Monday we worked some more on the dugouts at Pine River Backus School. It was a pretty mellow day, as far as masonry goes, which means it was still a fair amount of lifting heavy blocks up rather high.
Tuesday, on the other hand was a hard day. Nathan had told me we would be building concrete forms and pouring a footing in Walker. That was true. What else was true that I didn't learn till the building we were working next to had thick dust billowing from within was that we were also the demolition crew for a day. Now here I must say I had the really good fortune to not pick up a sledge hammer, maul, or any other implement of destruction the entire day. A cement block wall was smashed out by hand, and I took zero swings at it, THANK GOODNESS!!! They took one look at my arms, my biceps about a quarter the circumference of a normal mason's wrists, and assigned me to bucket brigade. My duty was to haul five gallon sized buckets full of broken concrete pieces out to the trailer, hoist them up about shoulder height, and dump them over. The professionals had the buckets filled faster than I could dump them, so I made many trips back and forth to put a wall in a dump trailer. We stopped at a weigh station on the way home and the trailer tipped in at 60 trillion pounds. It had really good tires on it. Somehow, my arms didn't fall off.
Here you can see the trench and foundation footing form we worked on early before Nathan tricked me into real work. The soil here was the sandiest I've ever seen; it was just like beach sand at the ocean in Northern California!
Today, Wednesday, I took a day off from masonry to do some very important business (I slept in). Once I'd taken care of sawing all those logs, I headed up to Bemidji with Paul to begin the process of getting electricity to my cabin. I spent $50 to become a member of the local electricity co-op, another $350 for the wires to be installed underground from the road to my cabin, and $300 more for the meter base, interior breaker panel, exterior sub-panel (to use while I build), and an exterior outlet in an enclosed box. It felt hugely successful! Once again, business in Bemidji was totally painless. I have an appointment on Tuesday to meet a guy at my lot who will stake out the route the power cables will be buried in the ground. Then it will be about two weeks till they come out and actually do the job. In the meantime, the excavator says my basement will be dug by Friday and Nathan says he'll build forms for the footing on Saturday. Then Joel and I will be there when the concrete truck arrives which hopefully will be Tuesday or Wednesday.
Besides the electricity business, Paul and I each made a purchase while in Bemidji. He took me to a place called the ReStore which is a used materials outlet that benefits the building project Habitat for Humanity. I scored a really cool retro light fixture for 10 bucks. Paul says it's totally authentic and looks just as ugly as that stuff people had when he was a kid in the early seventies. Picture to follow soon. They had tons of great house stuff for so cheap! I almost bought a tub/shower combo and bathroom sink, but figured it was a bit premature. Not to be outdone by my groovy bathroom luminary, Paul bought a brand new riding lawnmower for more than I spent on my bicycle, but less than my truck cost. It's a really nice machine and he's a guy with a whole lotta lawn. He began mowing 4 seconds after we arrived in Becida and was done with his whole yard like 6 minutes later with a smile on his face. Picture to follow on that one too I think :-)
After we got all our errands done, I got to have a little visit with Curt and met his wife who will be here from Florida for a few weeks. Tonight we are staying in Becida, and tomorrow Paul will drop me off in Walker to work with Nathan again at the construction/demolition site. If I survive that, I'll spend Friday helping the new preacher of the Nazarene church in Backus move into his new house. I'll keep ya posted...
I think that is a good call on the basement. Double the square footage and a place to hide from a passing tornado. I have really enjoyed your blog so far. Reading it to grandma and grandpa was fun too. They loved it.
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