Hornby Update

Rachelle was busy making work for the huge Circle Craft Christmas Sale in November so I loaded up the truck and headed off to Hornby Island. I took a vacation day on Friday and headed out on the last ferry on Thursday night. As is often the case, BC Ferries messed me around and I didn't get in to Darrel's place in Parksville until 12:30AM.

Friday morning I got underway fairly early and noticed that the truck was hesitating at highway speeds. I'm thinking it's a clogged fuel filter but I was able to get to Hornby without too much anxiety and was standing on our land at 10AM. I spent the rest of the building some shelves in the bathroom for the laminate flooring and fixing the toilet.

They shipped us a new part to replace the non-working one that originally came with the unit. Unfortunatly, our rig is black and the unit that they shipped was white, fit poorly and STILL didn't work. I was able to nail down the problem to a poorly crimped wire and eventually got the thing running. Before I seal the whole thing in place, I'm going to try putting the black one back on and see if it fits better.

When that was all done I used up the remaining daylight by going for an excellent ride on my mountain bike. The trails on Hornby are soooooo buff that you can't help but hoot and holler the whole way down!

Back at the cabin dusk hit and I realized that I was alone. Rachelle wasn't there to sit on the deck and eat dinner with me or enjoy a drink. I realized that our place and dreams on Hornby are a shared experience and isn't complete without the other. It just wasn't the same. So I went to the bar and watched the Canucks game and a great jazz band.

The other 2 days were spent bucking up the recently felled trees into millable lengths, straightening up some scattered lumber, screwing up the chainsaw, and unsuccessfully attempting to dig out some stumps. I also completed a surprise project that I'm going to spring on Rachelle the next time we go up.

Nights were pretty cold and damp. It's now very clear to me that the next job is to install the vapor barrier, insulation and wallboard. Then we can get one of those electricly heated oil reservoirs to provide a bit of heat and keep things dry when we're not there.