Puckaway Motor Club

Tag: family (page 3 of 3)

Log: April 22 – 24, 2016

April 25, 2016 / / 1 Comment

Friday

Jake and I rode in around 7:00 pm after a stop at Piggly Wiggly to stock the fridge and cabinets. Got all kinds of goodies: brats and italian sausage, canned veggies, chips and salsa, juice boxes and snacks for the boys (Jake picked out some Little Debbie brownies), essentials like ketchup, mustard, horseradish, and butter, and two six-packs of different Wisconsin craft beers. There’s now a whole aisle devoted to smaller Wisconsin breweries at the Princeton Pig—a welcome surprise. I brought in the groceries and goods from Oshkosh while Jake got his trucks set up by the pole barn.

IMG_20160422_193335100With the fire danger holding at Moderate, it was safe enough to burn in the pit. I started the pump and began to fill a 55-gallon drum as a precaution, pulled the truck around to the pole barn, poured some old boat gas around the base of the pile, and tossed a match. Wasn’t long before we had a roaring fire. I kept an eye on it while unloading tools from the back of my truck. Once the pine boughs and smaller branches all burned off, we were left with a sizeable pile of thick logs and a warm, low flame. Jake and I cozied up on the bench in front of the pole barn and watched it burn down until he decided he was tired enough to turn in for the night.

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Log: April 16, 2016

April 18, 2016 / / 0 Comments

Lyssa, the boys, and I arrived in the truck around 10:30 am after a family breakfast at Aunt Judy’s. We also got two flats of bottled water, which I was grateful for later—it was unseasonably warm and beautiful out; it stayed sunny and in the mid-70s all day. I quickly unpacked the boys’ Power Wheels ATV and Tractor from the truck bed and they were off exploring. I stacked the snow tires for Lyssa’s car in the pole barn and headed over to the keep to get things ready to unload the rest of the truck. I got out the leaf blower and cleared around the garden shed, bird feeders, deck, and the front of the keep. Once everything was ready, I pulled the truck around and set up the patio table and four chairs on the deck. We got a new set for the house so brought up our old set. It’s a perfect fit. Between the new furniture and the chairs we already had up here, we now have deck seating for ten. I’d still like to get some little side tables, though.

With everything unloaded, I went to tidy up in the keep. I ran the vacuum cleaner through to take care of the few dead flies that had accumulated, sprayed down and wiped out the shelves in the fridge, and cleaned the table and counters with bleach cleaner. Couldn’t have taken more than 15 minutes to get things ready for the year. What a difference over last spring. Turned on the A/C so the boys would have somewhere to get relief from the sun. On my way out, I primed the pump and let it run for the rest of the day to clear out the accumulated gunk and sediment.

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Log: January 30, 2016

January 1, 2016 / / 2 Comments

Pulled in the driveway with Lyssa and the boys around 1:45 pm after lunch at Aunt Judy’s. Once again, the boys behaved really well.

Clear skies and no wind with temperatures in the upper 30s. Great day for a visit! We’ve all been cooped up in the house too long and could use the fresh air. Jake found all of his trucks and construction equipment in the pole barn and the boys got to work making roads in the snow.

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I shovelled out the deck and checked in on the keep. Absolutely zero sign of critter activity. You’d think if they were going to find their way in out of the cold, it would have happened by now, so this is excellent news. Everything looked and smelled clean. The keep has really transformed over the last year into quite the nice place to stay.

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Log: August 30, 2015

August 31, 2015 / / 1 Comment

Walked over to Paco’s around 9:00 am to start the process of loading the garden shed onto Peter’s flatbed trailer. Since Paco’s backyard is fenced in, we began by removing a section of chain-link fence. It came away in one piece except for the center pole, which we had to cut at the base. I emptied the shed and took out all the shelves to make it as light as possible, then jacked it up at the doorway so I could side a pipe under the frame. I wrapped a long chain around the base, cinched it up in front of the shed, and grabbed it with the blue ATV’s winch hook. After some initial hesitation, the shed starting rolling across the pipe. Paco and I alternated between positioning pipes and pushing and turning the shed to clear a tight corner between his garage and his kids’ playset. Once we got out in the open, I went back to winching from the ATV while Paco laid out pipes.

Once we had the shed lined up with the trailer, we had to switch tactics. I traded the ATV for my truck and hooked up to the trailer. With the fence out of the way, I could back a few feet further into the yard, clearing the house and giving us more room to work. We attached the trailer ramps and used my new come-along to slowly ratchet the shed up the trailer deck. It took some finesse, but we eventually got it positioned perfectly on the front of the trailer. I pulled out of Paco’s yard as carefully as possible but, because of the added weight of the shed, managed to scalp a 4 foot section of sod. At least it was easy to put back. I parked on the street and helped Paco put his fence back together. We kept his sawed-off fence pole in place with some rebar; you’d never know it had been modified. I backed the trailer into my driveway to finish securing the load and took a break for lunch.

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Log: May 1-3, 2015

May 3, 2015 / / 2 Comments

Friday

Arrived around 6:30 pm with a strapped down load in the truck bed. Two mattresses, some 2″x6″s and two sheets of 5/8″ OSB to build the trundle bed, 10′ 1″x12″ shelf boards, extra planks for the deck stairs, and a brand new door for my trailer. Unloaded everything into the pole barn and got my first good look at the deck in the daylight. The current goal is to finish the platform and stairs; the railing will get added on later this summer.

I hadn’t planned on resuming work on the deck until Saturday. The project for the night was to build a trundle bed and provide a much-needed upgrade to the sleeping accommodations in the trailer. I had found a simple plan for building a frame online and tweaked it to allow for a full mattress on top and a pullout twin mattress. I set up shop in the pole barn and got to work building the full mattress frame. I forgot to grab the caster wheels for the small, simple twin pullout, so that’ll have to wait. The OSB can be lifted out of the 2×6 frame leaving a light, sturdy assembly that’s pretty easy to move around.

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Log: April 25, 2015

April 25, 2015 / / 1 Comment

Jake and I came up around 11:30. Sunny but cool, mid 50s. We had stopped in town for some housekeeping and storage supplies and Princeton was packed with people. Didn’t realize it at the time, but it was the opening weekend for the Princeton Flea Market. I pulled Jake’s PowerWheels ATV out of the back of the truck and he set off to explore the yard.

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I set up the new outdoor speakers for the pole barn. For now, they’ll just sit out, but I want to make some sort of mini-roof for them and mount them on the side of the building. They’re water-resistant but probably don’t need direct exposure to the elements. Got some tunes going and moved the truck over to my trailer where the rest of the day’s activities would take place.

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