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Wednesday, September 18, 2013

The final countdown

It's amazing to me how quickly the time has gone.  When the sabbatical started, there was still snow on the ground here in Mountaintop Maryland.  Now, after a cool spring and wet summer, the air is starting to carry the crispness of fall and the return date to Holland is quickly approaching.

It's been an interesting adventure.  There is still much to do on the Glamping business, but the time with family and long unseen friends has been priceless.  Below is a photo update of the construction project and a few, much needed vacations.


There was a fantastic weekend with some of the old crew up at IUP.  We stayed at the Niederitter "huntin' camp", ate loads of great BBQ, drank buckets of great beer, and spent most of our time acting like irresponsible college kids again.  Gezellig!

Of course we hit the campus and several of the mainstay bars up on Philadelphia Street, but the best times were had out at the camp, playing cornhole and laughing late into the evening.   I didn't get a picture, but we drove past the old house on Water Street that we all shared senior year.  Man, that place needs condemned!  I still remember my mom coming up and ripping the landlord a new one when he put up siding and boarded up most of the windows in the process...aren't mom's great?  There were 12 kids sitting on the rickety old front porch, drinking beer and smoking cigarettes...some things never change.

 Speaking of campus, so many of the old buildings have been torn down...even the Quad is gone!!!!  But this old Econ building is still standing.  The 5th window down is the famous one.  Jim and I had a three hour class together and on the last week, we killed a bottle of gin in the back of class and climbed out the window.  The professor never said a word.  I got a B in the class.


I also promised Grace that I'd post a picture from the demolition derby at the county fair.  Small town America weekend fun doesn't get much better than this!  I'll never look at firemen the same way. :-)


Then there was a wedding in Toronto.  I hate weddings.   But this one was actually really great!  Well done Heather and Dan!  You somehow managed to impressed this cynical old fart.  Your vows were really awesome.  I love laughing like that at a wedding.  Here we are with the "Ya-Ya" club, waiting for a school bus to the ceremony.  Guess who was the only guy on the bus not wearing a tie?


And then there was Idaho.  Ahhhh...Idaho.  A place very special to my heart.  It was wonderful seeing old friends, making new friends, and visiting some of the wild country again.  Howling wolves, bugling elk, and soaring eagles.

The Sawtooth Range from the Salmon River Valley
Saddleback Lake, high in the Sawtooths after a 3 hour hike.


I also hit my goal of climbing Bogus Basin on a road bike.  This was an important, personal milestone for me.  I have been training all summer and it paid off with a relatively easy climb, 15 years after the first leg-burning time. 



I ran into an old friend up in the mountains.  I haven't seen him in more than 10 years.   It was a Thursday morning and I was signing us up for the Redfish lake shuttle boat over to the Sawtooth Wilderness area.  This is as remote as you can get in the lower 48.   I walked up to the dock and there was a guy in front of me, decked out with a full-on backpack.  I recognized his voice immediately.  Dave Baldiga.  He hired me into my first job in Idaho and got me into mountain biking.  The odds of seeing someone I knew in this spot, at this time were miniscule.  So, as we are catching up on the short boat ride across the lake and I was telling him about my climb up Bogus, what does Dave say?  ....  "Did you break an hour?"   Are you freaking kidding me?!?!?  Although I bet Dave could probably do it.  Great seeing him.


Business?  Oh yea, that's right.  There has been some progress on the business.  The bath house is up!    There is even some electrical work completed.


The fire rings were also delivered, so I distributed them around to each site.  I still have to dig them in and set them in concrete, but I'm pleased with the choice.

As seems typical with this project, there have also been some setbacks.  Today was particularly rough.  The well is finally being drilled and I have received two calls that they are running into clay and shale much deeper than they anticipated.  They needed me to approve additional liner...cha-ching!  But what can you do?  It's like hiring an SAP consultant.  They are the keepers of the keys.  If they tell you that you need 30 hours of programming to get a customer number from the system, how can you question it?  It's the same thing with well drillers.  It's not like a carpenter's work that I can look at and say, "Damn! You pound a mighty fine nail!"  How do I know what shale and clay tailings look like?  I need water at the glamping site and I am compelled to believe what these guys tell me and pay what they say I need to pay....Shit.

Also had the beds delivered for the glamping huts.  It took a lot of maneuvering for the truck to get around the well drilling truck, but he finally made it.  When he opened the door to unload the first bed, it was painfully obvious that the order was wrong.  I need double beds...he had singles.  Shit.  That's going to cost my schedule.  These were special order hospital-grade beds.  It'll take another 3 weeks for correcting.

But, ce la vie.  Take a deep breath and remember the smell of those Idaho mountains...it'll all work out.