(written on the 28th)
In anticipation of the house building efforts that were going to be taking place this morning, we had parked Rover at the end of the horse pasture, so as not to be in the way of the equipment when it came.
I can’t really remember what was going on the rest of the morning before Hans came to see if I wanted to go with him to town. They needed to brace the exterior walls, and so he needed to go to town to pick up some wood and invited me along.
So I went with him to town, only to find that the lumber yard that was supposed to be open was actually closed for inventory. 😬
I scrambled to try and find some wood for sale privately by somebody on Facebook Marketplace, by chance, but that was a no-go, so I offered to drive to Rapid City (roughly an hour away) To pick up lumber, so Hans could stay working on the house with the contractor.
So I hopped in there little Volkswagen… wagon 🙃 And drove to Rapid City, trying to do some Journal catch up by dictating as I drove.
I got to the lumber yard about 20 minutes before they closed, and so I had about 15 minutes to pick out 20 boards and get them loaded up before they closed their gates.
Unfortunately, the wood that was left in the stack was some of the worst wood, I think. People having already gone through it to choose the best stuff, and there were only two or three layers left at the bottom out of what I think was probably about a 20 layer stack originally.
Hard enough for me to pick good wood already, being the perfectionist that I am. Even harder when I’m doing it for someone else and want to make sure it’s the very bestest of the bestest, but there wasn’t time for that, and my sister was telling me to make sure I wasn’t too much of a perfectionist and picking the wood. 😅
So I went through it and did the best I could, with the employee helping me go through it to find straight stuff. I didn’t actually see any of the stuff that he picked out, but when he asked me about one particular board to see if I thought it was okay, it was, so I think he probably did a pretty good job at choosing wood.
🤞
The biggest challenge was yet to come. I had to figure out how to secure all of the wood to the top of the Volkswagen Jetta. It had a roof rack, but the only thing I had to secure it with was three pieces of rope.
I used the two shorter pieces of rope that Hans had pre-tied To sort of cinch the stack of boards down onto the roof rack, but that wasn’t going to be anywhere near sufficient, as wind resistance would easily push all the boards out.
I had forgotten to bring the knife with me to cut the rope for making additional tying and lashing jobs, so I had like one 30- or 40-ft piece of rope left to do everything else.
😅
Seeing how easily the wind would just blow the boards out from underneath the ropes that I had already secured, My first priority was to find a way to stop the wind from being able to blow against the boards. I saw that my sister had a piece of carpet in the rear of her wagon covering the floor of the hatch area, so I grab that piece of carpet, folded it over the front end of the wood pile, so all the wind would be blowing against the piece of carpet and not against any individual boards.
Then I lashed that piece of carpet on so it couldn’t move, and then proceeded to wind the long piece of rope in and out and around all the other boards, tying little knot along the way and cinching everything down super tight.
It was… an adventure. 🙃
I finished the journal entry I was working on on the way home, I think, and gratefully, I made it all the way home without any issues. No wood flying around on the freeway. It didn’t even really budge, I don’t think.
🎉
After that, I was pretty much done. I don’t know what was with me, but I wasn’t useful or helpful in any way. I just sort of sat like a bump on a chair watching the BYU football game. 😅
My mom and sister were out doing a massive amount of laundry, both ours and theirs. 🙏🙏🙏
And they came back with both the laundry and dinner, which is really nice.
I got little John taken care of–emptied out, rebagged, and got the wood chips bucket refilled.
Once again, we just sat around eating and talking until it was time for all of us to crash for the night.
Another day in the books, and grateful, they were able to make good progress on the house!
Lift the world.
~ stephen
Lift the World 