This weeks news. Or, how not to haul lumber up a logging road

It’s been an interesting week up here on the mountain, my little slice of heaven.

I had made a grievous error while drawing up the plans for the second floor of my son’s cabin. I don’t normally draw anything out, since I can picture what something will look like and build it. But, this is a New England Saltbox style cabin, and I needed to see how the bedrooms would be laid out.  I drew everything up and showed it to my son and his wife; yet, I was troubled enough that it kept me awake that night.  The next day, though sleep-deprived, I figured out my screw up on the layout for my son’s cabin and made the appropriate changes.  When I was figuring the plan in my head, I had drawn everything up using the outside dimensions of the cabin, not the inside, which would have made the kids’ room about the size of a closet, that would not do.  I figured out how much more lumber we would need to finish the framing, and my son and I set off to purchase it.

Now, I had built a rack on the bed of my pickup for hauling the canoe, and maybe a few long pieces of lumber I might need for projects around here. It was never intended to haul much weight. We purchased 26- 2-ft x 6-ft x 20-ft timbers, and 11 more 2x6x16’s to finish the framing for the second floor. That’s quite a bit of weight.  We strapped everything down and headed home.

All went well until we began the climb up the old logging road towards the cabin. Things soon began to head south, as the saying goes.  About 3/4 of a mile up, the rear support, only made for the weight of the canoe, came crashing down and caused the bulk of the lumber to slide backwards at an accelerated rate; the longer pieces came to rest on the tailgate and road, while the shorter ones skidded down a bit further and came to rest some ten feet from the rear of the pickup.  We assessed the situation and decided to unload half of it right there, since it was already pretty much unloaded anyway. The rest we pushed as far forward as we could on the rack (no longer having the use of the rearmost support), tied everything down once again, and resumed the climb, a bit slower this time.

After many stops to push escaping lumber forward, we finally made it to the driveway into the lower building pad where Son’s cabin is being built. By this time, most of the lumber was hanging precariously balanced on just one support with a strap that was being stressed to its limit.  Well, as you can probably guess, the strap had had enough and parted ways, unloading the lumber right there in the driveway.  Luckily, I still had an old livestock rack that had fit my previous pickup but turned out to not fit the new one.  I had used it many times, in the past, for hauling lumber and other items too long for the bed of the pickup. It turned out, however, to fit Son’s pickup.  With a few minutes work (more like a half hour of cussing and much lifting), we had the rack secured to his truck bed, and back down the mountain we went to collect the remaining lumber.  From now on, my pickup’s rack is ONLY hauling a canoe and, maybe, a few (small) pieces of lumber.

Stress levels have been going through the roof with me. There are five adults living here; one is a good friend we are helping out of a bad situation, the others are myself, the lovely wife, my son, and my daughter-in-law.  Out of all of these adults, I am the only one that knows how to build, work on the pickups, repair the snowmobiles and get them ready for winter, plus a list of other things that need our attention before the snow flies again. There aren’t enough hours in the day, nor weeks in the summer, to get all this done, since rain has slowed us down on the building or any work outside, for that matter. My son, to his credit, is picking up the building concepts pretty fast, which is taking some of the load off of me, but he still requires some supervision. The lovely wife has offered to tear into our pickup (she figures she can do that much), let me fix what needs to be fixed, and let her figure out how to put everything back together. I’m not sure if that’s a good idea or not, but I will let her at least tear down what needs to be torn down, and I will take it from there. I’m not sure which frightens me more, the wife turning wrenches, or winter hitting before things are ready.  To top it all off, I have major dental surgery coming up next Friday, which will put me out of action for a few days.  With all of this, my already gray hair is turning a lovely shade of white.

Well, that’s all the news for the week. Bye for now. If I’m not six feet under by next weekend, I will post another update. If I am, well, the lovely wife will take over.