Special announcement

As many of you know, I wrote a book. 

And then rewrote it, and rewrote it.  I'm on around the fifth or sixth rewrite now with help from my friends over at Scribophile. 

I'm actually going to release it.  I hope to have it out by my birthday (November), so start saving now.  The list price will probably be in the $4 range. You can probably save that much between then and now. 

But that's old news.  The BIG NEW NEWS is this:

I had award-winning artist Russ Thornton create me a book cover and I think it came out fan-freaking-tastic.

Ready?

OMG, how awesome is that.

I know, right?

So cool. 

Save your money, seriously.  You have to buy it. 

Rainier day.

Mom leaves us tomorrow.

Booo.

Can I get everyone out there to say, "Move up here with us mom!"?

Not today anyway. 

We have subjected her to enough construction and destruction. It was high time for a little pretty.  We woke up early, for us, and set our sights on Mt. Rainier. 

It started off as a beautiful day.

Kautz Creek viewpoint.

The mountain was out and everybody was happy.

The boys got to romp around on some rocks and we all enjoyed the pretty views.  It was a little crowded and one young-ish guy was throwing rocks down into the creek a little closer than I would have liked, but it was okay.

Yes, there were mushrooms.

Ah, zoom lens, I've missed you.

Then we drove on hoping to reach Paradise.

And we did.  Eventually.

First, traffic.

Lots of traffic.

They were working on the road and guiding groups of cars through with a pilot car. We sat for a little over half an hour.  But, hey... Rainier is snowed in during the winter. They have to work on the road sometime.  We finished the drive up to Paradise.  The first parking lot was full, so we drove on to the short term parking lot and it was full, so we drove past that and tried to find a spot alongside the road, but there weren't any for the first half mile or so.  But, we passed this pretty little waterfall, so we got out and took pictures.

Cute little road-side waterfall.

Yeah, this is happening.  BAM.  Long exposure.

Michael and Max found a snow field for some mid July play in the snow.

Then we rotated through the loop and tried again to find a parking spot within the same area code as the visitor's center.

Nope.

After a full circle, we ended up two car-lengths farther away. I dropped everyone else off at the visitor's center and started the hike back up.

Cars

More cars and people who sometimes slow down passing pedestrians

Rainier was going into hiding

And there were more cars. 

I rejoined the family for a meal of low quality, high priced food and then shouldered our way past everyone else in the Pacific Northwest. This is Thursday. Yeah, it wasn't what I was hoping for.

Humanity was all over the place.

People and cars and... this isn't what I want when I go to the mountains.

Screw traffic, I want to go backpacking again.

If you look close, you can see the line of cars along the road.

If this had been my primary experience in mountain environments, I wouldn't want to go back. By the time we left Paradise, I was done. Just done. 

Sarah decided to drive.  She provided one more stop at Narada Falls because, waterfalls.

It was worth the trip.

Hey, wait! Is that water falling over a precipice? I love that!

Nana and the boys all smiles.

Oh yeah, you can feel it can't you?

Long exposure. Stone bridge, waterfall, rainbow.  I'm killing it over here!

It's amazing the difference a beautiful waterfall makes.  The sound alone will change my whole mood.

Happier, we made our way back to the car. The boys needed some hijinks to finish it off. 

Maxie hobbit.

Found some cauliflower fungus.

It was a great day. Tomorrow, we let mom escape home. We miss her already.

Hurry back mom, we'll have your house ready soon.

Clap along if you feel like happiness is the truth

Come on get happy!

Yeah, I'm, stealing Pharrell Williams song.

I had a conversation with a co-worker who had read the blog.

"Man, I've been reading the blog. It sounds like you are having a terrible time."

I was stunned for just a second. Terrible time? Me? Couldn't be further from the truth.

I suppose, looking at it objectively, it could appear that way. I mean, we are finding mold and rot and decrepit crap everywhere. The amount of work required seems to grow the more work we do. It's like some perpetual problem creation machine.

Isn't that cool?

Lemme try to explain.

One of the great things about traveling, aside from gorgeous scenery and meeting cool people, is challenge. I mean, everything is new all the time. There is no regular grocery store, gas station, nothing. You can't go on auto pilot. You have to be engaged, in the moment, and figuring things out as you go, all the time. There are lots of moving parts. We had to deal with the RV, the kids, my schedule, planning trips, budgeting for trips, finding RV parks and all while taking care of the myriad number of things that go wrong in any given day.

Being a traveler means being immersed in your life. Very few, if any, things are done without purpose and thought. Your life isn't led by accident. Sure, beautiful Serendipity comes along and surprises you with something awesome from time to time (as does her cousin Chaos) but you recognize those moments more clearly, I think, because you are so engaged and in the moment of your day-to-day life.

Sarah and I looked at a few houses that were essentially finished. Take the keys, move in and get comfy.

No way.

This house, with all of its faults and projects, requires effort. It requires constant thought and engagement. I've learned so much in just the first what, three weeks, that it is amazing to me.  I always feel like I'm learning and growing more capable as a person. Just like traveling.

So, am I tired? Oh heck yeah? Is there stress? Definitely. But, I am not having a terrible time. Far from it.

I'm like a kid with a real life erector set and it's cool.

I know there will be days when all of this seems overwhelming and I will just want to set fire to the place and be done with it, but not now.  I'm not naive. So I'm squeezing every ounce of enjoyment and enthusiasm out of this I can. And when it gets rough, I'll pull out my ace.

All of this is for me and my family.

Instead of working hard to put money in someone else's pocket, what we do here is for us. It will be done our way, by us, because we thought about it and decided we wanted to.

How cool is that?

If I get any busier, I'll be like Sarah.

We interrupt our regularly scheduled demolition

A brief interlude:

A problem was creeping up on us. 

We have a dog.  His name is Satchel and he is a wonderful pooch. 

Poor guy, look at his owner.

We have subjected him to this travel lifestyle for half his life.  Unfortunately, time is catching up to him.  The stairs leading up to the RV are pretty steep for an old dog. 

There has to be a better way dad!

He used to bound up and down like it was nothing, but alas, no more.  He was getting really reluctant.  He even fell once or twice trying to get up and something needed to be done.

So, I decided to take my newly discovered handyman confidence and put it to a real test. 

I calculated and measured and even drew lines!

This Old House is brought to you by Crocs. Crocs, the shoe choice of professional carpenters everywhere.

It is taking shape.

I did it. I have a weird shaped piece of wood.

There was some assembly required. And of course, another trip to the lumber yard. Math is hard. 

I didn't do the calculations to see how many steps I would need until after I already bought the first round of wood.  Oops.

Kids!  It's not a spaceship! OK, so it's kind of a cool spaceship.

I nailed everything together, then added a few wood screws just to keep things from backing out and then...

Holy cow.

I know, right!  Listen, I'm as surprised as anyone. Carpentry and whatnot has never been a strong point of mine. This was supposed to be an abject failure. This was all supposed to come crashing down.  Somehow it all went together and worked.

Oh yeah, Satchel won't use it.

There it is...there's that sweet, sweet, failure I'm looking for.

Yup, it terrifies him.  He stands at the top and shakes.  We even put non-skid strips on it to make the footing better but, he still won't use it.  We are going on about five hours now, since I put it up. I am hoping the fear of peeing in the house will outweigh the fear of the stairs and he will use them.

Sigh... I try so hard.

Oh yeah, I added a new door to the back bathroom. 

I had to demolish something.

What to do?

Before we got too far into today's adventure, I want to play a little game.Do you remember those puzzles in the Highlights magazines when you were a kid where they showed you two pictures and you had to pick out the differences between them?

Well, let's try one.

Take your time.

Before...

Did you guess a box of contractor bags?

We pulled down the row of hanging cabinets and it really seems to open things up.

Now, back to our horror show.

When last we left, the back bathroom looked like this...

Yeah, gross, but better than it was.

Having already ripped up some flooring in this place, I knew how this was going to go.  The linoleum was put down first and then the shower surround and cabinets were put in over that.  There is no way the sub floor under that tub isn't rotten, so it had to come out.

First, we had to deal with the water supply lines.

Note the conspicuous lack of shutoff valves.

This obviously wasn't designed to be worked on.  There was no access door and there were no shutoff valves. one way or another we were going to be without water for a while.  Seemed pretty obvious to me that I needed to run to the hardware store.

Since we are wrecking things...

Sawed off the hoses and cleaned them up with the utility knife.  Then it was time for...

That's better.  I'm going to use pex tubing up to the fixtures.

Now we could get to work tearing out that shower surround so we could rip up some floor.

Easy, right?

Yeah, right.

We got to work and pulled off all the trim around the shower. We saved it to put back on if we so choose.  Then we started pulling out the screws holding the shower in place.  It was weird because some of the screws were square drive and some were bolt head and I had to have a ratchet.  And, several of the screws were driven into the drywall alone and wouldn't back out.  I found a neat way to get those out.

The flat pry bar wouldn't just pull them out, but it gave enough pressure to use the screwdriver.

We finally got all the finishing nails and screws out and everything was nice and loose.

All we had to do was yank it out, right?

Take a look and see if you can figure out the problem.

That thing was wedged in there tight.  They must have put that in there before they even finished the walls.  The narrowest angle of the shower is two inches wider than the doorway with the door off. We might be able to get it out, presuming we could turn it sideways and get it past the vanity, if we took the door frame down, but probably not even then. The hallway is only about two feet-wide.

We thought about getting the sawzall and just carving it into small enough chunks to carry out. We thought about that a lot. I must admit, I smiled a little at that idea, but no.  I just hate destroying something that could still be useful to us or someone else if we don't have to.  There had to be a way.

What could it be?

My mom helped with this next bit.

Yeah.  The bottom of the two studs there and the sill are completely rotted through.  I'm going to have to replace them.  You know, if I'm going to have to rip out part of that wall anyway...

Sarah's spirit animal is rage.

Actually, I think Sarah was more disturbed by the mess she was creating than she was relieved by appeasing the urge for destruction.

Not bad really.

One little hitch though.  That black pipe is a sewer drain vent. To keep sewer gases out of the house, it should stay intact. I declined to cut it to pull out the tub until we have some couplings to at least hold it together while we fix everything else up.

I didn't feel like going to the hardware store again, so that was the end of that project for the day. Luckily, there are other projects. Perhaps I'll tell you more about those another day.


Oh yeah, for the record: One more opportunity to flood the house and I didn't.