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endless cliffs
Sunday, October 17 2021
location: 800 feet west of Woodworth Lake, Fulton County, NY
It was decidedly cooler outside when we got up this morning, and even a bit cool in the house, though last night we'd added a blanket, which kept things reasonably toasty. There was still leftover coffee from yesterday, so we didn't have to make more, and we played the New York Times Spelling Bee like it was a second Saturday in a row.
Eventually I braved the outdoors and did what I could to make the outdoor 240 outlet for the car charger usable even with a closeable cover. The outlet itself had to be taken out of the box and turned upside down in order for the fat cord coming out of the charger plug to point downward, a prerequisite for there being any sort of cover at all. I also had to modify the bottom of the cover by cutting away some plastic. All of this redoing of things put more than the anticipated level of wear on the screws holding everything together, and I had to go inside and cannibalize ones with actual threads remaining in order to finish the job. I also added some thin pieces of tough transparent plastic (cut from packaging) inside the box to keep exposed parts of the wires from having any chance of shorting out against the inside of the box. With all this in place, the car charger now fit in the outlet box with the door half-way open. But the damn 50 amp circuit breaker in the breaker box was still detecting a ground fault and refusing to let electricity flow. None of the wires had seemed damp in the box, so perhaps the problem was one of induction. In any case, I needed to charge the car. As my internet research had failed to determine whether or not a GFI breaker was required for this purpose, I decided to take my chances and go back to using a conventional one. This meant moving all the breakers back to their original positions, meaning I wouldn't have to relabel them after all.
After I was done with that, I wanted to show Gretchen the line of cliffs northwest of the cabin, so I invited her to come with me on a walk without telling her where we were going. The cliffs were only several hundred feet away, though I don't think Gretchen thought they were quite as awesome as I did. We continued below the cliffs for awhile and then, near where the boundary with Adirondack State Park land comes diagonally up from the lowlands to the northwest, I decided we should go down the slope. Gretchen followed me reluctantly, complaining the whole way about the steepness of the slope and the fact that we were headed towards a waterlogged swamp. But it was possible to avoid the pools of water by staying slightly upslope from them. It bears mentioning that along the way, we saw a lot of stony outcrops I'd never seen before, including another place where there was an air gap beneath a massive boulder perched atop two others.
Walking north along the bottom of the slope, we soon arrived at the red-marked path near the north end of Woodworth Lake, When we got to the beaver dam that provides the last foot or so of water level to the lake, we saw that it was being overtopped by water, something I'd never seen before. This meant the lake level was about eight of nine inches higher than the lowest I'd seen it a month or two ago.
We continued along the lake shore to our dock site, where the twelve-by-ten frame for the future floating dock was indeed floating, secured only by a rope I'd tied to it. The metal pipe I'd cemented to the rocky subsurface ledge was completely submerged. We thought it best best to pull the floating frame out of the lake for the season (or at least until I have more time to work on it), so we wrestled it out. I did most of the work, of course, with Gretchen mostly getting in the way and making unhelpful suggestions.
Back at the cabin, Gretchen started working on assembling the beds while I drove with the dogs into Johnstown to get supplies from Noble Ace Hardware. I particularly needed a flexible 1.25 inch drain extension and a 1.25 to 1.5 inch drain adapter as well as both black and white caulk (the former was for the electrical box cover, whose foam gasket failed to seal against the box; all this stuff is crappier than it should be). While waiting in line, there was a big beefcake of a guy in front of me who, like most people in Fulton and Montgomery Counties, was not wearing a mask. He started coughing, so I turned my back to him and added a few feet to the distance between him and me. I was happy when another line opened up and he went to that one.
On the way home, I stopped at the Price Chopper for portobello mushrooms, sweet-potato-based dog treats, and four pack of some sort of biggie-sized stout beer. (Sometimes I get sick of IPAs and crave something else.) One of those stouts inevitably became a road beer for the drive back cabin.
When I got there, Gretchen was arriving at the part of the bed assembly that required some assistance, and my impact driver made short work of much of it.
When I turned my attention to the sink project, I soon discovered that the flexible drain pipe I'd bought wasn't quite long enough. I could, however, hook it up in a makeshift way that allowed the sink to be used leak-free if one refrained from filling the bowl with water and then draining it. This would've been easy had I had some plumber's putty to stuff into a lemon-slice-shaped void, but I didn't. so I used a wad of plastic bag instead.
Next Gretchen wanted me to install the toilet paper holder, but I made a real mess of things trying to find a stud in the wall. (It wasn't quite as bad as something Joe Walsh might've done, but I will have to fix it next time I have joint compound.) And then it came time to actually attach the toilet paper holder to the hidden bracket piece, it turned out that the grub screw had been lost. Gretchen had heard it drop but hadn't thought anything of it, not knowing that the tiny thing (measuring maybe a quarter inch by 3/8 inches) is essential for the installation, since it tightens against the bracket to hold the visible part of the toilet paper holder in place. We looked high and low for it, but had vanished from the universe in seeming defiance of the conservation of matter. So installing that would have to wait for another day.
Originally Gretchen and I had planned to have a barbecue tonight; we'd even bought Impossible Burgers. But the weather was cold and spitting rain, so we decided to have a more modest meal indoor instead. While I briefly tried to wire up an outlet for the boiler (but failed due to a lack of junction-box-to-duplex-outlet adapter), Gretchen cooked us a meal comprised of a vegan pasta dish (with lots of vegan sausage) made by our friend Rebecca, to which Gretchen added marinated portobellos (using the ones I'd bought earlier today). Then we packed up and made the long drive homeward, with me doing all the driving. Along the way, we stopped at a Stewart's on Comrie Avenue in Johnstown for free air and to get rid of yet more trash.
An interesting thing happened on the Thruway near the Coxsackie exit. I saw a vehicle slow way down in the right lane as it passed a big truck on the shoulder, so I (in the left lane), fearing an accident, debris, or who knows what, slowed way down too. There was plenty of room behind me for vehicles back there to do the same. But what happened was that a big truck back there a quarter mile or so began flashing his headlights dramatically, as if to warn me not to block him. By that point, though, I was past the two other slow cars, and whatever danger they'd presented was behind me. So I quickly accelerated up to highway speed and soon left all those other vehicles invisible behind a hill or around a bend.
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