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mosquitos and wasps above the laboratory deck
Thursday, August 4 2005
Both today and yesterday Gretchen and I went to the Secret Spot on the Esopus a quarter mile or so upstream from the Hurley Mountain Road bridge. Yesterday we encountered some locals who have been using this spot for years and don't know its present owner. Today the owner was there with her two dogs. There was also some random guy there, whom none of the others there knew. The water, which is outflow from the Ashokan Reservoir, was a little too warm to be refreshing and we found it most comfortable to linger in the cold pockets, where springs bubble out of the northwest bank. After awhile we were attacked by enormous horseflies, which tried to land on the parts of us that stuck out of the water. The predictable effect of this was to send us completely underwater repeatedly. But you can't really wait out a horsefly; they'll fly tight laps over the water waiting for you to resurface.
This afternoon I installed a single solitary collar tie between two rafters in the laboratory. These rafters are the ones that will have to hold up the weight of the south end of the solar panel deck, and, though I don't know what weight they can support, I want to do what I can to ensure that they don't flex inward too much under the weight of the deck, which in the wintertime will be covered with a lot of snow. Through a series of careful measurements I was able to cut small rectangular holes in the drywall on either side of the gabled ceiling and insert the glue-slathered ends of the collar tie into the holes and then fix it into position with massive lag bolts. I love lag bolts! The time and effort necessary to twist them in to their hilts seems well spent, and once they're in, they're obviously going to stay that way.
Later I attached joist hangers to the north and south solar panel deck column structures, which are still temporarily clamped together ten feet above the laboratory deck. After the sun went down, ruthless sorties of mosquitos came boiling out of the foliage and ravaged my exposed flesh, that is to say, everything that wasn't inside my shorts. They paid special attention to my ankles and the unreachable parts of my back. Perched precariously atop a step ladder, there was little I could do to defend myself.
Interestingly, there's a medium-sized nest of paper wasps under the peak of the roof at the laboratory's northern end, and its residents don't seem to be disturbed even when I'm working only a foot or two away from them. This is in keeping with something I knew growing up in Virginia, that paper wasps are among the most docile and agreeable of stinging insects. You have to really piss them off before they'll attack you. Most of the time it's fine just to let them be.
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