August 2,2011

I know I need to post again when I get calls from friends asking for news, or wondering whether Paulette traded me to the Eskimos for a pair of mukluks.

Catch 22
You may recall my eyeglass frames came apart a little south of Portland, OR. Costco replaced the frames under warranty. I mentioned to the gal in the optical department that we will be remote all summer, and requested she please put some glue on the nose piece threads so they won’t come out. Instead she gave me four extra nose pads and two extra screws. Sure enough, a screw came out a few days ago. So we retrieved the extra pads and screws and I tried to put a new one in. The catch 22 is I couldn’t wear my glasses to see what I was doing. Old spare glasses helped but the Rx didn’t provide the best clarity. Nor did I have a super-fine screwdriver to install the screw. I dropped the first screw and it is so small we couldn’t find it though we both looked and looked and even swept and sorted through the sweepings. With my back to the wall I managed to start and turn the only other spare screw with a needle-nose pliers, but the pad didn’t fit right. I suspect they are the wrong pads. At least my spectacles are wearable for now. This is a saga of being remote. One must MAKE things work.

Eating the Elephant
Drywall installation is about 3/4 complete. I have mostly the gabled ends (12-22 feet in the air. Nuts.) to do, and the portion covering kitchen plumbing. Hoisting a sheet of drywall to a twelve foot height by myself is a challenge. I almost lost the second sheet, but managed to regain control before it took me down the ladder with it. I also began doing insulation on the main ceiling this morning. This is a slow itchy job as fiberglass crystals become airborne. Plus it is warm up near the apex of the ceiling. After three hours of up and down the ladder I got some particulate in the corner of my eye so called it quits and went to pressure testing plumbing (so I can drywall over those areas). The LP line for the stove and drier checked out OK so I switched to the water lines. All tested ok except I found one big leak in a shower valve, which didn’t make sense because the valve was closed. I figured I had a defective valve. Finally I realized the upstairs shower has hot going to the right valve and cold on the left. This is the opposite of most houses. I was closing the wrong valve. The only thing I can think of is I put the lines in from down below and looking up from that vantage I installed the hot on the left. I didn’t realize it would be reversed looking from the other direction upstairs. At least I caught the problem and can change the routing before closing up that wall.

Fishing
Our elderly neighbor had company coming and asked me to help him get his boats ready. In return he invited me to go along for three days of fishing. I jumped at the chance. The first day out I hit the jackpot. I landed two semi-large halibut. The largest was 56 inches long and weighted 73 lbs, and the other weighed 60 lbs. Plus I got a few ten to fifteen pounders that day.

The grandsons suddenly get perspective when I ask how much they weigh, and they realize the large fish weighs more than they do!


I felt blessed with that catch. The next day we didn’t fare as well. We got a limit of halibut, but all were on the small side. Sunday we tried a different area and again only small stuff. Other items made the day interesting. A mother Orca and her three offspring cruised the area several times. This was the second time I have seen killer whales here. At the end of the third day I hooked something big. The other three guys got their lines out of the water while I thought I might be dragging in a submerged log. Thing is at times the log would pull out drag. It took all the pole and line would handle to gain a few feet at a time. They got a fighting belt and put it on me since the pole was digging into my groin (I have four black and blue marks in that area the next morning). After twenty minutes of this strain we began seeing flashes of “color” of a huge fish.

A little closer to the surface we realized this creature was a Skate, a type of stingray. This was the biggest ray any of them had seen in their 20 years of fishing up here. It measured approximately six feet from side to side and had an overall length of perhaps 9 feet. I don’t have a clue what this creature weighted. They estimated 150 lbs.



Skates are thin so the last picture doesn't show much. After letting me bring it to the surface and taking a few pictures the skate headed down again. It was graceful and seemed to gently fly in the water. I added more drag trying to turn it around. At that point the 80 lb test line broke. We were going to release it anyway. We split all the halibut equally about 7:30 AM Monday. Now I am wondering how to get all this bounty south in a frozen state. Plus we hope to add some silver salmon when they run in about a month.

We see bear tracks now and then but we saw our first actual bear of the year near town; a fair sized adult black bear gleaning strawberries near the road. I just happened to notice as we drove past. Sorry, no pix. The camera was at the cabin. With the salmon running plentifully I expect this will not be the last bear of the season.