Blog

Happy ocho de Mayo,

A good many things have conspired (successfully) against getting this little slice of project life up here for you to see: a very busy building schedule, the fifty things that spin off of that, a built in aversion to this kind of work when other things are pressing, my sometimes depleted gas tank, and in the lead off spot, a laptop turned bad. If there is anything less merciful than one of these eye-wrecking tyrants, it’s one with a case of the farts. Now too stubborn for Disc Warrior, and enjoying a capricious turn of mind, mine has lost its way. I sort of admire the rebel spirit and the random nature of its behavior, but that will not hinder me from crawling over the person next to me on the plane, rolling down the window high over the Atlantic and frisbee-flinging it to the fishes. In its defense, it has been kidnapped, and returned, and still bares the scars of the trauma: photos the rats downloaded of their beach vacation and lots of music. If you need early Tupac, look no further.

One of the most charming symptoms is that it uploads the photos here in whatever order it likes, heedless of my threats. It’s like writing a book and having the pages assembled by a political action committee.

This is, I think, the fourth attempt to “post.” And with each time-sucking failure I’ve become less inclined to repeat the effort, but there is no good end to that course, so I’ll bulldog this one come what may and trust your ability to sleuth it out.

I’ve skipped ahead to the present, leapfrogging over the ring beam pouring, and landed on the trusses and purlins, though not necessarily in that, or any other reconizable, order. And, strangely, I feel a little better now.

After the ring beam was poured and cured, we needed to build the gables, the triangular structures on each end of the building which dictate the angle of the roof.

The small gable nearly completed.

The second course of one of the two big ones.

The siege tower Opyio built for putting up the big trusses.

A prisoner of the tower.

A nearly completed big gable.

The long view.

The gable form, and the completed gable, after concrete had been added and turned it from stairs to a slide.

Musyoka.

Peter attaching a U bolt in the ring beam that the trusses will be welded to.

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David chiseling what will become one of the triangular gable stones.

Our small trusses, lined up like they belong in Area 51.

We hoisted up one of the trusses to prescribe the exact height and angle of the gable.

The finished stone.

We painted all the steel with Crown red oxide paint. There's a long story behind this and a hardware store owner.

Crown's best.

David on the narrow, keeping us straight.

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One small truss for man.

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One giant truss for mankind.

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Mankind’s representatives for the event.

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I’m in the midst of figuring out a better way to deal with my juvenile delinquent Mac-punk, and it may all work out in the end. Well, I suppose it has to work in the end, there’s no choice. Whether it works out better is the peanut butter or pate’.

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Let’s talk soon,

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David