Stan’s Blog

It has been determined that the North 60 will host the 4orth on the 4th.   So be there.  Others will.

As part of the dry pond improvement project, Nick handed me a box of Grass Seed that he had swept off of a Home Gardening Floor from bags that had ripped open.   So I walked up and down the berm throwing out seed.   I was a little startled when I grabbed something soft and Fuzzy in the Seed Box.

If you cannot tell, it is a dried mouse.  Nick was amused.  He claims it was not there on purpose.

Hear Ye, Hear Ye! It is official, Big Ed was witnessed doing a catch and release of 3 different fish from the Dry Pond. Rejoice and bask in Ed’s glory, because he was the first, and must be acknowledged. There will be others. But, For this story to be complete, A frog must be caught there. And a snake or Snakes. And a Newt. And a Turtle.   Ducks and Geese must be seen cavorting. And maybe, just maybe, A deer, with sunlight glistening from its 23 point antlers must be seen drinking from the calm clear waters of the pond. Coyotes will be heard howling to each other across the waters. Someday, a skinny dipper will be spotted hiding behind the Island. Row Boats with couples singing to each other will skim in intricate patterns across the pond. And last, but not least, I look forward to having many many Dragonflies patrolling the waters and keeping us safe from mosquitoes. It has started. Let it Continue. I patiently await fulfillment.

It has been scheduled by none other that Brenda herself on the calendar . It is planned for May 1-5 with most of the activites on Saturday May 3. Currently it will have the Pot luck dinner followed by the raffle, most likely followed by music of some kind.

A Confirmed Rumour has it that Laura’s brother Bill will be setting up some kind of Tiki bar.  It will be near a water spot and there will be Flamingos, palm trees and Rum Punch. Deborah will be in some sort of Hula Outfit. It will be open on Saturday after 4pm and will not be serving Minors.

Let me know of any other plans.

Stan (I will be heading up either Wednesday nite or Thursday morning)

Sat April 19, The Dry Pond is Full. Bring your suits and your boats. Woo Hue.

The thing that we have been waiting for has finally happened. Nick and Ed Plugged the Hole today. If it rains real good, then we will be able to ride the Jet Ski’s for Spring Fling around the Island. I will provide updates as it fills.

The Next big project is to increase the frontage at the Cabin.

For Spring Break the TurnerClan went to the Lake house. Many Lizards were caught.  We lasso’d a snake and I pulled it out of its hidie place.  Then I let it poop all over Ryan. Anna helped to lasso a different snake the next day but failed to get it to come out of its hole.

One day, Nick took Brenda for a ride in his jet boat. While they were using the Electric trolling motor, the steering mechanism for it went out.   Once they came in, Eddie and Zack got Nick to agree to take them for a boat ride.  Nick decided that I had to go along to help.  As we were launching, I got Laura to hop on for the ride.  As we are heading for the No Wake zone, Nick informs us that he does not have much gas so we have to keep the ride short.  His gage is showing empty as we head out into the lake.  So Nick does a couple of high speed circles and then shoves the throttle forward.  The boat starts to accellerate then BAM!!  The boat stops accelerating and the engine revs.  Nick plays with the shifting system but the boat does not want to go anywhere.  Nick mumbles something about a Shear Pen snapping.  After about 30 seconds  of playing with things, the Overheat alarm starts to go off and Nick Kills the engine.  I inform Laura that this is bad.   I dig out a Paddle and start waving at a boat that is about 500 yards away.  It ignores me and speeds away.  We are about a half mile away from the dock with a very light wind blowing us towards the dock.

Nick goes to the front of the boat and drops the electric trolling motor.  He lays on his stomache on the bow and  reaches down to grab the trolling motor.  He tells me to sit on the front seat and push the trolling motor throttle button.  It starts up and we move.  Nick adjusts the motor with his hands so that we are sort of heading for the dock.   Eddie and Zack keep asking when we will make it back to the Lake House.  I notice that our course is drifting away from the dock.  The drifting keeps getting worse and Nick seems to be just lying there staring at the water.  I let him know and he looks up and re-adjusts the motor with his hands and we start heading back to the dock.   After a while we start drifting again and I let him know once we start heading back into the lake.   A couple more repetitions of this and the trolling motor suddenly stops.  Nick pulls it out of the water and starts disassembling it using his Leatherman.  We are about 200 yards outside of the No Wake poles and the water is WAY too cold for Laura to get out and start pulling us towards shore.  We dug up 4 paddles and Zack, Laura, Eddie and I start paddling for the Dock while Nick tries to get the Electric Trolling motor working.  The wind helps a little while I worry that Zack or Eddie are going to drop a paddle and we will have to go after it.  Nick eventually gives up and takes a paddle and tries to order us around to make us paddle properly.  I ignore him and paddle the way that I want to.  We make it back to the Dock and celebrate that our ordeal is over.  Yeah!

Just saw that there are high resolution-ish pictures of the Cabin area.  It includes pictures of the Dry pond, Jeff’s house and Betsy’s house under construction.   Google thinks that the Chicken coop is on Huffman Hollow Trail.  The race track on the North 60 is visible.

Even though he did not get to race his car in the finals he still got 3rd place for Show (For some reason the Scouts call it Concourse). The reason we probably did so well was that you get a couple extra points if you have a Scout theme on the car. So we had glued an old patch to it. Otherwise it was totally an Eddie design from how it was cut to the color scheme. Next year Eddie wants to make a car that will win both the Race and the Show prizes.

In our back yard, there was a pine tree that grew ThisClose to another tree. It died about 10 years ago and for the last 4 years has been leaning over more and more. So I decided that I needed to cut it down. I got my electric Chain saw plugged in and was working on cutting the wedge of wood from the tree so the tree would fall in the right spot. After some cutting, I saw the wedge break free from the tree, and I pulled the chainsaw out. The tree cracked and leaned over and pinched the wedge into its slot. The tree did not fall down. The wedge would not come out. I was bummed. I tried a crowbar on the wedge. I tried to knock it out with a sledge hammer and a long bar. The wedge was wedged. My tree felling instructions really wanted the wedge removed so that the tree would fall in the right direction when I did the cut on the back of the tree. So I started to cut at the wedge with the chainsaw. As I cut at it, the tree would make a little crack, I would step back with the chainsaw and the tree would not fall. This happened a couple of times so I cut at the wedge a little deeper. This time the tree did not warn me with a little crack noise when it shifted. It also pinched my chainsaw in the the slot with the wedge wedged on top of it with the whole tree on top of that. I was bummed. I yanked at it, wiggled it. It would not budge. If the tree fell now it might fold my chansaw bar right over. Which is why I did not go get my brand new Christmas chainsaw to try and rescue it. I went to my wood shop and got some long wood chisels and started chipping away the wedge above the chainsaw. I discovered that trying to watch the tree, the end of the chisel, the base of the chisel, the hammer and planning my escape route was too many things to watch and think about simultaneously. The end result of which was the hammer striking my hand a number of times. Like ouchie. After about 15 minutes of this. I was able to pull the chainsaw out. I decided to forget about the wedge and go for the backside cut. The tree fell right where I wanted it to. Yay! This little 3 minute adventure only took me about an hour and a half to complete along with a sore hand. I hope that all my future trees are much simpler.

Nick had a problem this morning. He heard a thumping about 6am and went to yell at Chris who wasn’t up yet. It was coming from the bathroom where Brenda was banging the trashcan on the floor because she was too weak to yell. And for some reason Brenda feels a need to lock the bathroom door at 6 in the morning. So anyway Nick has to go find the key to unlock the door and found her lying on the floor hugging the rug. According to the Appendicitis entry at Wikipedia, if she had an inflamed appendix which lies on the psoas muscle then the patient will lie with the right hip flexed for pain relief. She tells him to call 911. Nick takes her to the Hospital in one of his snow plow trucks with the lights flashing. The doctors there decide that she has broken her Appendix. So hers probably looked something like this. I don’t know much about what happened next but She underwent surgery and seems to have survived. She will be allowed to go home on Tuesday afternoon to experience all her post surgical pain. Nick has asked the Doctor to save the video of the operation. When he gets it, you will be able to watch it here. There is also a good chance that she will be able to take the little black piece of appendix finger home in a jar so they can display it over the new Television. That would be cool.

It is this Weekend, Jan 26th at the Cabin.  Only a balmy low of 26 so the creek might freeze.  Paul planned it but I don’t know if he will be there.  So Far I have a confirmed Bill, Holly and Allen (Hangs out with Hollers).  Bill might bring 2 others.  Nick will pass thru, might stay.  Big Ed has nothing better to do, but might not come anyway.  I plan to sleep under the stars or at least a tarp, No Laura maybe no Eddie.  Hoping for lots of Sno so I can try my Sno Fling.  So Come hang out.  Yo.

I was having a wonderful time playing Battlefield 2142 against other people on the Internet with my computer when I heard Laura start screaming from down stairs. I wasn’t sure what was up so I decided to go check it out. She kept screaming so I started moving a little faster. When I got to the stairs, she was still going strong and I heard the word “Fire”. I started moving a lot faster and almost fell down the stairs as I tried to figure out where she was. When I got to the kitchen, she said the Dryer was on fire and she handed me the fire extinguisher which was still in the box. I looked at the dryer and saw light coming from a crack in the front panel. I finished opening the box, took it out and pulled the pin. I could see the flames flickering from the crack and tried to pull the dryers front panel off. It would not come off. I stuck the nozzle of the extinguisher in the crack and discovered that the little lever on the back of the extinguisher does not make it do its thing. You have to push the lever on the top of it. After two shots into the crack, the flames went out and the laundry room was filled with smoke and fire extinguishing powder. It tastes funny. I ran downstairs, got my crowbar and tried to get the panel off. It wouldn’t come off. I had to dig up the instruction manual and finally got it off. The bottom of the inside of the dryer was covered with lint about 3/4 inch deep. The top layer was black from burning and there were spots where the flames had burned in much deeper. Insulation had melted from some wires underneath. We were lucky. When I went back to my computer game, the punkbuster part of the game had kicked me out of the game because I had stopped moving my character. I forgave the game.

Eddie, Laura and I worked very hard to win the Cubscout Wolves Pinewood derby race. I cut some wedges on the front of the car according to Eddies specification and some triangles on the back. I routed a hole to stick a Lego Star Wars Clone warrior to drive the car. I sanded the car and Laura and Eddie painted and stuck decals on it. I glued a Cub Scout patch in front of the Lego guy. Laura spent hours smoothing the wheel axles using the dremel and rouge polish. She rubbed graphite onto each axle and tested the spin of each wheel and rated the spins so that I would put the 2 that spun the best on the front of the car. I installed the wheels and axles so that all the wheels touched the ground at the same time and once everything was lined up, I locked the axles in place with a spot of epoxy. We got the weight to be just under the 5 oz by shaveing bits of lead from the weights and the official scales had to to re weigh us 3 times before they accepted the car. After all this work Eddie raced his car against other cars and proved that 4 other cars had worked even harder on making their cars faster than ours. Eddie’s car came in 5th out of 16. He was devastated. We told him that he would get a participation ribbon which he felt would not be as good as a trophy. Then came the “show” announcements. We did not pay much attention. They called the 3rd place, then the 2nd place. For First place, they called Eddie’s name. It was a big trophy. We had to keep telling him to go get it. Eddie did not understand that he could get a prize for best looking pinewood derby car. He did not get happy until they made him get up on stage with all the other winners with his trophy. He is trying to decide if he wants to go the regionals next month with his car. If he doesn’t get to race, he is not sure if he wants to go.

Eddie and I joined the Cub Scouts to sleep on the USS Torsk, a WW2 submarine that is set up as a Museum piece in the Inner Harbor at Baltimore. A group of kids and their parents sleeping in close quarters on tiny bunks stacked 3 high surrounded by metal. Originally I did want to attempt to sleep next to other loud snoring people. But I found out that ear plugs are actually rated by the amount of sound that they block. So I researched on the internet and found some that had a maximum sound blocking rating of 32. I ordered a bunch of them and put them to the test when Paul and I shared a Canvas tent at Cub world. Paul’s tree-rattling snores did not disturb me so I agreed to get sardined in the Sub for the ultimate snoring earplug test.

One feature that the submarine museum wanted the adults to experience was “Standing Watch” throughout the night to protect the Scouts from raiding pirates. We were to each pick an time during the night for our hour of standing watch. I drew 5 am. Other adults who drew 1,2,3 and 4 am wanted to trade with me but I figured I could handle 5 am.

I picked a middle bunk that had lots of space between me and the bunk above me. I ended up with a woman above me and another below me. Sounds great, but the whole experience left a lot to be desired. It turns out that I accidentally kicked the lady above me a couple of times but she did not retaliate. Another man did not pick as wisely. He complained in the morning that his nose kept touching the stainless steel bunk above him. He also said he did not get much sleep.

Something I discovered while attempting to sleep in the skinny little bunks on the submarine was that the bunks padding are covered by NaugaHide. I found out that after about 15 minutes of contact with bare skin the NaguaHide will begin to bond with human skin and it will strongly resist separating as it would yank on every exposed nerve in the skin that it had assimilated. Since I felt the need to turn over about every 20 minutes, I would notice an intense pain as the NaugaHide would separate from my skin. This tended to wake me up a little. But Not enough for me to want to worm my way out of the bunk and put on a shirt.

Each time I rolled over I kept anticpating that it had reached 5 am and I would be woken up to stand my watch. But it turns out that the lady who had 4 am did not wake me up. She felt that she could not get back to sleep so she did not wake me

The submarine captain lady had warned us that she would be waking us up at 6:30 am by sounding the Ah-oog-Ga horn. This had all the kids so freaked out that they all woke up at 6:15. When the horn went off, I was disapointed that it did not have a speaker in the sleeping quarters. So it was not all that loud, but I was awake anyway.

One of my favorite drinks is Sun Drop.  I got hooked on it at Lake Waccamaw, NC.  The only place I can find it up here in NOVA is at Food Lion.  While poking around I found an internet site which has various recipes which use Sun Drop. it is at Sun drop Recipes  Some day I will try the Broccoli Sundrop Soup It looks good.

Octoberfest 2007 occured on October 4,5,6,7, and 8th which was Columbus Day weekend the Monday of which was a Federal Holiday.   But only Big Ed and I stayed thru Monday.  Everybody else whimpped out.  We spent Sunday Evening burning leftover pot luck food and listening to the coyote yelping.

There were no significant injuries but some drunken 4Trakers were able to flip their bikes on the dry pond walls.   The mud pit got chewed up some and was able to trap every vehicle that tried to go thru it except for the bulldozer.

We celibrated Doug W’s 40th Birthday which was in September. There was a cake, It has cars on it.  It was good.

Eddie and I joined Anna’s Scouts at the cabin Saturday nite.  Eddie had a lot of fun and stayed up late playing Capture the Flag with the scouts.   Then we went to bed in our tent.   About 3 O’clock in the morning I heard an animal moving around the tent and since it was outside, I just listened to it a little bit and went back to sleep.   A little later, I heard another noise.    I opened my eyes and it’s pitch black, can’t see a thing.   I am still a bit sleepy and it seems that the animal is inside the tent.   I am trying to figure out how it got inside the tent when I realize that the animal is moving towards me in the dark.   I feel it start to climb on my air mattress,  I give a crazy yell to scare it and shove at it so that it flies across the tent.   Then it makes a noise that sounds like “Daddy, why did you push me off the bed?” It seems that Eddie decided to move from his air mattress to mine.  Oh well, no blood no foul.

Dear Cabin-Ites, I am posting this on behaf of Anna and Doug…

The Willards have invited Ryan and Eric’s Boy Scout troop to camp out at the cabin on Friday, Sept 21 - Sunday, Sept 23. They would appreciate it if 4 trackers rode away from the cabin area during that weekend. Theyplan on using the cabin area and having camp fires at night. The Boys Scouts have a no
alcohol and no smoking policy and we would appreciate your cooperation.
Please pass the word

Anna and Doug

On Memorial Day Weekend, A Motorcyclist was riding down the trail at the Farm House when he was attacked and thrown from his motorcycle by an element of Nature.   It slashed his face as it lifted him from his bike, viciously pulled him into the air and smashed him into the ground.   His collarbone was shattered and required surgery and he also sustained a broken ankle.   Doug W. helped drag his damaged body out of the woods to the road where Fire and Rescue personnel took him to the hospital.   There they surgically removed his very expensive motocross body armor.   His boots were saved tho, because they removed them before Doug arrived.   Due to the nature of his wounds it was necessary to evacuate him to a Fairfax Hospital where his collarbone was reconstructed and somewhere along the way his face was stitched up.   The ankle only got a soft cast.

In other words a,

Vicious vegetative verdant Vino Vine violently vaulted a valiant vanguard who Vacated and vamoosed from his Vehicle with vehemence and velocity leaving the victim a vestige of his vivaciousness.

Today I had to drive my car into a secure Government Facility. When I showed my ID to the guard, he commented to me that something very special just happened. So I asked him what and he said that 3 out of the previous 4 cars ahead of me were driven by a “Turner”. My immediate thought was to make a joke about the counterfeiting equipment getting stuck on the last name. But considering where I was, I felt it would not lead to him laughing at the joke. Then he showed me his badge and his last name was “Turner” also. So I just said “Wow what a coincidence!”, congratulated him on his name and drove in.