 2 coats of primer and paint, can't wait to get all the sanding dust cleaned up and paint on everything.

Spring still feels a long was off, below zero the last two nights but that big snow missed us completely.

Good Progress in the Warm Room

Work in the warm room is going nicely,

still not as fast as I would like but all the little detail work always take longer than planned.

We rented a panel lift to fit the high ceiling sheet rock and it worked out great! We had never used one before so there was a little leaning curve, but it ended up taking longer to run it back and forth to town then it did to hang the rock.

Here it is in action.

Back wall with the cedar ceiling beam installed

Front wall and a window with a great view of the lake.

Front door and small end of the room.

Back wall of the small end of the room, it's hard to photo a little building.

We haven't decided on what we want for windows above the header, so that space is un-rocked for now.

We also started on the outside detail work. Pat has designed and cut out the picket fence parts, and is working out the paint scheme and picking out the carpet and lighting.

Just a reminder of what we're building.

The snow continues, last weekend we had 3 straight days of lake effect snows that put down another foot, but the sun angle is improving and the days have been getting warmer which makes the snow pack settle down some.

How's Spring Treating You? Dumb Ass

This is just one of the colorful greetings

one receives after making a Nostradamus like prediction of spring 10 days ago.

Since then there has been:

rain fog mix

over a foot of new snow

a few nights below zero, Friday -18.6

So I guess what I'm saying is, I might have been wrong.

I was even thinking at the start of this week that I was going to get through the winter without getting sick,

Wrong Again.

Been laid up for 4 days with some crap I caught in town,

which is what happens when you travel into the big city of Grand Marais.

Had company up last weekend so all in all very little got done on the observatory in the last 10 days.

I'm hoping to get rid of this cold and make some progress this coming week.

Stop Being So Damn Negative

If I want to believe that spring is here just let me,

BUT NO,

you all have to be negative with your

"We could get 4 more feet of snow before winter's over" or "It will still be well below zero", and my favorite the high school basketball winter storm annual prediction.

Some time it's hard to be the glass 1/2 full guy in a county full of glass 1/2 empty folks.

Today we experienced the best weather of the winter, 50 degrees and sunny.

I spent the day cleaning snow and ice off the cabin, observatory and warm room and got right down to the shingles.

Back side of cabin

Lake side and even the deck is clear, a week ago I would have guessed May before seeing the roof.

Now the entire week has been great but today can't be beat,

between scraping layers of snow off the roof I would sit in my recliner on the deck in my red European low cut Speedo getting some early season sun.

(good luck with that mental image)

We have also been overwhelmed with the interest in the tracked vehicles and we have started a company up here called

Remote Access

Tracked Vehicle Solutions

if you have any interest in seeing what it's all about or wanting a test drive just email me from this blog or at mco@boreal.org and I'll get back to you.

Other then that, sheetrock work continues in the warm room, using our new drag to do road grooming and I continue to attend the County Commissioner Meetings.

Rocking the Warm Room

Well the weather up here has let up some,

even though the rest of the country is getting snow, it's been better then a week since our last storm and I'm happy about that.

Pat and I just about have our road fixed back up using our old single blade drag,

the new drag is back over at Dean's where I need to make some modifications to the lifting mechanism. I hope to have it ready for the weekend's warm temps wich will make the snow more workable.

I spent some time sheet rocking in the warm room today and I have to say it was fun getting back to work on the observatory. We hung rock on the lower section of the ceiling and one end wall.

looking at the small end of the warm room

Large end.

This larger end of the room has a much higher ceiling so we will need to rent a panel lifter and also buy more sheet rock, but first I need to clean up so we have enough room to work.

Other then that the boys are bored of winter and are just trying to stay warm

in their favorite spot.

Arrowhead Electric Just Piles On During an Already Tough Winter

Pat and I spent yesterday cleaning up snow,

plowing around the storage building and running the new drag in and out of our road several times. When we parked the groomer last night the road was perfect and looked like a finely groomed snowmobile trail without a track of any kind on it.

I started the Rodeo around 8:30 am for our trip to town,

after letting it warm up we packed up our garbage, laundry and everything else needed to complete our errands and headed down the road.

I was talking pretty smart to Pat about "how good my road looked" and telling her just what a stud she married who could make a rood look this perfect when we noticed tracks in the middle. I stopped and got out to see what animal made them and to my surprise they ended up being boot tracks.

Getting back into the truck I informed Pat they were boot tracks leading both in and back out, driving around the next corner the boot tracks turned in to tire ruts dug deep into the snow pack and just around the next corner the ruts turned into a van stuck in the middle of the road and now I was Very Pissed Off.

I climbed out of my truck to find out it is Arrowhead's Meter Reader in a two wheel drive van. Keep in mind he has just traveled down 2.5 miles on a privately maintained road that's not even very good in the summer to read 8 electric meters where only 2 cabins are occupied in the winter.

After his first ass chewing, we pulled him forward with a tow strap into his own tracks figuring that was his only chance to get out of the mess he was in.

I turned our truck around and went back to the cabin to retrieve my forgotten cell phone and placed my first call to Arrowhead to let them know just how impressed I was with the situation.

Heading back down the road hoping he was able to back all the way out, we found him only feet from where we first found him, stuck again. With no way to get around the van I got out of the truck and gave him his second ass chewing of the day and asked him what his plan was now. He informed me the office was sending out a tracked machine to pull him out but it would take some time so we headed back to the cabin again where I made my second God I'm impressed phone call to the office just to make sure they knew just how pissed off I was and now it's after 9:15 am.

Noon and I'm done waiting for a call

so we tracked back down to see what's going on, where

we find them in my neighbors drive way at the very start of the unplowed road trying to decide if they should try to fix up what's left of my road. I was in no mood to talk so I told them to get their junk off the road and stay out till June, so off went the tracked rig in front with the van behind and us in the rear. Well the track rig would run 20 yards and stop, then 20 yards and stop at this rate it's 2 hours out to their truck so thankfully the operator drove into the woods so we could could get by. (thanks to him, first smart thing I've seen today)

We get out to the county road 3 miles from were the van was stuck to find this truck.

So this is what we find at 6:00 pm tonight on our way back home. Their broke down tracked rig still in the woods.

But wait there's still more!Getting home and checking emails I find this.

Home About Learn Billing Residential Commercial Contact Managers Message Dear Members, 2010 proved to be one of the most difficult years on record for Arrowhead Electric Cooperative. Fortunately, through hard work and the dedication of our employees we managed to ensure your cooperative met its required financial targets to keep your cooperative healthy. These financial targets are imperative to keeping the doors open and the lights on in Cook County. As you are all to well aware, prices for goods and services continue to increase in all markets. Be it gas, milk, or electricity no one is immune from this struggling economy. Combined, economic forces and government legislation continually increase our wholesale power costs and the costs of materials we purchase on a daily basis. In 2011, Arrowhead Electric Cooperative has increased its rates to account for our escalating costs. The rates can be found below and are reflected on your monthly statement. Increasing electric rates cannot continue to be the answer to our local, regional and national energy problems. Together, we must seek solutions to reduce energy costs, increase efficiency and facilitate the success of our community. The employees of Arrowhead Electric Cooperative are responsible and accountable to you - our member owners. Personally, I have been humbled by the trust the board of directors has placed in me and I promise to continually work on your behalf. Sincerely, Jeanne Muntean, General Manager 2011 Electric Rates 2011 2010 Service availibility charge $43.50 $42.00 General service rate 0.1130 0.1000 Gen serv summer rate (Jun-Aug) 0.1270 0.1140 Off Peak Storage 0.0464 0.0454 Dual Fuel Interruptible 0.0570 0.0556 POWER OUTAGE? 1-800-864-3744 © 2011 Arrowhead Electric Cooperative, Inc. Email | 5401 West Highway 61 | PO Box 39 | Lutsen, MN 55612 | (218) 663-7239 To Unsubscribe from this email Click Here

Talk about bad timing.

Quick recap

Read 8 meters

van and driver stuck 1/2 a day

road truck, trailer, operator and tracked machine dispatched from Lutsen

drive tracked machine 4 miles before breakdown

road truck, trailer and operator back to Lutsen

tracked machine still 2 miles from county road

still have to fix, drive and truck machine back to Lutsen

I have no idea what the total cost of reading 8 meters well end up to be but it's in the thousands for sure and now they want more money.

I don't piss off easy but this was too much to take and I will be at the Arrowhead Board Meeting

Feb 24th

What a Drag!

The drag prototype was completed

with just a few more hours of work at Dean's shop and we then hooked it to the truck for it's 20 mile road trip to the storage building.

At the back of the drag is a swinging axle system

that locks down for road use or anytime

you need to back up.

Here's a photo of the back with the wheels down for the road.

Side view

Our new used truck that replaced the crushed Explorer.

Hooked to the Rodeo,

wheels up with drag down on the ground and ready to start grooming.

Video of the drag in action

Some other news,

our project surveyor Sam Parker is starting a blog and I would encourage anyone needing land surveying work or technical support to visit his site. Sam has always been very fair and helpful with a great attitude even when we didn't get it and he had to revert to remedial education!

He also did our pier alignment.

Here's his blog

Surveyor Sam

My Cook County MN Health Care Proposal

As many of my local readers know

I've been looking to get more politically involved up here in the great north and I now have a health care platform.

Removing snow from the roof affords a person lots of thinking time. I have spent this time working on a health care policy that I believe could help the full time winter resident's here in cook county.

I call my concept:

"Winter Vikie's"

1 Vicodin for every 1 inch of snow fall

1 Vicodin for every degree below -10

1 Vicodin for every degree of wind chill below -10

1 Vicodin per every 1/4 inch of ice on our roofs

10 Vicodin per every sunless day

1 large bottle of Baileys per week (coffee additive)

(Initial concept, numbers can be easily adjusted and suggestions welcome)

Now this would only be for legal age full time residents during the winter season,

which up here runs from September 15 through June 15.

Thinking outside the box like this just might help make a happier core population in the county year around, I know it would work for me!

Today I woke to 10" of new snow and it continued all day for a grand total of 14".

Yesterday I posted a photo of my propane tank.

Here's the same tank at the same angle taken about an hour ago, note it's still snowing.

One other thing we have encountered in this heavy snow season is the need to groom the packed snow on our unplowed road. A few years back I had built a single bladed drag that worked well at the start of the year but is not ideal for deep snow.

What we found is that the single blade drag is too short and will not fill in the dips,

it just follows the contour of the road without releasing the snow it carries.

A new design was needed.

So with a large load of steel and Dean's warm shop we now have this,

an 8 foot wide by 10 foot long 450 pound super drag that should be complete tomorrow. We are just finishing up the road wheel deployment system and tow bar design.

The drag will make much more sense when I photograph it on the snow, which I will do in a future post.

It is designed to carry more snow and zig zag it back and forth for the full 10 feet of it's length, depositing it nicely in all the dips and holes and finishing it smooth by running the excess snow under the packing plates in the rear.

In my last blog, I promised cabin photos for the readers that live on this road in the summer.

Jim's roof had snow removed over Christmas

You can click on any photo to enlarge it,

remember they were all taken last Wednesday and now there's at least 16" of new snow on top of what you see here.