1-17 August, 2013 Skylights, paintball birthday parties, winterizing, flat tires and old phones.

Finally got most of the roof completed so we took the weekend off to go camping and paintballing.  The photos are out of sequence time wise but stayed grouped together for the events recorded so I'm going to leave them as they are.

Susan has been picking a couple of gallons of raspberries daily.  We're now giving them to anyone in the neighborhood who will take them. 

I put my wall phone in the living room.  It's been in my room but I never hooked it back into the line after I moved the phone jack.  Now it's in operation again.  I used a portion of a sawmill slab for the back.

I then anchored the phone to the slab.

I ran the line to the phone jack between the charge controllers.

The left rear tire went flat on the Cherokee so I took it off to find the hole and got out my patch kit.

I found a broken screw in the tire.

I used a tire plug to fix it.  You run a reamer through the hole to enlarge it and smooth the sides.  Smear the reamer with rubber cement for the final reaming. 

Next put a plug on the tool used to install it and smear the plug with rubber cement.

Push the plug through the hole then remove the installation tool.

This is what it should look like.  Now trim the exposed ends down to about a quarter-inch and re-inflate the tire.

I installed it on the car then inflated it.  The green/black impact gun runs on 12 volts.  I ordered it by mistake then once I used it I decided to keep it.  It's not like a conventional impact gun.  When you hit the trigger the motor spins.  Once it gets it's momentum up it "whacks" the main shaft.  A couple of good whacks and the nut spins off.

My traps in the garden are still producing the occasional gopher. 

We've had some good rain and decided that the fire season is over for us so I put the siphon hose away for the winter and off-loaded and stored the barrels from the truck.

We took one Sunday afternoon off to spend some time at Dickey Lake.  It was a Canadian holiday that weekend so the beach was packed.  The Canadians near the border come here because it's closer than the lakes in Canada.  Susan and Scott did some wading.

We rode bicycles from the Fortine Mercantile to the lake.  On the way back I got a nail in my rear tire.  We were only a half mile from the Cherokee so Susan rode on to bring back the Cherokee while Scott and I watched the gophers while we waited at the ranger station.

We loaded up the UHaul camper to go to Dog Creek for the weekend.  When we went to leave the brakes wouldn't work on the truck.  The front chamber of the master cylinder was low.  I inspected it and the brake lines very carefully and couldn't locate a leak so we added more brake fluid, bled the brakes and hit the road.  By then it was evening so we camped at the same place we did last summer.

It was getting dark when we finally got set-up.

Scott likes to sit in the steering wheel and rock it back and forth.  I let him play a few minutes then picked him up (under protest!) and made him come inside the camper.

The next morning I went for a walk to another site about a quarter mile farther north.  We liked it better and moved there.

Saturday (the tenth) was my birthday so Emily made a cake for me (I'm now 59).

I like to play paintball so we rented a fifty pound co2 cylinder for refilling the small bottle you screw onto the markers (I have a fill station) and brought our paintball stuff along.  Not counting my marker we have enough masks/guns and tanks for nine more people to play.  Most of the kids have their own equipment but we loaned some of the extras to guests.

This is Stephen (Scott's dad) after one session.  We all sported some impressive bruises by the end of the day.

The women and kids spent the day playing in the creek and the dogs (that's not Odie) terrorized the local ground squirrel population.

 

Anna's older than Scott but they're about the same size and they get along great.  Water is one of their favorite toys!

I left one of the markers (sans co2 tank and paintballs) out for Scott to play with.  Bright and early

Sunday morning I looked out the window and noticed that he'd paid a bit of attention to the big boys the day before.  He was quite serious as he crouched behind the piece of firewood and watched the woods.   

After breakfast I repaired the flat tire I had on the last ride.  Scott was helping of course.

Before we came home we paddled around Dog Lake.  We'd seen it from the car but wanted to explore it more.  This is where we launched the kayaks.

It's a pretty little lake about a mile long and half-mile wide.  The north end and east side are pretty shallow though.

It's skylight time again.  We just can't stand how dark it is without our skylights so we purchased one to put back in.  I'm building the frame in this photo.  I got that one in then we went to Kalispell and bought a second one to put on the other side of the roof.