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kayaks to Woodworth Lake
Friday, August 20 2021
location: rural Hurley township, Ulster County, NY
I made up some excuse to work from home today, even though I'm really supposed to be working at the office on Fridays. Much of what I did today concerned the Taxinator, the handmade tax database importing software that continues to be my single major achievement in the workplace I've worked at longer than any other.
Towards the end of the workday, I started preparing for a sudden plan to go to the Woodworth Lake cabin this weekend. Gretchen really wanted me to take our two kayaks to the cabin and to also pick up some things shipped to the Gloversville home of one of the other members of our lake homeowners' association. On top of all that, she wanted me to do some electrical wiring in the only unfinished rooms in the house: the upstairs bedroom and upstairs bathroom. I began by putting the two vertical kayak holders on the Subaru's roof rack (the first time this particular Subaru was ever outfitted in this way). I then retrieved the kayaks from where I hung them years ago underneath the east deck. We'd bought these kayaks back in 2014 after they were featured on epsiode of Shark Tank. The great thing about these kayaks is that they can be folded up, but actually doing so is too much trouble, so we just leave them as fully-realized kayaks. We haven't actually had any use for them since buying them; after trying them out once on a pond on the property Sarah the Vegan used to live at, we've never gotten in them since. Lowering them down from their roost was tricky, as the pulley tackles had all rusted and didn't want to do what they're supposed to. And I'd added other support ropes that interfered enough with lowering the kayaks that I had to fetch a step ladder. On top of all this, we're in a bad phase of mosquito season. The kayaks looked okay after all that time in outdoor storage. There was a fair amount of dirt and pine needles stuck to their undersides (which had been facing up) and some critter (a bird, I think) had built a nest of pine needles and mud in one of them.
I loaded the Subaru with lots of Ryobi power tools, my small GreenWorks electric chainsawy, two gallons of water, a smallish bag of dog food, a loaf of bread, jar of peanut butter, a bag of corn chips, and, in the cooler, all my beers, and two dips: one a hummus and the other some sort of tahini thing. I called the dogs, who were delighted to participate in a road trip that I hadn't really planned.
On the drive to the cabin, I drank two road beers and pissed once into a plastic container that had held cashews earlier in the drive (both the beers and the cashews had been bought at the Old Hurley Stewarts at the beginning of the drive, when I'd stopped to add air to one of my tires). The Subaru lacks a place to put a smartphone, so I was forced to navigate by holding the phone in my lap, which works better than you'd think. (I still rely on navigation to get to Woodworth Lake, as the directions are complicated and seem to change every time we make the trip.)
I arrived at the cabin a little before dusk, and the first thing I did was take the kayaks off the roof and then carry one down the trail to the lake. The trail gets to the lake a little before where our dock will go, so I put the kayak into the lake and paddled to where the dock will eventually be. I then put the kayak in the handy boat rack, one of the few structures our lakeside parcel came with.
It was pretty dark as I walked back to the cabin, but I found my way home without trouble.
In the cabin, all the railing on the edge of the loft and stairway had been installed and finished with fussy little extra pieces of wood, some of which I'm tempted to chisel off (since they make the newels and other posts less functional by turning a flat surface into a stepped pyramid). Lots of work had also been done to install the wood stove, including the roof penetration and chimney piping nearly to the stove itself.
After noodling around for awhile on my phone, I eventually fell asleep with the dogs in the cabin's futon, which I didn't bother to drag out of the large bedroom (which, being uninsulated, tends to be hot).
Me in the kayak at dusk this evening.
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