March 4

This will be short. If you've had a bad day, read on - you may feel better since I probably had a worse day then you. If you've had a good day, skip this so I don't ruin the rest of your day. Don't worry, I don't have the new pictures I promised in the last post. That will wait till next week.

Today's trip to Anza had been delayed repeatedly over the last two weeks, mostly due to weather. I had the van pretty loaded up for today's trip: 18 2"x4"s, five pieces of 4'X8' sheet rock, a pocket door frame, a pocket door, 3 cases of ceiling tiles, plus all the tools I needed. All of this was to divide the warm room into a control area/TV room and a separate sleeping area and to replace the old ceiling tiles I ripped down ages ago.

I had some trepidation because I heard the dirt road to the site had taken some hits with the last rains. Under normal conditions the van barely has enough clearance; today it was even less with the load I had.

The road was eroded in a few places but had been repaired better than before in others. Despite the improved areas, the normal ten minute dirt road ride took over 30 minutes. Here's a pic of the road with one of the deeper eroded ruts:

The final approach to our site was in the worst shape. Some of those ruts are over a foot deep. The entrance to our site is just past the fence on the right.

The weather had changed quite a bit from the coast - from warm and sunny to cool, cloudy, and damp. A good thing was that even though it had rained quite a bit recently, the warm room was dry as a result of the new door and weep holes we drilled several weeks ago.

I had everything unloaded and in the observatory by 9:30. I should have easily been able to frame out the wall and door, put up the sheet rock, and hung the ceiling tiles by dinner time - not to be. The gods needed to be amused.

I opened up the pocket door kit to start to review the assembly directions. I couldn't find the bag of hardware for the assembly. The packing box had not been tampered with but there was no bag in the van or the observatory. I was stuck before I could do anything. The nearest Lowes was over 35 miles away; the one that I bought it at was over 90. That pretty much killed any hope of construction for the day. I resigned myself to rectifying the problem and trying again next week.

I got home by noon, got my Lowes receipt and headed to the store. The manager became very understanding once everyone in the store could hear of my problem and the wasted day. He reimbursed me $50 of the $60 cost of the door. So I made $50 for half a day's work minus the gas.

I'll try again next week and will hopefully have a happier story to tell.