Here's my new house! After June my crew and I'll be starting an 8 day on, 6 day off schedule, so it made more sense for me to move in with others to save on rent. Now I'm only shellin' out 210 simoleons a month, so that's good.
It's got a porch in the back with sliding glass doors to get to the basement. Originally I was supposed to stay in the basement, but after some deft deal making (more like good fortune and one guy's generosity, actually) I came out with an actual room... haven't seen it yet, but I'm sure there are no spideys like in the basement! Eek!
Reminds me a lot of college, actually. I guess it's one of those things: throw a few guys together in a house that they can call "their own" and it usually starts to look something like this...
Can't complain about a wood burning stove, though.
Quality seating, too.
Down the street a coupla houses some person planted two giant redwoods... they're super beautiful trees.
OK so I've decided that because I'll be in the woods so much, I'd better start being able to provide for myself there. The natural first step is, of course, making a fire with some sticks. So I tried my hand at that the other day following some instructions in a book I got, and sure enough, you can actually do it!
Now I didn't start a full fire, but I got smoke and almost an ember... after that it's gravy. And that's after the first try... next time I'll have a roarin' blaze goin'.
I decided to use the bow drill technique, which requires two pieces of dry, dead softwood (cedar, in my case), and limber stick for the bow, some cordage also for the bow, and a stone (in my case a shot glass).
Also pretty cool, we got to do some more work on the coast... just clearing paths through the driftwood from the road access points.
And then another day this week we did some more trail work... I got a chance to slay this beast...
Maybe you're thinking, 'why is he standing on the downward side of this tree... won't it roll on him when he cuts it?'. Well, that would be true except there was major side tension on this particular log... see the tree I'm standing next to? It's pushing the fallen tree towards the camera, while the rest of the fallen tree downhill is being pulled by gravity (and a lot of weight) the other way. What that means is that as I cut, the tree is opening up away from me, and could very well have popped outwards because of all the pressure -- it did open up that way, but it never popped, thank goodness.
Happy Memorial Day!!
