A tired weekend.

Friday afternoon I didn't do much.  I went out in search of rims that weren't there.  Hurray for outdated posts that say "Don't ask me if they are still here, I will take the ad down when they are gone" and they never take the post down when they are gone.    

Saturday, I went for a bike ride.  I will have to ride in on Monday, since I need to leave the truck to get the seatbelt fixed.  I decided to try a new trail.  It was quite pleasant (despite my current shape being round), though still disappointingly muddy even after several days of no rain.  It was also frustrating that my ratchet shifters had started to seize up, they weren't grabbing right and as a result you had to push the button a specific way to get it to shift.  

When I got back, I started working on the table.  It turned out putting them on paper towels was not the right course of action.  I miss having a nice work area that I could set them on and not care about what is underneath.  I had to take a knife and shave it all off (without removing the stain).

The reason the paper towels were there in the first place was because their drying spot was on my cot in the carport.  The paper towels were insufficient for that task.  Sigh.  There isn't enough urethane on the cot to warrant trying to fix it at least.

I also mowed Saturday.  The whole yard.  The mows between fixes still stands at 1 for the Cub though.  I noticed this while mowing the leech field.  That is the wheel off the deck.  I just raised the deck and mowed with it anyways.  I couldn't find the nut, so I will need to bring the bolt in and get one.  Apparently this wheel has a history of being obnoxious, so I might either double lock nut (if the bolt is long enough, it looked questionable.  Or replace the bolt too) or put some loc-tite on it.

I even mowed the parts that I didn't mow last time because it was too wet like the far back and the creek side of the leech field.  The far back was still slightly damp (to be expected with how tall it was, it was up over the brush guard in spots), and the creek side of the leech field was marshland, but those two spots hadn't been mowed since before my last KY trip, well over a month ago.

When I was mowing the driveway, I noticed that the weed killer is finally working.  

All the pieces are now urethaned.  I think I want to put one more coat on the table top itself, but I ran out of brushes.  I can start assembling the table inside though, the table top is the last piece to get installed.

You may have noticed that I tried painters tape on that last round of urethaning.  It worked better than just paper towels, which this time were just there to protect the truck (as opposed to the paper towels preventing the dripping on the other side in previous coats).  They need a little trimming/sanding because of how thick I slathered it on, but no scraping off paper towel fibers.  Side note, this urethane has a pretty nice shine despite not being a glossy finish, the angle of the picture makes them look so different in shade.  

Sunday of course started off with rain.  So I went and picked up new tires.  I had to drive a couple hours each way to get them, but they were worth it.  They came with tires on them, and not junk ones I will need to replace immediately.  Most importantly, while they have some rust on them, they aren't disintegrating like the ones on the truck are.  These are about as rusty as mine were when I first bought the truck, so I would expect that they will last about 5 years.

For comparison, here is what the rims on the truck look like.  Bald tire edges and all.  

The tires on these are decent.  Two of them are really good, and the other two are better than what I have but that is about it.  With any luck though, I won't have to buy tires for the rest of the truck's life, which at 200+ per tire is nice.  They aren't as aggressive as I like, so the 4WD will get a little extra work this winter.  Right now I am leaning towards replacing the truck next year and doing the house the year after.

I also had some free time after that and worked on the power center some more.  I ordered a copper bar to build an adapter to put lugs on the battery charger.  Unfortunately my pilot drill bit was not up to the task.  Fortunately this wasn't one of my nicer black oxide bits, which I used to finish the job, this was just a bit from a small "quick change" pilot bit set I picked up on clearance.  Even at 75% off, they don't appear to be worth it.  Copper is a fairly soft metal.  

And to add insult to injury, I just put the bit directly in the drill after that and then the bit broke.

I got one of them complete, the easier one.  The other one the split I put down the middle isn't large enough.  I am debating whether I want to make the copper split wider or just use the Dremel to cut the plastic housing away.  The copper is the conductor, and I really don't want to cut away most of it, which it looks like I would have to do.  I will definitely be noting this when I review the battery charger.

At that point the bird was rather unhappy and I was running out of daylight.  Apparently there is a second set of young'ens in the nest.  

Zoomed in, you can see a little baby head sticking out.  

I sprayed some lubrication on the cable for the shifters as best as I could before riding the bike in this morning, and by the time I got in, the shifters were largely working correctly, indicating that the biggest problem with my bike is just that I don't ride it enough anymore, which is kind of sad.  It was an expensive bike, and while I put a lot of miles on it when I lived in Syracuse, I probably put more miles on it in one year in Syracuse than I have cumulative since I moved.

I was also poking around the project list after picking up my tickets for the Colorado trip later this year, and I am thinking of postponing several of the items on the project list.  It occurred to me when I was out riding on Saturday that there is no chance of finishing all of them, and I at times feel like I am too focused on completing projects instead of enjoying things.  That was only the second time I have taken my bike out this year.  I didn't even go out hiking or camping last year.  I am thinking of postponing the ones in red to lighten the load for the rest of the year.  

2021 Projects:

• Prepare summer equipment
• Carport repair
• Windows in shed
• Shed supports
• Table
• South wall siding
• Bridge over creek
• Review options for house (mobile home vs stick built vs modular)
• Trailer hub - I am selling the trailer anyways.
• Rebuild smaller trailer
• Level back yard
• Level side yard - I probably won't do all three, and the side yard is probably the hardest to do.
• Level front yard 
• Clear trees to creek
• Remove dead/dying beech trees
• Retaining walls?
• Eliminate pile of crap in back
• Camper Power Center (portable AC power source and generator)
• Baffle box
• Clean up/level area down by second parking spot
• Driveway round three
• Fix shed door.
• Fix shed floor.

Sometimes I think my truck wants TNT too.

Sometimes I think my truck wants to get dynamite in its gas tank too.  It apparently decided yesterday that I don't get to wear a seatbelt anymore.  The whole mechanism completely seized up.  At least there is enough stuck out that I can make it look like I am wearing a seatbelt until I get it fixed.

Between hunting junkyards for truck rims on Monday and trying to get the seatbelt to loosen up yesterday, I squandered the last two days which were mostly dry.  Last night the storms came back in though.  We got some hail out of this one though.

Right now is a terrible time to buy a truck, but I went and priced them out again this morning.  They have gone up a fair bit in the past year, they are about 6 grand more than they were last year.  It is very tempting assuming I can find one though.  Certainly something to keep in mind.  I might go and see if I can sit in any of the GMC or Chevy ones though, which are still the frontrunners.

No movement on the checklist.

2021 Projects:

• Prepare summer equipment
• Carport repair
• Windows in shed
• Shed supports
• Table
• South wall siding
• Bridge over creek
• Review options for house (mobile home vs stick built vs modular)
• Trailer hub
• Rebuild smaller trailer
• Level back yard
• Level side yard
• Level front yard
• Clear trees to creek
• Remove dead/dying beech trees
• Retaining walls?
• Eliminate pile of crap in back
• Camper Power Center (portable AC power source and generator)
• Baffle box
• Clean up/level area down by second parking spot
• Driveway round three
• Fix shed door.
• Fix shed floor.

Another soggy weekend.

Friday night I got another coat of urethane on the table, though they look the same as the previous picture so I didn't take a picture.

Saturday I started off mowing the back yard with the push mower.  The  lawn tractor would have gotten stuck; there was still standing water in spots.  I ended up completing the back yard with it drizzling on me (and the rain continued the rest of the weekend.  Sigh).  

After that, there were a handful of indoor/under cover items I did, but not a lot of progress.  I took my Dremel and tried cutting out the center of one of the lugs to see if I can get the cables for the power center installed that way.  It didn't really work.  For a low power circuit, I would have just tightened the crap out of it and not cared, but not for 80A.

The battery and charger came in for that freebie camera.  The camera works.  It is a much worse camera than I thought, the Kodak software is pretty awful, and doesn't let you change anything.  You basically have an auto mode and that is it, which is kind of sad.  It is reasonably modern hardware (15MP, HD video, etc) but its software is definitely holding it back.  It doesn't even have the special shooting modes that most have these days.  

I also noticed Friday that there is a leak in the plumbing under the bathroom sink.  This joint has been a problem before.  The problem is that the installation kit that came with the sink and vanity isn't PVC.  The PVC cement (this is the second time I tried to cement it in) doesn't hold onto the polyethylene.  So I tried silicone this time.  Other than some noob turned the water back on to test it before reconnecting the pipe, the silicone tore off when I was reconnecting it up and it now leaks worse than it did before.  I might stop at Home Depot to see if I can find an actual PVC hookup so the cement holds better.

In today's rain watch, the water is rising in the carport.  The shiny part in the middle is water, and it is several inches deep now.

I also brought my truck in Friday to get the alignment checked and get a tire looked at.  Turns out there were no holes in the tire that they could see with the soap, so they cleaned it up and put new bead sealer on it.  It didn't work.  They mentioned when looked at it that the rim was really bad and if it was the source of the leak that there was so much rust they might be able to see it with soap.  They didn't want to clean the rust off and check since it would make it worse if it was the rim.  So it looks like when I replace the tires, I will be replacing the rims.  At least the alignment was still good, so I don't need new tie rod ends or ball joints or anything.

Also on Sunday I did a quick cost analysis on rebuilding that boat.  I can get a turnkey boat on Craigslist for 2k, and a nicer one for 3-4k.  I estimated the cost of rebuilding the boat at around 3500, so it doesn't really seem viable.  It is perhaps a nicer boat than what I would get from a turnkey solution (most of those are just small aluminum boats someone stuck a motor on), but those are all I need.  THey are only good for a couple of people at most, whereas I could in theory bring along 4-5 people in the bowrider, and the bowrider would be nicer in the larger lakes like Winnepesaukee, but I don't see having more than one or two tops passengers out on the water.  It is possible that the estimate was high, but parts for rebuilding boats are getting really hard to find.  For those curious, the spreadsheet is here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1s9JsoTW8Y3khIM3dg8Fcd1safnQvY596rwvFceAfato/edit?usp=sharing

A little progress, but not much on the checklist.  I got invited to go hiking at the end of August in the Rockies in Colorado, so I need to start working out so I don't die.  I am behind on my projects for the year, so I really wish the rain would stop.

2021 Projects:

• Prepare summer equipment
• Carport repair
• Windows in shed
• Shed supports
• Table
• South wall siding
• Bridge over creek
• Review options for house (mobile home vs stick built vs modular)
• Trailer hub
• Rebuild smaller trailer
• Level back yard
• Level side yard
• Level front yard
• Clear trees to creek
• Remove dead/dying beech trees
• Retaining walls?
• Eliminate pile of crap in back
• Camper Power Center (portable AC power source and generator)
• Baffle box
• Clean up/level area down by second parking spot
• Driveway round three
• Fix shed door.
• Fix shed floor.

Short update. Finally a day without rain.

I finally got a day without rain this week, so I got some project work done.  I got the first coat of urethane put on the pieces of the table.  Unfortunately, with how humid it was, they were still tacky when I went to bed, so I couldn't get a second coat.  Since this is a table and subject to washing/scrubbing/mild abuse, I wanted to put three coats on it.  

It also appears that the glyphosate I sprayed my driveway with was largely ineffective.  I didn't expect it to kill the knotweed, but I figured it would at least kill the grass and weeds in my driveway.  Some of them don't look healthy anymore, but even after almost a week, nothing is dead.  I mixed it very strong too.  

This puts the table in progress.  Unfortunately after today (I should get the second coat of urethane on tonight) it looks like we are back to raining every day.  This is getting old.  And my yard is getting thick.  We have gotten so much rain even my leech field is flourishing; it usually dies off after the spring showers in May and doesn't come back until the following year.  My creek is still very high, and it is usually barely running by this point.  

2021 Projects:

• Prepare summer equipment
• Carport repair
• Windows in shed
• Shed supports
• Table
• South wall siding
• Bridge over creek
• Review options for house (mobile home vs stick built vs modular)
• Trailer hub
• Rebuild smaller trailer
• Level back yard
• Level side yard
• Level front yard
• Clear trees to creek
• Remove dead/dying beech trees
• Retaining walls?
• Eliminate pile of crap in back
• Camper Power Center (portable AC power source and generator)
• Baffle box
• Clean up/level area down by second parking spot
• Driveway round three
• Fix shed door.
• Fix shed floor.

Lazy weekend.

Saturday I was kind of lazy and didn't do much.

I started by getting the boat off the truck.  I get a "how well can you jack-knife a trailer" tutorial every time I try to turn around a trailer up there, and as usual it took me half an hour to get the damn trailer turned around enough to get it on the slab; it is surprising how slow this trailer turns, I am accustomed to my utility trailer which cuts fast.  I am beginning to wonder if it would be easier to just back the trailer all the way up the driveway.

Even after leaving the boat sit all night tipped back to make sure all the water was out of it, I still ended up using the jack to get it off the truck.  I probably could have lifted it off, but it was dicey whether I could have lifted it high enough to get a concrete block under it without injuring myself.  If I get ambitious, I might move the boat backwards to balance the weight over the axle a little better.  I think if push came shove though, I could move it enough to get it back on the truck without a "how well can I back up blind" exercise.  It might be worth buying a tongue jack for the trailer though before I go to move it again though.  

I also went to return the anti-sway ball I had ordered from Amazon back in April (May?) that they wouldn't cancel (I tried several times every time they delayed it).  I got my money back, but apparently they don't require I actually return the ball, so I have a spare it appears.

I also went and picked up a free point and shoot camera.  The guy claims it works, but the charger is gone for the battery.  I figured an 8 dollar gamble for a new charger and battery was worth it.  I don't particularly care for Kodak point and shoots, but it is better than the nothing I have right now.  

I didn't really do anything else other than finishing cleaning up the Kitchen Aid and other stuff I brought home.  

Sunday I actually forced myself to do some stuff.  I finally got my yard mowed.  The mower wasn't happy, I could see it spraying water in spots, and I nearly stalled the Cub a couple times (gotta go full speed...).  I didn't do the really wet spot down on the bottom right because it probably would have gotten stuck.  I also didn't do the backyard, though the far back is actually the driest part of the yard.

I also went out and started to spray down my driveway.  In a couple of spots I actually mowed my driveway.  The glyphosate doesn't kill knotweed, but it should hopefully kill the stuff in my driveway.

I also went and pulled out the the parts for the table to clean up and urethane, should the rain ever stop.

I also noticed that the silicone had detached itself from the base of the toilet again, so I went through and am trying vinyl tape.  Maybe this will work better.  

I woke up this morning to a flat tire on my truck and more rain, so I decided to go and look at my creek while the air compressor was filling.  It is high.  Very high.  

Even the path leading up to the creek is under water.  This is about as close as my lot ever gets to flooding though.

Given the lack of availability of the generator I chose for the power center, I reviewed the generators in my list, and right now the Champion is the next best option.  It is a dual fuel generator, which is nice.  I could probably get dual 30 or 40 lb tanks, tie them together and not have to refuel the generator the entire trip.  Or at the very least, I can run it for two days on a 20lb tank.

This doesn't start anything else on the checklist, but the table is looking like the next project.  There isn't much left on it to do, I did all the staining and cutting and stuff last year, so it should be quick.

2021 Projects:

• Prepare summer equipment
• Carport repair
• Windows in shed
• Shed supports
• Table
• South wall siding
• Bridge over creek
• Review options for house (mobile home vs stick built vs modular)
• Trailer hub
• Rebuild smaller trailer
• Level back yard
• Level side yard
• Level front yard
• Clear trees to creek
• Remove dead/dying beech trees
• Retaining walls?
• Eliminate pile of crap in back
• Camper Power Center (portable AC power source and generator)
• Baffle box
• Clean up/level area down by second parking spot
• Driveway round three
• Fix shed door.
• Fix shed floor.

New boat.

I came across a free boat on Craigslist today and decided to pounce despite Elsa being overhead right now.  It is a roughly 14' (maybe 16?) fiberglass boat.  The guy said the boat was junk, but it doesn't look terrible to me.  It had a nice galvanized trailer under it.  If I determine the boat really is junk, I can just toss it in the dumpster I will need to get this year anyways and I have a nice boat trailer I can bring down.  

It was a real pain getting the boat hooked up.  The drain hole was plugged up, and there were at least 4-6 inches of water in the bottom, I could see it coming up over the floor.  Since the boat was on a hill facing down, I couldn't lift it to put it on the truck, and had to use my floor jack to lift it and then back the truck perfectly underneath it.  And with the truck cap all fogged up and the fact that it was too close to the road to come in at it straight, it took me 15-20 minutes to get it on the truck.  I am glad it didn't tear my hitch off; if I couldn't even budge it, the tongue weight was likely rather high.

When I got it back to work, I poked the drainage hole with my umbrella and got it to start draining.  I went inside after about ten minutes and it was still draining like this.  I am guessing this is why I couldn't lift it since I was trying to lift a hundred or maybe more gallons of water with it too.  With that much water in it, I would guess that the hull is watertight.

The transom is clearly junk.

The interior doesn't look terrible, but the floor is broken and falling in up under the front platform.  That likely means all the flooring needs to be replaced.

There is a spare rim in the back, though I didn't verify it fits on the trailer.  A lot of junk too.

This was the only damaged fiberglass I saw.  Should be easy enough to fix.  There are a few holes where there used to be things as well.  

The trailer is a nice Karavan galvanized trailer.  The passenger light is busted, but the driver light worked.  The tires hold air, though one of them was low.  Taking the hundred gallons of water out of the boat will help though.  I will just drive slow when bringing it home.

I apparently forgot to take a picture of the whole thing, which I will later.  I didn't really need another project, but I have one.  If the boat really is junk, then I will just crush it and throw it in the dumpster and just sell whichever trailer is leftover.  If it isn't, I have another project for next year (I already have too many for this year).

UPDATE - Here is the whole boat.

The front platform.  I am really not sure what the platform is for.  If it were a fishing platform, I would expect to see a seat post or at least holes where a seat was mounted.  

The broken passenger light.  I might for now just put my spare light on it I have in the shed.  It isn't a submersible light, but should survive for a while.

The fender wells are gone.  

The control center of the boat.  It has a surprising amount of things for such a small boat.

It has been a couple of hours since the initial post.  The tire that was low looks much better now.  It is weathered, so it will eventually need replacing.  

The fish finder appears to still be there.  Considering everything else has been stripped from this boat, I am really surprised this is still here.  The sensor was still on the back as well.  

It was apparently a Columbian boat, though this is literally the only branding/decal I saw on the boat and was oddly placed on the splash well.  Google suggests Columbian made fiberglass boats in the 60s, but they weren't a long lived brand and there isn't much on them.

Even the coupler is in good shape.  The wiring will need replacing sooner or later, there are far too many patches in it for my liking.

One odd thing, the trailer doesn't have a winch, just a chain to hook on the bow eye.  I will definitely put a winch on it at some point.  

When I took the second round of pictures, I was able to shift the boat around on the trailer by hand which supports my theory that most of the weight was water, though it was still far heavier than I expected.