Puckaway Motor Club

Tag: Jake (page 4 of 6)

Log: June 9 – 11, 2017

June 13, 2017 / / 1 Comment

Friday

New TV stand, new pooch bed. Life’s good.

Pulled in at 3pm with Lyssa, the boys, Hannah, and a bunch of goodies in the back. Red, Emmett, and Gunner had already been here about a half-hour. I unlocked the big trailer so they could set up camp and grabbed a dog bed for Hannah while I was in there. Gorgeous day! Sunny and in the upper 70s with a light breeze.

The boys were all happy to explore together and the dogs kept busy racing each other around the yard. Lyssa unpacked things in the keep while I made room for its newest upgrade—a proper TV stand. I cleared everything off the coffee table that had been serving as our entertainment center and cleaned out behind it. I moved the table into the bedroom; it’s now a nice place to keep our luggage.

Lyssa helped me carry the new TV stand in from the back of the truck. It’s a solid little Sauder unit I found on craigslist for $30. I wrestled it in place and set everything back up, including the freshly-loaded external hard drive. It’s nice to have all the gear off of the floor and the TV is much easier to see from the kitchen or laying down on the futon now that it’s higher up.

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Log: May 5 – 7, 2017

May 9, 2017 / / 0 Comments

Friday

A boy and his (tolerant) dog.

Jake, Hannah, and I came up in the truck around 6:15 pm. Jake’s been asking for an overnight up here—just him and me—for a while now, so he’s pretty excited. We unloaded the truck, unhooked the blue trailer, and opened up the keep while Hannah ran her laps around the grounds. I started the heater right away as it’s only 50° right now and the temp continues to drop.

We called Hannah into the keep and Jake and I headed into town to fill up the gas cans and get some dinner at A&W. We ate once we got back and spent the rest of the night inside relaxing and watching How It’s Made. Jake fell asleep on the couch around 9:30 and I carried him back to the bedroom. I stayed up messing with some automation scripts on the PuckaPi. I let Hannah out one more time for the night, then joined my snoring kiddo around 11:00.

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Log: April 20 – 23, 2017

April 25, 2017 / / 2 Comments

Thursday

Hannah and I drove in around 6:20 pm with a pickup bed full of tools and other goodies. She ran some laps around the yard while I quickly unloaded the truck. I wanted to get right to my first project.

Let there be (night)light!

Lyssa got me a pair of really nice network cameras for Christmas. They’re PoE, 720p, have IR blasters, and are IP66 rated. Translated: they don’t need a power cord, have four times the clarity of the old ones, come with night vision, and they’re waterproof. One of them has replaced the driveway camera back home, but the other one will serve as the new bird feeder cam.

I had already configured everything from home, so I installed it to the roof overhang on the keep, plugged it in, and tested it out. There was the expected major increase in image quality, but I was surprised by just how much wider of a field of view it has, too. This is a very welcome improvement.

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Log: April 15, 2017

April 17, 2017 / / 1 Comment

Lyssa, the boys, Hannah, and I all met my dad at Aunt Judy’s around 10:30. Jake was excited to show Grandpa that his picture was up on the wall. Hannah waited patiently in the truck while we had breakfast, guarding our trailer full of ATVs. We were all on the road to Puckaway by 11:15. It’s unseasonably warm for spring and a beautiful sunny day.

Ready to explore!

As we drove down the driveway, Lyssa spotted a big mound of dirt at the edge of the yard in front of the keep. Scanning the yard, I saw several more. I was confused for a second until I realized the pattern—all of the these piles were around stumps. Rather, they were around craters where stumps used to be. Someone had come through with a stump grinder and dispatched a total of 14 of them. I wandered the yard, grinning as I took tally. The projects are now completing themselves up here!

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Log: February 26, 2017

February 28, 2017 / / 3 Comments

The five of us pulled down the snowy driveway around 11:45—Lyssa, Jake, Josh, me, and our new dog, Hannah. This is Hannah’s first trip anywhere with us. We just got her three weeks ago from a local shelter and she’s acclimating well. Turns out she’s a very good rider; she barely even moved the whole trip up.

Hannah’s first road trip.

It’s been fun to watch Hannah learn how to be a dog. She’s four years old and I don’t think she’s ever been off a short leash or out of a small kennel run. She absolutely loves it up here, running fast enough to squeeze tears out of her eyes. The boys get a kick out of watching her.

I was still getting the boys’ sleds out of the back of the truck when Lyssa called me over to the front door of the big house trailer but said I needed to get ahold of Hannah first. There, half-underneath the trailer, was a dead six-point buck. I don’t know if it got hit by a car or someone was taking potshots out of season, or what. It didn’t have any obvious wounds.

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Log: December 31, 2016

December 31, 2016 / / 1 Comment

If you eat enough of Aunt Judy’s waffles…

Lyssa, the boys, and I rolled into Aunt Judy’s a little after 11:00 for a late breakfast. Jake had his usual waffle and Josh devoured a cheese omelet. It was a pretty standard meal for the most part, but Jake spotted something on his way out: himself. There’s a little notice on the wall urging people to leave TripAdvisor reviews, and they’ve got Jake’s picture! I took the photo back in June and uploaded it to Google Maps where it’s had over 5,000 views. Aunt Judy’s “waffle baby” is a little celebrity now!

… you go up on the wall!

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Log: October 23, 2016

October 24, 2016 / / 0 Comments

Lyssa, the boys, and I pulled in around 11:30 after a delicious Aunt Judy’s breakfast. Sunny, breezy, and in the mid-50s—a perfect fall day. Not much on the agenda today; just looking to enjoy the place and get the boys tired. Quite a few leaves on the ground now with more falling like snow as the wind picks up. I blew off the deck and around the keep, feeders, pump, and outhouse while Lyssa and the boys raked up a big pile near the pole barn that they could jump around and play in. The boys got a kick out of diving deep, popping out, and scaring each other. Jake was really interested in checking out the remains of the woodshed, too.

Back in the keep, I went through all the bedding and linens. I had washed everything I brought home last trip and hauled it back up today. I put all the stuff we use regularly in vacuum bags and stacked them in totes in the bedroom closet. There were a lot of older blankets and sheets left and I returned those to the big trailer. This freed up a lot of room in the closet and should make dressing the beds a lot easier.

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Log: September 17, 2016

September 19, 2016 / / 0 Comments

Lyssa, the boys, and I pulled in at 11:00 after breakfast at Aunt Judy’s. Heading down the driveway, I was nervous that the new paint on the keep might not have held up through the big storms that rolled through this past week, but the place looks absolutely great. On our way up, we had stopped at J&A for a deer block. They were out of stock and won’t have more until Tuesday, so I got a bag of molasses-based feed and two bags of shell corn instead. I unloaded the boys’ power wheels from the back of the truck and they were off to the races. I carried the goods from J&A to the garden shed and got a bummer of a surprise upon opening it up. I had left a full 50-lb bag of sunflower seed in there without sealing it in one of the containers and the chipmunks had completely looted it. So much for filling the bird feeders. I spread the remains of the bag, the molasses mix, and some shell corn in the area behind the feeders and made sure the rest of my new purchases were secured in critter-proof cans. Chipmunks suck.

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Musty paneling sure gets hot in a hurry.

I’ve got two goals today: collect building materials to build a new outhouse, and clean up fallen branches and brush around the yard. I knew there was a good-sized stack of exterior pine board paneling under the big house trailer, so I grabbed the green ATV and small yard trailer and started digging things out. Roughly 60% of the sheets were too rotten or rough to be of any use, so I stacked them on the trailer to get burned. The rest I set aside to get picked up later. The pit was already stacked with the big oak limb I cut down last trip, so I made a teepee out of the panels over that, poured on some old boat gas, and lit ‘er up. Wasn’t long before I had a nice hot fire. Lyssa tended it while I took the boys into town for snacks and to fill the two big gas cans from the pole barn with ethanol-free fuel. I stopped in at J&A again to see if they had any sunflower seed to replace the bag the chipmunks binged on. This, too, was out of stock until Tuesday. It’s always Tuesday.

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Log: September 3 – 5, 2016

September 6, 2016 / / 2 Comments

Saturday

I pulled in at 11:30 with a truck full of tools, painting supplies, and a big ol’ 36″ prehung, outswing, exterior door I found for cheap on craigslist. It’ll eventually adorn the new outhouse, but for now it goes in the pole barn. Unloaded the rest of the tools and drove over to the keep where I hauled in my clothes, some clean towels and sheets, two flats of bottled water, and a cooler full of my latest batch of pickled goods. They now bide their time in the keep fridge, awaiting the brave souls who shall attend Puckaweekend 2016.

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From left to right: garlic mushrooms, mustard/Tabasco eggs, horseradish eggs, pickles, Hell pickles, spicy garlic asparagus, Inferno asparagus.

With the truck emptied out and the pole barn jukebox playing some 70’s rock, it was time to set my sights on the big project of the weekend: painting the keep. I finally have a stretch of days with weather that lends itself well to painting outdoors (it’s supposed to stay under 80° with low humidity and plenty of sun all weekend), and I’m planning on making the most of it.

However, before I could even crack open a can of paint, I needed to prep the keep. I filled the bird feeders, then hauled the ladder onto the deck and used it to get a good look at the roof. What a mess. Years of leaves and small branches have piled up, decomposing into dirt in spots, the edging is pulling away in several places, the main vent pipe for the furnace is not connected to anything, and there’s grime and moss everywhere. I brought a leaf blower up and blasted the majority of the compost away, then took some sheet metal screws and secured the trim and the vent. Now it was time for the heavy equipment.

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Log: July 16, 2016

July 18, 2016 / / 0 Comments

Pulled in a little before noon with Lyssa, the boys, and a truck full of tools. I also brought up a replacement blower/leaf collector unit for the riding mower that I found on craigslist. It might need a little tweaking to fit, but it’s in a lot better shape than the stuff we already have.

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Wild black raspberries!

The boys wanted to ride their Power Wheels right away but they hadn’t been charged up. I need to rig something up to make this work better. We typically charge these things after they run them all day, but leaving the chargers plugged in isn’t the best idea as they’re not “smart” chargers and might wreck the batteries. Maybe I can get some kind of timer that’ll shut off after 6 hours or something. Anyway, we set them up on the chargers and Lyssa took the boys for a ride on the ATV in the meantime. I focused on tidying things up in the pole barn. It’s nice having walking room in here again with Dad’s boat back up at Presque Isle. It wasn’t long into their ride when Lyssa pulled back up to the pole barn. They had found some black raspberries growing along the trails by Peter’s woods and wanted to make sure it was OK to pick them. I got her a container to put them in and they were off to collect. After a while, they came back with a few handfuls worth. Josh was very excited about this new feature of a “wheeler ride.”

IMG_20160716_155608345Lyssa wanted to wash the berries, so I turned on the pump in the keep and we hung out in there for a bit. The boys snacked on berries and Cheez-Its, Lyssa relaxed, and I started clearing out the front closet. I guess I just don’t know how to come up here without starting a project and the shelving situation in there has been bugging me for a while. I tore out the original side shelves and Richie’s homemade extensions, took some measurements, and crafted new full-width shelves out of 1×12 boards. These are now solidly anchored with 2x2s and I was able to move a bunch of things out of the kitchen cabinets into the closet. There’s room to bring in a set of dishes, which makes more sense now that we have running water to wash them with.

I cleaned up my tools and the boys got a little time with their Power Wheels before we decided to head out and grab some dinner around 6:00. Fun little day trip today with perfect weather.

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