Bezabor: You gotta be kidding.... a cheese explosion! (posted from home)
Sunday, 11/13/05 - I must have spent longer awake through the night than I realized for I didn't wake until 0830. I made some instant oatmeal for breakfast and got on the road. I cruised the forest roads for a couple of hours, stopping at each of the overlooks to enjoy. Many of the forest roads were tight little double-track roads with drainage ditches on both sides so I was happy not to meet anyone coming the other way. I made my way down to the C&O Canal and stopped at Town Creek aqueduct for a short walk, then went over to Paw Paw, WV. I stopped at the Paw Paw tunnel parking lot but decided to wait until Labashi was along to go into the tunnel.... that gives me an excuse to come back.
It was only about 1200 but was clouding up fast so I decided to head home via Berkeley Springs. Labashi and I had enjoyed a soak in the public baths there last year and I thought I might have a soak but then decided it really wouldn't be much fun without her so I headed on home via back roads.
And now the weird thing. I was sitting in my chair watching some TV and having some olives (from the McConnellsburg Giant's olive bar!) and Easy Cheese on crackers. I accidently bumped the Easy Cheese can and it fell to the floor beside my chair and then rolled into the stairwell in our foyer. Upon landing, the Easy Cheese can started spurting-- strongly enough that it propelled the can backwards across the brand-new rug we just put there last week. The can emptied its entire contents onto the new rug before I could get there. Absolutely incredible-- an Easy-Cheese explosion!
Saturday, 11/12/05 - I took the weekend off to play. I took Mocha Joe to Green Ridge State Forest, near Flintstone, MD. Labashi and I had stopped there overnight years ago when returning from a vacation in West Virginia and I wanted to get a better look at this 44,000 acre forest. I had gotten a late start and didn't get to the State Forest office until 1300 so didn't want to spend a lot of time looking for a camping spot and I didn't want to just accept one at random. The nice lady at the office, Michelle, allowed me to register but not select a specific camping spot if I'd promise to call her back by cell phone by 1600 with my prospective choice of site. She told me to call before setting up, just in case someone else had selected that one in the meantime. She also gave me some hiking recommendations.
Michelle told me that the Twin Oaks trail could be combined with another trail to form a four-mile loop. That sounded about right for the remaining daylight so I headed up there, checking out the nearby campsites as I went. By the time I reached the trailhead.
My only problem was that the trail brochure said the four-mile hike would take four hours and there were only three hours of daylight left. But I've done enough hiking to know that I can pretty easily average two miles an hour hiking and I saw from the map that there was a bailout option--- about halfway through the hike the trail crossed the road I had used to reach the trailhead. If the trail was a lot tougher than anticipated I could bail early and just follow the dirt road back to Mocha Joe.
The trail was excellent. It progressed through mature oak and maples, all very open with no understory, into a transitional zone of mixed growth, through a pine plantation, through a managed-for-wildlife area, then down into a pretty little valley where I followed a streambed upstream along the bottomlands and then back up to mature oaks again. The end of the loop is the start of the Mid-State Trail into Pennsylvania; I've got to go back and do that another time. Well done, Green Ridge State Forest!
I camped in site #6 which had a nice open view of the sky and a level area big enough for Mocha Joe. I got supper going and split some firewood for a campfire as the sun set and a spectacular full moon took over. With my fire I was very comfortable as temperatures slowly dropped through through the fifities and into the forties.
By 2000 or so I was ready to go inside and I wanted to try my little Coleman catalytic heater. I had used the little Coleman years ago and had stored it away when we got the Portable Buddy heater. But the Buddy heater puts out 6000-9000 btu's and even the low setting is a little too much and on low it makes a little too much noise. So I thought the 3000-btu output of the Coleman might work. And that turned out to be the case. By bedtime the outside temp had dropped into the thirties but I was comfortable in shirtsleeves in Mocha Joe.
I woke about 0400 and saw that the moon had gone down. But I could still see the tree outlines outside. It was from starlight. Even through the tinted windows of the van I could see thousands of stars. I lay there watching for awhile before falling back asleep. The outside temp was 32 at that time and I woke an hour or so later and it had dropped to 27. But I was comfy under my sleeping bag.
Friday, 11/11/05- I spent today putting on the first coat of Drylok paint on the block wall. Before starting the actual painting, I fixed all the holes with Drylock Fast Lok, a cement-based filler. The painting went well and I used up about half of the five-gallon container of paint. I want to let this dry thoroughly between coats so will not start the second coat today. I finished up around 1400 and rode the motorcycle in to the plumbing supply to get a check valve for a pipe leading to our floor drain. We use that pipe for the dehumidifier to drain into and want to put the check-valve in place in case of another sewer backup. I've also blocked off the floor drain with a plug but am not fond of that solution in the long run. In our 24-plus years in this house we've had a washing machine malfunction and a water heater leak which were handled by the drain. Somehow I need to get a check-valve in the main sewer line.
Thursday, 11/10/05 - Today was another day of scraping carpet adhesive but I was able to finish up today. Fun, fun, fun.
Wednesday, 11/9/05 - Working on the basement today. I spent most of the day scraping up carpet adhesive left behind by the carpet removal process. I had been surprised that the wet carpet came up as easily as it did. I had simply slit the carpet into yard-wide strips using a utility knift, then used a large (about 8-inch) scraper we had bought some time ago in preparation for 'someday' replacing the carpet to cut through the foam carpet backing while lifting the carpet. But that left a fairly thick layer of adhesive on the floor.
I had found several recommendations for removing the adhesive on the internet and thought I'd try the one that made most sense to me, which was to spread a 50-50 mix of denatured alcohol and water over the adhesive and cover it with plastic for a while to allow the adhesive to soften. Then use a four-inch razor scraper (available in the ceramic tile or wallpaper section of the hardware store) to scrape up the adhesive. That actually worked fairly well. I would put down the alcohol-water mix on a section about the size of a large garbage bag and lay a heavy-duty garbage bag over it. I did four sections like this and let it sit about a half hour before starting. As I'd scrape a section and no longer need the bag, I'd put it down on a new section. Each bag-sized section took about a half hour to scrape.
Before starting the scraping job, I washed down the concrete block walls with an acid solution called Drylok Etch, to prepare for painting them with a Drylok latex paint. The treatment takes care of 'efflouresence', which looks salt crystals on the blocks. We had a few small patches of efflouresence, each only six inches or so across but while I was at it, I might as well do all the blocks. The acid had a pretty strong smell and would cause me to cough sometimes but I set up several fans to keep the air moving so it wasn't bad. The alternative was to use muriatic acid and I'm sure that would have been much worse. After washing down the walls I went back and sprayed them thoroughly with water from the hose and mopped that all up before turning to the scraping job.
Sunday, 11/13/05 - I must have spent longer awake through the night than I realized for I didn't wake until 0830. I made some instant oatmeal for breakfast and got on the road. I cruised the forest roads for a couple of hours, stopping at each of the overlooks to enjoy. Many of the forest roads were tight little double-track roads with drainage ditches on both sides so I was happy not to meet anyone coming the other way. I made my way down to the C&O Canal and stopped at Town Creek aqueduct for a short walk, then went over to Paw Paw, WV. I stopped at the Paw Paw tunnel parking lot but decided to wait until Labashi was along to go into the tunnel.... that gives me an excuse to come back.
It was only about 1200 but was clouding up fast so I decided to head home via Berkeley Springs. Labashi and I had enjoyed a soak in the public baths there last year and I thought I might have a soak but then decided it really wouldn't be much fun without her so I headed on home via back roads.
And now the weird thing. I was sitting in my chair watching some TV and having some olives (from the McConnellsburg Giant's olive bar!) and Easy Cheese on crackers. I accidently bumped the Easy Cheese can and it fell to the floor beside my chair and then rolled into the stairwell in our foyer. Upon landing, the Easy Cheese can started spurting-- strongly enough that it propelled the can backwards across the brand-new rug we just put there last week. The can emptied its entire contents onto the new rug before I could get there. Absolutely incredible-- an Easy-Cheese explosion!
Saturday, 11/12/05 - I took the weekend off to play. I took Mocha Joe to Green Ridge State Forest, near Flintstone, MD. Labashi and I had stopped there overnight years ago when returning from a vacation in West Virginia and I wanted to get a better look at this 44,000 acre forest. I had gotten a late start and didn't get to the State Forest office until 1300 so didn't want to spend a lot of time looking for a camping spot and I didn't want to just accept one at random. The nice lady at the office, Michelle, allowed me to register but not select a specific camping spot if I'd promise to call her back by cell phone by 1600 with my prospective choice of site. She told me to call before setting up, just in case someone else had selected that one in the meantime. She also gave me some hiking recommendations.
Michelle told me that the Twin Oaks trail could be combined with another trail to form a four-mile loop. That sounded about right for the remaining daylight so I headed up there, checking out the nearby campsites as I went. By the time I reached the trailhead.
My only problem was that the trail brochure said the four-mile hike would take four hours and there were only three hours of daylight left. But I've done enough hiking to know that I can pretty easily average two miles an hour hiking and I saw from the map that there was a bailout option--- about halfway through the hike the trail crossed the road I had used to reach the trailhead. If the trail was a lot tougher than anticipated I could bail early and just follow the dirt road back to Mocha Joe.
The trail was excellent. It progressed through mature oak and maples, all very open with no understory, into a transitional zone of mixed growth, through a pine plantation, through a managed-for-wildlife area, then down into a pretty little valley where I followed a streambed upstream along the bottomlands and then back up to mature oaks again. The end of the loop is the start of the Mid-State Trail into Pennsylvania; I've got to go back and do that another time. Well done, Green Ridge State Forest!
I camped in site #6 which had a nice open view of the sky and a level area big enough for Mocha Joe. I got supper going and split some firewood for a campfire as the sun set and a spectacular full moon took over. With my fire I was very comfortable as temperatures slowly dropped through through the fifities and into the forties.
By 2000 or so I was ready to go inside and I wanted to try my little Coleman catalytic heater. I had used the little Coleman years ago and had stored it away when we got the Portable Buddy heater. But the Buddy heater puts out 6000-9000 btu's and even the low setting is a little too much and on low it makes a little too much noise. So I thought the 3000-btu output of the Coleman might work. And that turned out to be the case. By bedtime the outside temp had dropped into the thirties but I was comfortable in shirtsleeves in Mocha Joe.
I woke about 0400 and saw that the moon had gone down. But I could still see the tree outlines outside. It was from starlight. Even through the tinted windows of the van I could see thousands of stars. I lay there watching for awhile before falling back asleep. The outside temp was 32 at that time and I woke an hour or so later and it had dropped to 27. But I was comfy under my sleeping bag.
Friday, 11/11/05- I spent today putting on the first coat of Drylok paint on the block wall. Before starting the actual painting, I fixed all the holes with Drylock Fast Lok, a cement-based filler. The painting went well and I used up about half of the five-gallon container of paint. I want to let this dry thoroughly between coats so will not start the second coat today. I finished up around 1400 and rode the motorcycle in to the plumbing supply to get a check valve for a pipe leading to our floor drain. We use that pipe for the dehumidifier to drain into and want to put the check-valve in place in case of another sewer backup. I've also blocked off the floor drain with a plug but am not fond of that solution in the long run. In our 24-plus years in this house we've had a washing machine malfunction and a water heater leak which were handled by the drain. Somehow I need to get a check-valve in the main sewer line.
Thursday, 11/10/05 - Today was another day of scraping carpet adhesive but I was able to finish up today. Fun, fun, fun.
Wednesday, 11/9/05 - Working on the basement today. I spent most of the day scraping up carpet adhesive left behind by the carpet removal process. I had been surprised that the wet carpet came up as easily as it did. I had simply slit the carpet into yard-wide strips using a utility knift, then used a large (about 8-inch) scraper we had bought some time ago in preparation for 'someday' replacing the carpet to cut through the foam carpet backing while lifting the carpet. But that left a fairly thick layer of adhesive on the floor.
I had found several recommendations for removing the adhesive on the internet and thought I'd try the one that made most sense to me, which was to spread a 50-50 mix of denatured alcohol and water over the adhesive and cover it with plastic for a while to allow the adhesive to soften. Then use a four-inch razor scraper (available in the ceramic tile or wallpaper section of the hardware store) to scrape up the adhesive. That actually worked fairly well. I would put down the alcohol-water mix on a section about the size of a large garbage bag and lay a heavy-duty garbage bag over it. I did four sections like this and let it sit about a half hour before starting. As I'd scrape a section and no longer need the bag, I'd put it down on a new section. Each bag-sized section took about a half hour to scrape.
Before starting the scraping job, I washed down the concrete block walls with an acid solution called Drylok Etch, to prepare for painting them with a Drylok latex paint. The treatment takes care of 'efflouresence', which looks salt crystals on the blocks. We had a few small patches of efflouresence, each only six inches or so across but while I was at it, I might as well do all the blocks. The acid had a pretty strong smell and would cause me to cough sometimes but I set up several fans to keep the air moving so it wasn't bad. The alternative was to use muriatic acid and I'm sure that would have been much worse. After washing down the walls I went back and sprayed them thoroughly with water from the hose and mopped that all up before turning to the scraping job.
posted by Bezabor&Labashi | 18:26
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