Gosh what a week. Has it been a week? It’s been a week somewhere I’m sure.

We pretty much got the first floor dried in late Friday afternoon. Randy decided to take a couple of days off so I made plans to spend the weekend at the property. I spend Saturday morning getting everything together I figured I needed and boldly set off for a new adventure. I spent most of Saturday afternoon getting settled then along about dark things began to go south.

I was unable to find my gas grill in storage but wasn’t concerned since I had a brand new Coleman stove. Well, you don’t just toss a steak in a Coleman stove and cook it. You need a skillet or some such device. I didn’t have one. Two pop tarts, a pack of peanut butter crackers and a Busch beer doesn’t sound exciting unless your stomach is on dead empty.

I remember when I was a kid that Coleman lanterns were extremely bright. I’m sure that they are still so but my eyes kept telling me otherwise. Candles did help but I was left longing for my deep cycle battery, solar panel and led lights somewhere in storage.

Then I broke out the air mattress only to discover that it requires some kind of special fitting to blow it up. No problem says I, I have an air compressor. Nope. Bicycle pump. Nope. Shop vac. Nope. Dammit.

Which led to me setting up the cot. An experience I hope to never have again. Thirty minutes later the cot is finally sitting there and it’s getting cold. As in really cold. You would think that a Coleman lantern and a bunch of candles would keep the chill off a 12×12 room that was reasonably air tight. Nope.

I had a propane heater that comes with all kinds of dire warning about what happens when you use it indoors. I was worried enough that I decided not to fire it up until I had the carbon monoxide
detector working. Of course I couldn’t find the detector. Did I mention it was very cold that night?

So Ziggy and I settled in for what we both hoped would be a restful night. At first I tried to put Ziggy in a sleeping bag. He seemed interested until I started to zip it part way up around him. Suddenly he screamed “It’s a trap!”, bolted for the door which was shut and latched then refused to come near the sleeping bag again.

So I ended up in a sleeping bag on the cot while he slept on the only blanket I had brought on the floor. By 4 am it was cold as hell so all the good intentions regarding the carbon monoxide detector went out the window and I lit off the propane heater.

The cot itself was an experience. It was hard as a brick.

By Sunday afternoon I was getting fairly hungry but couldn’t face another freeze dried meal. I don’t know who writes the online reviews for those things but if that is “some good eating” to them they really need cooking classes. Then it struck me, pallets are made of untreated hardwood. An hour later I had two steaks sizzling over a nice bed of coals. Ziggy doesn’t get human food all that often but he agreed that it was the best steak he had ever had. I didn’t bother to tell him he had never had one before but hey, it was a celebration of sorts.

Monday morning I was up before the 5 am alarm, had two cups of decent coffee and set to work. Got some bamboo planted, did a bunch of clean up and set about getting material sorted. By 1 pm the rain clouds were rolling in so I headed back to town with a two page list to bring next time.