Mark's Off Road Warehouse Fire Thread (6 Viewers)

[myquestoyota]

Ah yes, spent four days in Fairbanks the first weekend in June and had forgotten how much the daylight affects your sleep patterns. Landed at 10:30 PM and the sun had not set yet. Stayed up every evening way past bedtime into the wee hours not realizing it was 2AM. Took a bit after returning to adjust. Never even noticed it as a kid. Safe travels.

 

[HENDOG]

As the Boys at the Firehouse would say "Ya Can't Make This Stuff Up!"

Sounds like you need a vacation from your Vacation---But man what a trip! Proud of ya. Ain't them mountains something? You have only scratched the surface of ALASKA, if that. Wait till you drive up---LOL.

 

[HENDOG]

Took 10 plus days to weld and repair the trailer!!!

 

[myquestoyota]

We drove the highway several times in the early 60's when you needed at least two spare tires and lots of time. Over time they fixed the road and now it's a pleasure, if you're not in a hurry..

 

[HENDOG]

Define Pleasure???

 

[myquestoyota]

Well, I did have to walk 10 miles back in '75 to find a wheel bearing but the last time we took the Cassiar highway without a glitch in a '72 Chevy. That was in '95. Slow down man, you're tearing s*** up. Now let's get off of Mark's thread.

 

[65swb45]

So when we got to Ketchikan, we had our own special welcoming committee!

 

[myquestoyota]

Bears?

 

[65swb45]

Bears?

Full flack jacket Border Patrol!

I guess one look at my passport picture was enough to profile us!

The guy had to take a special ferry over from town just to see us. Apparently border patrol doesn't keep an office or personnel on hand at the airport. Just send them over for "special occasions." We chatted a little bit, then went into the terminal for some lunch. We didn't have time for a ferry into town, as we had a dinner date in Haines.

Now this is telling. In the five years I've known Wayne, I've never picked up on the fact that he has dietary restrictions.
I ordered a grilled sandwich; he ordered the same. Later in Haines we went out for pizza with our hosts. He had pizza. Then he suffered all night. And still the proverbial penny did not drop.

 

[65swb45]

Our hosts in Haines are part time desert dwellers, living half a year in the West Mojave (which is where we know them from) and half a year in Haines. He is a local tour guide, award-winning photographer, and webmaster of the. Desert forum devoted to the Saline Warm Springs, the 'glue' that holds our desert tribe together. I am their ad hoc legal counsel.

Tom and Carolyn built themselves a magnificent lakefront house overlooking the Rainbow glacier. There we spent three wonderful days and two regretfully short nights before pushing off for the small, land-locked fishing village of Cordova.

A picture of Tom, in his pot at the end of the rainbow.

 

[65swb45]

We went on a nature walk that Tom takes the cruise ship tourists on (the newly wed, the over-fed and the nearly dead). Not bad pics for a cellphone.

 

[65swb45]

We left Haines on Thursday for the sleepy coastal fishing village of Cordova. This proved to be one of the biggest highlights of the trip. The 'airport' was a gravel strip separating one of the roads out of town from the town's lake. Needless to say, tight quarters. We literally stopped the plane in the road and pushed it back into a parking spot across from the landing strip and lake. The view was magnificent...when it wasn't raining (which it mostly was)

 

[65swb45]

We set up our tents under the wing of the airplane to help with the more or less constant rain. During a calm I put out my guitar for fun, daydreaming that I would make a sign that said "Will play for fuel!"

 

[65swb45]

Now here's an interesting story.

We walked down to the dock and had dinner in a restaurant overlooking the harbor. While I was in the restroom my buddy struck up a conversation with a young mother with an infant, who was hanging out in the corner of the restaurant with a few young people. She was waiting for her husband, one of the local fishermen, to return from the Sound for the evening. She eventually came over and sat with us. I didn't think too much of it at the time; just pleasant conversation, a young woman humoring a couple of old men.

The next day Wayne offhandedly said to me, 'Mark, we've been in Alaska for five days now and haven't had any fish yet.' I smiled. I then told him that years ago I had learned of a saying amongst the Alaskan native peoples: you do not hunt a whale, you receive a whale. So I told him not to worry about it; we didn't need to go looking for fish. When the time was right, we would receive fish.

An hour later the young woman whom we had chatted with the night before pulled up to the airplane in her truck, rolled down her window, and handed us a jar of smoked salmon! Wayne's jaw hit the ground. Then she offered us an invitation to her parent's house for dinner! And of course dinner consisted of every kind of seafood that could be caught locally.

Wayne will never doubt me again.

 

[HENDOG]

It's a magical place!!!!

 

[65swb45]

Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

I spent some time at the beginning of May teaching my son how to stucco, a trade I learned when I was 17. After a couple of days on some lo-vis sections, I turned him loose on the two walls of the house/office that I had had sandblasted in March. The results were not exactly uniform in texture or depth, but they were good enough for an office in an industrial neighborhood. More importantly, I was able to delegate something. I stuck to drywall tape and mud while he labored away in the summer sun, finishing by June 1 so he could leave for his summer job.

I started coming in before sunrise a week ago to start painting the house before it got too hot each day. A simple 4" paint brush and two ladders worked for the majority of the work. Not as happy with the materials as with the labor. Paint used to be much better at adhering, not just making a seal. But again, done is good.

 

[65swb45]

Once it's too hot to work outdoors, into the offices. Rounding the final corners on mud and sanding. Anyone who's done it knows that blending new to old is harder than all new construction. The transition pockets that were the closets between the two bedrooms took a lot longer than the two rooms themselves.

 

[65swb45]

Today is a special day. It is the one year anniversary of the fire. There is much to reflect on. As when Sacha died 12 years ago, there have been those who stepped forwards, those who feigned support, and those who made themselves scarce. Lip service support will never go out of style.

I have to give a special thanks to people like @DSB345 and @SW20 whose orders helped me pay my bills while I started the ongoing overhaul of my operations, as well as to @thebigredrocker , @Spike Strip,@tls3601, @pngunme, @JohnnyC , @Coolerman and @gator25 for keeping my name out there in the mix of options for parts purchases. I am still at least six months out on finishing the new office, moving in, demo-ing the old one and installing the rest of the pallet racks. I realize that I am very fortunate to be the master of my destiny. Most days I just live by the phrase 'yo soy trabajador: I am a worker.'

Back to plastering.

 

[65swb45]

Meanwhile...back in Alaska!

Word travels quickly in small towns. Once word got out that we had dined with one of the first families, other invitations followed. Our next engagement raised a few eyebrows, as we agreed to join an impromptu bbq with a gentle giant by the name of Gus, who runs one of the tenders in the Sound when he's not flying his own Cub.
We went off into the National Forest (where apparently ALL the mosquitoes in that part of Alaska congregate!) for a fish fry with a dozen or so college age, pot-smoking, guitar-playing misfits, thereby squandering all our newly-earned credibility.

NOT!

We will never forget Billy, a prototypical mesomorph with a strong back and apparently a stronger liver who once appropriately lubricated tried to pick up on every woman in the group, including a lesbian.

She handily rebuffed him by saying "Lets find us some twins!"

 

[65swb45]

My wife and I worked through the weekend together doing one last round of putty and putting down the first coat of paint. While the mind-numbing work of putty and sanding left me with a kind of white-blindness, the coat of paint showed me every spot I missed...and know I will have to look at for the next 10 years or so, unless I fix it NOW.

I could try once again to fool myself and tell myself I can circle back to this stuff later, but those 'somedays ' never come. The current office that I threw together 27 years ago is proof of that: only half painted, all the windows rough-framed. So the big question is whether I push on, or succumb to latent perfectionist tendencies while business continues to suffer.

Anyhow, so far, so good:

At least I framed the windows this time!