Bolt Hole Report, September 4, 2010

I woke up this morning to the sound of apples being munched. Rolled over and sat up to see three deer in the reclaimed apple orchard behind the cabin. One spike, one doe, and one fawn--who has nearly gained the size of its mom. They heard the bed springs squeak and--while not alarmed--decided to head back to their hidey hole for the day. I managed to see them as the crossed the lawn and split with the young buck headed across the road toward Mark's and the doe and fawn heading west into the woods.

These are the only three deer Mark has been seeing all summer. Could be a long, fruitless hunting season since we have sworn that we will not shoot the doe or her fawn even in bow season. (She's protected during the rifle season when it's bucks only around here.)

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After breakfast and a cup of coffee, I decided to see if the chainsaw would fire up so I could go out and cut some firewood. There are a few maple and cherry blowdowns that lifted their rootballs out of the ground a few years ago. Until this year they still produced leaves. Mark and I decided this would be the time to cut them into rounds for later transport and splitting at the barn.

Damn it! The chainsaw (a Homelite) fired up after just a few pulls so it was off to work.

The wood was in the forest to the west of the house about 300-400 yards away and had come down right on an old skid way. The three big maples (around 18" in diameter at breast height when they were upright) were about 40' long but still had their topmost branches attached. I tackled those first trying to reduce things to just three logs. I was at it for just thirty minutes or so when Mark showed up with his Husqvrana. We made the woods sing fro a few hours as we cut and stacked the future firewood. We probably have 5 or 6 face cords of wood. That should be more than enough but if we need more, there are other trails and other blowdowns that need cutting.

Like I said, we stacked the rounds we cut and then started looking around for more to cut. There was no shortage of blowdowns. Most were fir and hemlock and they really obscured our view through the woods. ZIP! ZIP! ZIP! We brought as many to the ground as we could and then cut the branches off piling them in to hollows and weighting them down with the larger pieces. Most were well on their way toward rottendom and a few winters covered with snow will soon have them turned into so much soil duff.

All told we put in around five hours working in the woods. Tomorrow we'll go back to clear the old skid trails so we can get the ATV down there to pick up the wood. The skid way the maples were on is blocked for ATV use by some frost heaved boulders that a skidder would laugh at but which would have the transmission off the ATV ripped out in no time. Shouldn't be too hard to open up another path now that we've removed some of the fir tree blowdowns. We looked around when we finished cutting today and saw a likely route that will require removing only a few 1-3" diameter hemlocks.

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The weather has certainly turned here at the Bolt Hole. Yesterday was near 90 degrees in the afternoon without a bit of breeze blowing. Today, close to noon, the wind kicked up and blew out of the west northwest. The temperature dropped while we were working from just a little over 70 to closer to 55 degrees. If it continues to drop, I may have to think about using some of the firewood tonight!

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Now all I need is to recover from today's labors enough to be able to pick up 1) my chainsaw, 2)my arms, and 3)my legs. My back aches. My right shoulder aches. My left middle finger aches from jamming it somewhere. Suffice to say, I'm going to sleep well tonight!

Rutgers 31, Norfolk State 0

Rutgers Scarlet Knight got off to a slow start Thursday night and lead Norfolk State just 6-0 at the half on two San San Te field goals (31 and 20 yards—he had missed two others). Tom Savage had already been sacked three times and things were not looking good for the boys on the banks of the old Raritan. Then the second half started.

Joe Martinek ran 6 yards for a TD. Joe Lefeged returned a blocked punt 3 yards for a TD. Tom Savage connected with Mohamed Sanu for 10 yard TD. (Sanu also ran for a 2-point conversion after Martinek’s TD.) San San Te finished the scoring with a 27 yard field goal.

Martinek ended the night with 20 carries and 109 yards De’Antwan Williams carried 6 times for 69 yards and Jordan Thomas had 13 carries gaining 47 yards. In all, RU gained 268 yards on 50 carries while holding Norfolk State to just 25 yards on 24 carries. Savage finished the night completing 10 of 19 passes for 148 yards and the one TD.

The 1-0 Knights will travel south to play Florida International on Saturday, September 11th at 8 PM. It will be the Golden Panthers first game of the year.

Thursday night at the Bolt Hole

I'm sitting in the kitchen of the Bolt Hole this evening following the Rutgers game against Norfolk State on the computer. (RU just scored a rushing TD and a 2-point conversion to go ahead 14-0 midway through the third quarter. Not great but not bad either.)

Terry came over to the campground this morning to help me prepare the trailer to depart for Alpin Haus in Amsterdam. It took us about 15 minutes to get things squared away and hitched up. She took the last of the things that just had to go to the Aerie (including the dirty laundry and bed linens) and I took the few things that I knew could not stay in the trailer while it sat int he yard awaiting the replacement of the slide out motor. We then emptied the tanks as best we could at the dump station at the campground and I headed north while she went back to tending the cats and watching Don and Adam apply stone to the exterior walls.

The ride north was totally uneventful. I had t stop once to refuel in Seneca Falls and then once more to eat my lunch--a left over Subway sandwich from our workday meal on Wednesday.

When I got to Alpin Haus I was surprised to be told that they may actually get to the work early. Joey, the gal at the service desk, said she had information that the parts were on their way and, in fact, should have been in house already. Hopefully, she said they will be there in a day or two. Originally she had told me that they would schedule the work for September 10th, but now she said they would get to it as soon as the parts arrive. I left her the keys and a note about the braces I had put in to keep the slide out from...well..sliding out, gave her my telephone number and bid adieu as I headed for the Bolt Hole.

Mark is here and showed me the devastation a power failure had produced vis-a-vis the refrigerator. Not only did we lose nearly all the food contained therein, but the mice had a field day with what spilled out the door. They carried on with the toilet paper, towels and various other things they normally leave alone. (How's that saying go again? Oh yeah: "While the cat's away....") He also showed me what may have caused the problem: moisture condensing on the electrical box in the basement. Then he pointed out the corrections he made down there to dry the place out.

He also showed me the new high-speed wireless internet connection he had installed in my kitchen while I was away. (I had to give a verbal okay to the folks at the phone company that he had permission to act on my behalf. I think I was in Alaska at the time.) Thing works like a charm although the modem does create a little buzzing sound in the background when I'm on the phone. Much faster than dial up.

Then we took a walk about the yard. The number of apples in the trees is astounding. Trees that are whip-like in nature being only a couple of inches in diameter at breast height and running 20 to 25 feet tall are bend nearly double with the weight of apples. The apples themselves are pretty poor quality being only a few inches in diameter and tart as vinegar, but they are abundant. Mark thinks the type of apple was chosen because it is so prolific--when the spring frost allows--and because they were grown for the applejack they could produce. They are certainly not eating apples by any means. If they were, the bears would have torn many more limbs down to get to them. The few deer that are around have nibbled at the tips of the branches and have also nibbled the drops, but there are still some apples within reach that they haven't touched. Even so, I'd have to say the apple orchard reclamation project Mark began about four years ago seems to have begun to pay off.

Then it was time to go grocery shopping to replace some essentials, like coffee and toilet paper!

Now, I'm "watching" the Scarlet Knights game on the internet via CBSSports.com.

If Earl remains to the east, I may have to go out and start cutting firewood tomorrow. At least, the circulation about the storm will draw cooler air south from Canada. Today it was near 90 degrees--again.

Aerie Report, August 31, 2010

Late Tuesday afternoon and I'm at the Aerie again. The trailer is nearly cleaned out and will be by tomorrow (Wednesday) evening. I've only got a few frozen foods that need transport. The rest of the caned goods and non-refrigerated foods can stay in place to be off loaded at the Bolt Hole.

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Don and Adam started work on the staining and stone work on Monday morning. Adam has been pressure washing the logs to remove dirt and grime before staining begins. The 2500 psi machine is certainly going through the 400-450 gallons f water in the cistern pretty darn quick! With a very slow recharge rate in the well, we'll recover between 30 and 40 gallons an hour. That requires the well pump to run for just 10 minutes and rest for 50. With it having been drawn down so low, Adam will start the staining process as the cistern fills. Meanwhile, Don has put a wire mesh in place and a scratch coat on the exterior basement wall and has started to apply some of the faux stone. This is the same "stone' that we have on the fireplace and chimney. It will really look nice when it's finished.

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I harvested a couple of dozen white onions from the garden this afternoon. The reds still have their fleshy tops and were left in the ground for another time. So far we've almost as many onions as we did last fall and those nearly made it to April. Some of the onions were smaller than I like, but, since they grew without any weeding or cultivating or watering at all other than what Mother Nature provided, I'll take the results.

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Weather has been nearly perfect for outdoor work. The sky remains clear although the days are, perhaps, a bit too warm. (It's reached the 90s the last three days.) We haven't seen any rain since the 23rd and the forecast shows only a chance on Friday night into Saturday--depending upon Earl's behavior.

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Tomorrow I will be heading over to the Muck to assist other members of the Tiadaghton Audubon Society with the annual maintenance of the boardwalk and blind. There will be some carpentry, some weed whacking, and some staining to do there as well.

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Thursday, I'll hitch the trailer up and head to Amsterdam, NY and the Alpin Haus to get its slide out motor replaced. I'll then retire to the Bolt Hole for the weekend. Hopefully, Earl will swing out to sea and there won't be much in the way of rain Friday night into Saturday.

Road Trip 2010: Fuel by the Numbersand more

I spent some time with my friend, Microsoft Excel, last night putting together the numbers from our recent trip. My records were nearly intact since I carefully record every gasoline purchase with location of fill-up, price per gallon (or liter, as the case may be)number of gallons (or liters), miles driven since last fill-up, and the miles per gallon for that tank of fuel. I say "nearly intact" because I forgot to enter the name of one town and the total cost for the fill-up in another. That's more than close enough for government work.

Since some of the gas was purchased in Canada and those folks measure in liters, I had to convert the number of liters into gallons. (BTW, there's 3.784 liters in a gallon. One quart equals 0.964 liters. It's right there on your milk carton. One liter equals 1.06 quarts. That's on you soda bottle.)

And, since some of the gas was purchased in Canada it was paid for with Canadian cash which was nearly but not quite the same value as the USD. For practical purposes, I've assumed they traded at par over the course of our trip with the differences on either side balancing out over time. In reality, the two did a delicate little dance about that value, with each having the upper hand by a few pennies at one time or another. Usually the value depended upon what was happening in the Canadian elections, who said what to whom in the US, how folks felt about their teams chances for the Grey Cup or some such nonsense. Lets just call them equal for now.

Any how, our trip covered 75 days from June 9th to August 22. I filled the tank before we left and did so again when we came back.
Total distance traveled was 12,238 miles.
The Tundra burned a total of 1334.75 gallons of regular gasoline with an average cost of $3.05 per gallon.
(The price was highly inflated by the average of $4.32 per gallon paid in Canada and the average of $3.73 per gallon paid in Alaska. The rest of the USA we averaged $2.75 per gallon--and that includes the $3+ paid for five fill-ups in Washington, Oregon, and Idaho. [Idaho? It was Mountain Home. Oh.])
The cheapest gas was in Columbia, MO at $2.40 per gallon.
The most expensive was the $1.84 per LITER paid at Muncho Lake, BC. That works out to $9.77 per gallon. And that's Canadian. Sure am glad I only took enough to get to Toad River! Where it was "only" $1.36 per liter!

Those of you who have your calculators out will easily see that we averaged 9.4 miles per gallon. Not great you say? Remember that the Tundra was hauling a trailer with a gross vehicle weight of 7500 pounds for much of the time. only one or two days was the Tundra in use when it did not have the trailer attached long enough to require a tank of gas. In Colorado Springs, for instance, we got 18.6 mpg when going over the mountains to South Park for ballooning. Our total cost for fuel alone came out to approximately $0.37 per mile.

The Tundra took a couple of lumps. There area few paint chips here and there and, while we almost made it without a ding in the windshield, we did get one the size and shape of a nickel when passing through a construction zone on the east side of Boise, Idaho. It's just about an inch inside the passenger side of the truck and if you didn't know where to look.... There's probably an epoxy that can be applied to it to prevent spreading. If not...Hey! This is PA! Lots of cars and trucks on the road with cracks from side to side. And the insurance companies aren't reluctant to pay for the damaged windshield or two.

Then there's the trailer: It needed realignment in Edmonton. It needs a new slide out motor now. But it survived the bumps and thumps along the way pretty well. No flat tires. Only a few pieces of gravel slung up to ding the siding--and most of those were from the Tundra despite the mud flaps. It still needs a good cleaning inside and out, but it has been very, very good to us.

College Football: Week 1 OutlookTop 25s plus Opponents

Here we are at the start of the 2010 Collegiate Football season. Realignment of conferences and rumors of realignments, bust ups and dust ups abounded during the off season. Changes have been made but will not take effect quite yet. Still some teams will be playing their final year in their current conference and may be 1) picked upon by their PO’d conference members or 2) looking to prove how much better they are than their conference members. Either way, it could prove interesting for Nebraska and Boise State.

The Preseason Top 25 Polls are out as well and there’s some interesting things happening there too. So, without any further ado or commentary, I present the “experts’ opinion” as to who should be considered the elite teams here in the early going.

The three polls are the AP Top 25, the Coaches Poll, and the CBSSports.com. If a team is not listed in one or more of the three, I indicate such with an “NR” for “Not Ranked.” I also provide this week’s opponent for each of the ranked teams.

Getting onto this list is usually more difficult than getting into a White House reception without an invite, but this week, the folks at CBSSports must have been looking at unicorns or something. Just look at the number of teams they list in the Top 25 that neither the AP nor the Coaches polls have there. And then the CBSSports guys leave Oklahoma off altogether despite the #7 and #8 ranking by the AP and Coaches? Instead they’ve got Cincinnati up there while the other two do not even put the Bearcats in the Top 25.

Oh well. Once the whistles blows on Thursday night things will get considerably clearer I’m sure. Especially since everyone on the list is playing this weekend. Yeah, a lot of the games are the typical mismatches one usually finds in the first and second week of the season--games that will pad the win column of the teams that are looking toward that high ranking, but there are always the surprises and the upsets. And there are a few games that look to be really competitive (Boise State @ Virginia Tech, Pittsburgh @ Utah, and LSU @ North Carolina, for example) that make you believe the schedule maker fell asleep at the wheel.

1/1/1 Alabama The Tide will host San Jose State on Saturday night.
2/2/5 Ohio State The Buckeyes play host to Marshall on Thursday.
3/5/2 Boise State The Broncos travel to #10 Virginia Tech on Monday night.
4/3/3 Florida The Gators will host Miami (Ohio) on Saturday.
5/4/4 Texas The Longhorns will play at Rice Saturday afternoon.
6/7/6 TCU The Horned frogs host #24 Oregon State Saturday night.
7/8/NR Oklahoma The Sooners will host Utah State Saturday night.
8/9/16 Nebraska The Cornhuskers will host Western Kentucky Saturday night.
9/10/8 Iowa The Hawkeyes will host Eastern Illinois on Saturday afternoon.
10/6/11 Virginia Tech The Hokies will host Boise State on Monday night.
11/11/12 Oregon The Ducks host New Mexico on Saturday.
12/12/14 Wisconsin The Badgers play at UNLV late Saturday night.
13/13/17 Miami (Fla.) The Hurricane will host Florida A & M Thursday.
14/NR/21 Southern California The Trojans travel to Hawaii for a Thursday night game.
15/15/15 Pittsburgh The Panthers will travel west to face Utah Thursday night.
16/17/13 Georgia Tech The Yellow Jackets play host to South Carolina State on Saturday.
17/19/NR Arkansas The Razorbacks host Tennessee Tech Saturday night.
18/18/NR North Carolina The Tarheels will host #21 LSU Saturday night.
19/14/9 Penn State The Nittany Lions host Youngstown State on Saturday.
20/20/NR Florida State The Seminoles will host Samford on Saturday.
21/16/18 LSU The Tigers will play at #18 North Carolina Saturday night.
22/23/NR Auburn The Tigers will host Arkansas State Saturday night.
23/21/NR Georgia The Bulldogs host La.-Lafayette Saturday afternoon.
24/22/NR Oregon State The Beavers will be playing at #6 TCU Saturday night.
25/24/NR West Virginia The Mountaineers will host Coastal Carolina Saturday.
NR/24/19 Utah The Utes host the #15 Pitt Panthers Thursday.
NR/NR/7 Cincinnati The Bearcats will play at Fresno State late Saturday night.
NR/NR/10 Brigham Young The Cougars will host Washington on Saturday night.
NR/NR/20 Central Michigan The Chippewas will host Hampton on Thursday night.
NR/NR/22 Texas Tech The Red Raiders will host SMU Sunday afternoon.
NR/NR/23 Clemson The Tigers will host North Texas on Saturday afternoon.
NR/NR/24 Mississippi The Rebels will host Jacksonville State on Saturday.
NR/NR/25 Navy The Midshipmen play at Maryland on Monday afternoon.

The above list should get shorter as the season progresses. Why CBS Sports has such a divergence from the other two.... It's a mystery to me!

My Rutgers Scarlet Knight will be playing host to Norfolk State on Thursday night.

Let the games begin!

Sunday, August 29, 2010

The trailer is still parked over at Ives Run and I'm sleeping there every night. Meanwhile, Terry and the cats are staying at the Aerie. After 75 days (+ or -) of constantly being together, it's a little strange.

During the day we're at the Aerie (or out on bird walks) together...mostly. Terry's picked up with her girlfriends in the stitching clubs and has been out twice already at meetings. She's also reconnected with the ladies guild at the church (she's currently at a church picnic). I've had to move the trailer to a new site while going to get it inspected...alone. It's not difficult to do by myself--I've done it often enough--but after 75 days (+ or -) of having someone share the chores I find that I missed her assistance.

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When I come back to the Aerie, it seems to be to do some work about the place. Mowing the lawn, weed-whacking the edges, draining and refilling the cistern, etc. It would be nice to be able to just sit back and have little or nothing to do but that ain't gonna happen any time soon. I've still got a pile of wood that needs splitting--just as soon as I get down to Joe's to get the splitter back. Then the trailer needs to go north to get the slide out motor replaced. That's next Thursday's job. I'll just drop it off at Alpin Haus and they'll call me when it's done. Which will require another trip north to move the trailer to the Bolt Hole.

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When I take the trailer north on Thursday, I'll head up to the Bolt Hole for the holiday weekend. While there, I'll be doing some more firewood cutting and scouting about. Mark says there are few deer about the place and recommends we try to find a new place to hunt for a while. I'm leaning toward just forgetting about the NY season and concentrating my efforts on the PA Bow and rifle seasons.

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I'll have to return to the Aerie Monday night (which means fighting traffic just a little) since the Tundra has an appointment for bright and early Tuesday (September 7th) morning. It needs some TLC after hauling the trailer around for 12K miles--plus up north to Amsterdam.

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College football season starts this week. The Big East still lives and the eight schools in the conference should provide some exciting play this year. Everyone (with the possible exception of Syracuse and Louisville) should be competitive.

While Pittsburgh and West Virginia have some incredibly talented running backs in sophomore Dion Lewis and senior Noel Devine respectively, Rutgers sophomore QB Tom Savage and sophomore WR Mohamed Sanu should be able to light up the crowd. Coach Butch Jones will try to keep the fire alive at Cincinnati. And coaches Skip Holtz (1st year at South Florida) and Randy Edsall (UConn) will bring all they got to the table--and that's a lot of brain power! Hotlz is moving from East Carolina where the Pirates seemed to surprise an awful lot of folks on national TV. Every UConn loss last year seemed to be by 1 or 2 points. Edsall won't let that happen again. As for Louisville and Syracuse....can you say "rebuilding"...still. The Cardinals got embarrassed-often-last year. They may be able to use that this year--overconfident opponents, fired up players, etc. The Orange tried something different at QB last year using a former basketball player from a different university as their leader since they, frankly, didn't have any one ready to step in and had nothing to lose. It didn't work. Here's hoping they found someone as it's tough to play offense without a QB.

I've got to get my poll posts and match-up posts done but I'm not sure when I'll get them up. No wi-fi at the campground.