Ouch!

More like moan and groan than ouch, but there were a couple of ouches during the week as well. Both Barb and I (and Forrest) have aching bodies from working on the garage. But we made some great progress!

The pile of lumber that we had delivered last week is now 2/3rd gone and built into actual garage walls. Kevin came over last Sunday and helped us lay out the plates. Laying out the plates is basically marking the bottom and top boards, so you know where to put each of the studs. Typically, 16" apart, this is so you have a board every 48" or 96" so your sheeting seams hit on a stud. There are other studs too, such as corners, intersecting walls, windows and doors. 

Kevin, being a fulltime contractor can lay out buildings in his sleep. Us, not so much. What would take us a full day (probably with a few mistakes), he can do in an hour. So, he was nice enough to come out and lay them out, marking where each stud should go accounting for the length of the wall, windows and doors. That day, he did two walls: one 48' long wall and the 24' west wall. This would be enough to keep us busy for a few days as we built them. Which is what we did on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Tuesday, we built the 48' north wall. The first step was to cut all the studs to 10'. Did you know that a 10' 2x6 is not always exactly 10'? They will be anywhere from 10' to 10'-1/2" so you have to make sure they are all exactly the same size. To do these two walls we needed about 60 studs. Once those are cut you lay them out on the ground, standing on edge with the green treated board on the bottom and the top plate on top. You lay each of the studs at the mark Kevin had made on Sunday. This particular picture is where an interior wall intersects, thus the additional boards. 

Then you nail the studs to the bottom and top plates. Somer even came out to help nail in a few boards!

It was a beautiful day, and we only had one minor incident when I tripped on a stake and took a tumble. Well, it was more like 3-4 stumble steps before I fell, then the fall and a roll down, where I lodged against a tree. I laid there for a few seconds taking inventory of what hurt the most before I struggled to get up. Somer was fortunate enough to witness the entire thing, Barb had her back turned. The only damage was to my pride and my shin which got scraped up. That was my first "Ouch" of the week. 

Our next "Ouch" came the following morning when we were getting out of bed, Barb and I were both moaning and groaning from the previous exertions. We sucked it up though and went back to work building the shorter 24' west wall. Luckily with no additional "Ouches".

Once that was done, Barb and I went shed hunting (hunting for the shed antlers the elk and deer dropped in the last few weeks). We went over near the area where Barb shot her elk last falls as we knew there were a lot of elk in that area. That is where we both experienced our next "Ouches" for the week. We covered some terrain that was way beyond our physical abilities. I like to think we are in pretty decent shape, but we got our asses kicked. Up and down the ridges. It was the ups that kicked our butts. 

What a beautiful day though, 70 degrees and sunny! Did we find any antlers? Just one, a decent whitetail antler. 

Speaking of being physical, Barb and I both had our annual doctor appointments this week. Barb came home with instructions to monitor her blood pressure for the next week as it was higher than they like to see it. My appointment went fine, they asked all the usual questions; "Are you feeling depressed, are you generally happy, do you have thoughts of hurting yourself...... But there was one question that made me pause; "Have you fallen in the last 30 days?". I thought about it for a millisecond before responding "No". I did not need some minor trip being on my permanent medical record!

When I got home, Forrest and I loaded up the boat and headed 40 minutes south to the Angostura Reservoir, the only open body of water in the area. We spent 6 hours on the water half of which I played with the electronics getting familiar with them and the other half fishing. 

What a beautiful day, 84 and sunny! So hot in fact that shirts were coming off and sunburn was setting in. While we did not catch any fish, we had a great day. 

While Forrest and I were fishing, Barb was back home cutting more studs and putting sill seal on the bottom plate.

Friday was a wall raising day! Kevin brought his skid steer over with the boom, Dan and Bonnie came over to help and along with Barb, Forrest and I we were ready to lift some walls! I was skeptical lifting the 48'er, but Kevin knew what he was doing and within 5 minutes we had it standing! We spent the next 45 minutes bracing, drilling concrete anchors and leveling every up.

The 24' wall was next. Again, we leveled, braced and drilled. Kevin still had some time left, so we quickly laid out, built and raised the 24' east wall. Just like that we had 3 walls up!

Before he left, Kevin laid out the plates for the 48' garage door wall. Barb, Forrest and I got busy building it after he left. We still have the large headers to put in, but that too will soon be standing, and we will be ready for the trusses!

We paid for it the rest of that night and the next morning though as our stiff and tired bodies questioned what we were doing to them. The hot tub felt great that night!

Saturday, rain and snow greeted us as we woke up. Three days with 70 and higher followed by snow. Welcome to spring in South Dakota! 

Our niece Alana and Ryan came over on Saturday along with Sophie and Loki for a doggie play day. We were forced to stay inside as it was wet and muddy outside. Oh boy, we had a lot of catching up to do after a 3-month absence. They are building a new house that should be done in the next month or so. We chatted, caught up and of course played dice games. For each game the winner won the money, and the loser had to take a shot. Forrest won 4 times out of 8 games; I lost 5 times out of the 8. Barb added a new element to the loser called The Shot Wheel. The loser had to spin the wheel to see what shot they were taking. 

No post is truly complete without a few dog pictures. This is my view when I am eating a Rice Crispy bar.....

Otherwise, if I am not eating, they just chill.....

While we don't have it on the calendar yet, with luck, next week's post will show some trusses on the building and maybe even some sheeting!

Hitting the Ground Running

 Did you expect anything less? So much to do, so little time! There are always things to do when you get back from an extended absence. Although Forrest and Somer took good care of the house, Barb went about cleaning it. I don't care how clean it was, unless Barb does it with her own two hands, it is not clean enough. Lily is still living upstairs in the loft; she has made herself quite comfortable up there. We don't mind having her in the house, me specifically, as it gives me someone to blame stuff on like when the last brownie is gone Barb will ask, "Who had the last brownie?". "I think I heard Lily coming downstairs in the middle of the night", I respond while brushing brownie crumbs off my shirt. 

We also took the camper off the truck, it is all tucked away in the garage waiting for Barb's remodeling. Remodeling you ask? Yeah, Barb has a long list of things she wants to do to the camper. The biggest thing is to replace the subfloor, replace the linoleum with the left over LVP from the house, remove/replace the valences and recover all the cushions on the dinette. As a matter of fact, she is knee deep in demolition mode with the valences and linoleum removed already. 

The boat too is all tucked into the other side of the garage. Forrest and I have been working on getting it ready for fishing. We have done all out pre-fishing rituals, got all our tackle and rods ready and install on new LiveScope, which was a much bigger deal than anticipated as we had to run several sets of wire harnesses throughout the boat. 

I now have two Gamin units installed in the back of the boat!

Forrest also broke out his 3D printer and made me a cover for the transducer on the LiveScope. These printers are amazing! The first picture is the printer in action, the second shows the finished product with the printer in the background. 

The other thing we spent the week doing was watching YouTube videos. Specifically fishing YouTube videos. It was somewhat melancholy to watch them as I was watching a lot of the videos we published from when we visited Pasha Lake. By far, this is where we created our best fishing memories. I feel joy in my heart remembering all the good times and a pit in my stomach thinking that we will never get to experience at that level again since the new owner took over. Oh, we will make new memories, but I doubt they will be as good as those. Here is a link to one of my favorite videos we made up there.  

We are excited to get out on the water, but it looks like the earliest we will get out will be this coming Thursday when the temps get up into the mid 60's. We have a couple of trips planned so far this year; 3 that are on the calendar; one in June, two more in July, plus a couple more that are just in the planning stages. 

Now, the boat was not supposed to be in this garage, it was supposed to be in our new garage. The problem is, is that it is not built yet! The plan was to build our new garage before we got the boat, but you know how that goes. Sometimes you put the cart before the horse. We did get the materials for the garage though and we plan on starting to build it later this morning!

Of course we had to get together with the gang. We met Dan, Bonnie, Merrill and Vicki at bingo on Wednesday night. None of us won, but it was great getting together!

The next day we went over to Kevin's neighbor, Greg's, to split and stack his firewood. Dan, Bonnie, Kevin, Barb and I surprised Greg by going over and split/stacked all his firewood. He was not there, and it was a surprise for him. Kevin sent him a picture when we were all done. 

He was so pleased that he invited over the next day for happy hour followed by supper that Cheryl had prepared. Of course, I forgot to take any pictures, there was a total of 10 of us there, it was good to see everyone and get together!

Zoey and Dakota are glad to be home. They are loving having so much room to roam around. Zoey zooms around the house bouncing off the furniture, she did not have room to do that in the camper. Dakota is no longer confined to being under the dinette and she has multiple beds from which to choose from. 

Now for the moment you have all been waiting for; how many bottles did we bring home? (drum roll).... the final tally was 52! This makes Rita the winner with her guess of 53. What does she win? Bragging rights, that is about it. I thought about giving the winner a bottle of booze, there was one we bought that is absolutely nasty, but I like Rita, and I would not do that to her. I think I will save if for next time Harry stops by and give it him. This brings the total number of bottles in the house to a little over 200. We are done buying for a while, we are starting to have storage problem. Well, unless we find a special bottle that we just have to have! 

That's it for last week, it looks like this coming week is going to be even busier!

The Struggles of Life

When you become of a certain age your days revolve around one or two things. Important things. Things that if they do not go right can ruin your entire day. Funny, when we were both working, we were juggling a handful of stressful things with ease and invariably one or two did not go right and we took them in stride. Not anymore.

What these things are vary from person to person or in our case couple to couple. Maybe you don't get a good night's sleep. Maybe you wake up with an ache or pain. Or heaven forbid your favorite player does not do well on Jeopardy or The Wheel of Fortune!

We have a routine in the morning when we are in the camper, Barb gets up first, gets ready and takes the dogs out for their morning walk. This is my signal to get up and get ready. Much easier to move around and get ready with them all gone. But I have yet to know if we are going to have a good day or not. I will not find that out until she returns. Actually, it is only the first of a two-step process that will tell us if our day will be a good one or one filled with tension and stress. 

After getting ready, I get back up in bed and start reading blogs or looking on The Facebook. When Barb returns, I put everything down and look at her expectantly. "Well?", I ask. Here is it the moment that will tell me if we will have a good day. I look at Barb's face with hope. "She went boom-boom", she replies and a wave a relief washes over me. Step one down, now for step two....

Barb starts warming up the water for her coffee and picks up both dog dishes and fills them up; two scoops of dry for Dakota and a scoop for Zoey. Each with a dollop of canned dogfood on top. Dakota gets out from under the dinette and immediately starts eating hers. Zoey will slowly walk up to hers like she is expecting brussel sprouts or something and starts nosing it. This is the other moment of truth, we have to ignore her, if we stare at her she will not eat, so Barb starts making her coffee while watching Zoey out of the corner of her eye; "Come on girl, you can do it, make it a good day", I silently pray. 

Yes, that is what our lives have evolved to, from stressful careers managing dozens of people, handling projects and troubleshooting issues to having a good day hinge on whether or not your dog goes boom-boom and eats her breakfast. If either go wrong, and they do, there will be worry until both of these tasks are complete. Not by me mind you, by the other one. That, my friends is our life. I know you dog owners out there can relate. 

By now many of you have figured out that I did not end up in an urn this past week. Either that risk has past or the appointment she set up is for when we return home. The next question is whether or not we are now pulling a boat?!?!? As you may recall, there were two that we (I) were interested in; one in Lee's Summit Missouri and one in Eau Claire Wisconsin and now a third that showed up last week in Hutchinson Minnesota. 

We left the Camping World in Calera, Alabama and continued to make our way northwest to Memphis Tennessee. A first for us and maybe a last. We have been in some dirty cities in our years, but this one might take the top spot. Maybe it was just the area we were in, but trash and garbage everywhere. I have no idea how this city could ever get clean again, there was litter everywhere! Where we did spend the night was pretty cool though, the Bass Pro Shop. Their premiere pyramid location. 

I loved this mount of three varieties of teal on one display. You birders out there will know what each of them are. 

What I really like though were the vintage decoys. Oh, to own some of these.....

While it is a free spot to stay in their parking lot, it was pretty noisy as there is an interstate bridge right above us.  The next day was another first for us. The first time in 12 years of traveling that we have ever set a foot (or wheel) in Arkansas!

Our next stop was one that we had been looking forward to for a while and happened to be right on our way. Mansfield Missouri, which happens to be the home of Shawn and Kim, an RV couple we met in Arizona many years ago. You may also remember them from a post when we had supper on their sailboat in Big Pine Keys Florida about this same time last year. 

We spent the afternoon on their side by side touring their ranch. What an interesting piece of property! Of course, I only got one picture of them as they were walking downhill after showing us a natural spring. 

After that we headed into town for supper at a new Mexican place followed by happy hour at the clubhouse at the ranch. So good to catch up with them again. 

The next morning, we were off to see our first boat!

We arrived at the owners address in Lee's Summit just after 12:00 noon and there in the driveway was the boat. Better in person than it looked in the pictures. Shinier, cleaner, more features and accessories that we had anticipated. Over the next 60 minutes we went over everything. I asked questions, tested each of the electronics. Laid on my back and inspected the hull, ran the motor. Everything checked out. After a quick conference with Barb, I started talking price with the guy. We settled on a number that we were both happy with, shook hands and the deal was done! Well, not quite, I had to go to the bank and get some money. I had transferred some from one account to another and it was not going to be available until that morning. One of the things you deal with when you travel is banking. About the only bank we have found readily available across the country is Wells Fargo. We use that account as our traveling account and it did not have enough money in it, thus the transfer. Off to the bank we went. Not a huge deal, but more of a deal than usual. Getting out that much money in cash required the managers involvement, but I was in and out of there in 30 minutes.

After hooking up the boat we headed down the road with no destination in mind. We had no idea where we were going after this if we weren't going to Wisconsin. I was driving, Barb was hovering over the atlas and her phone trying to see where we should go. I was asking her where we were going, she was stressed... Finally, I just said "I am going to pull over until we figure this out". I see a huge empty parking lot and pull in. It was a closed business plenty of room for us to park and figure things out. We noticed that the adjacent building however was open with cars in front of it. I look to see what kind of business it was and started laughing. Barb, not yet seeing the humor, looks up from her atlas and says, "What's so funny?". "Look where we parked", I replied. She looks up, grabs all her computer, phone, atlas, gets out of the truck and heads straight for the business. What is the business you ask? A brewery of course! Transparent Brewing Company to be exact. What are the odds that we randomly pull over and it just happens to be in a brewery parking lot?!?!? 

I took this picture in the parking lot. Doesn't look like this boat was specifically designed to be behind this truck/camper combo?!?!

One hour and one beer later we had a plan. 45 minutes later we were pulling into a Bass Pro Shop outside of Kansas City. If you are ever in the area and looking for a free place to stay. DO NOT pick here. Not that there is anything wrong with the business, it is just that 200' away is a fire hall and rescue station. Sirens all night long!

The next morning, we drove west two hours arriving at Milford State Park right around 1:00pm. A beautiful state park on Milford Lake. The day we arrived it was 75, the next day 81. Talk about two beautiful days! $21/night off season, we were the only two in the campground. But that is not the best part, the best part is the lake! 

We spent two days on the water testing out the new boat, no fishing, just puttering around, reading and enjoying the days. Just what we needed! 

Dakota just chilled on the deck and slept. Zoey was interested in everything that was going on around her. 

After two days, we packed up and continued out way west towards home. Two 5-hour days if we hurried, which would bring us home Saturday, but there was a weather event heading our way; high winds; 30mph sustained, gusts over 50mph. We found refuge in North Platte Nebraska at a Harvest Host in the form of Pals Brewing Company. We pointed the rig into the wind to minimize the rocking from the wind, went inside for a couple of beers and a pizza before tucking in for the night. 

Barb got an interesting flight!

The following morning the wind was still at about 20mph, but very managable. We drove the remaining 5 hours, arriving home around 2:00pm. Forrest, Somer and Lily greeted us, yup, they are still holding down the fort! 

After 11 weeks of adventures, we made it home! We unloaded the truck of all the bottles we had acquired. Anyone care to take a guess how many bottles? I will give you a little help, below is a picture of some, but not all the bottles we got.  

I will reveal the answer in our next post, until then, I will leave you with this video. Since Harry (the now dog lover) said that he would rather have dog videos over people videos on the beach, here is a video of Zoey on one of our drives. I thought about putting this on a loop and telling Harry to watch it to the end. Who knows how long he would have watched it for!