Gentlemen's weekend ran from 10 Oct to 13 Oct this year. Despite the fact that Jon and the group the from Kalamazoo did come up, the weather was great all weekend. The main project for this year was capping off the new chimney and moving the insert back to the fireplace. Though it does not sound like much, there were many challenges faced and it took most of the trip to accomplish.
As usual I drove up from Cleveland on Wednesday, leaving a little earlier than usual, so I arrive before 11:00 PM. The drive up again was easy, being that I drive up in the middle of the week and at night, and the Cabin was again easy to open. Having the Cabin used multiple times late summer/early fall makes each subsequent trip easier. The set up went quickly and I got a fire going in the insert. I deemed it cold enough that having a fire was justified and I wanted to have one!
One of the advantages of heading up early is having some time to explore before getting to the work. The woodshed has needed something on it for a long time. I finally brought up a thermometer and mounted it. This will give an easy way to gauge the outside temperature both without having to go outside or using a thermometer that keeps falling off the Cabin.
The day was beautiful: a clear blue sky and a comfortable temperature. I decided to explore a bit east of Mitchell Lake. I have tried exploring this area before and have always run into issues. There were (and are) still plenty of trails to map.
Since others were going to arrive at some point in the evening, I did not want to be out too long. I did stop at a tiny lake (not even on the map) for lunch. It was an incredible setting: a small lake surrounded by trees, some changing colors, with a light breeze to keep things comfortable while sitting in the sun.
After the crew from Detroit arrived and while we were waiting for the group from Kalamazoo we noticed a white haze in the sky. At first it looked like high, thin clouds, but on further investigation (with night view on our phone cameras) we discovered they were the northern lights! This had been a "good year" for solar storms so the northern lights had been visible from many places. When we first saw them we were looking south over the Cabin! In fact, they were visible as far south as Chicago (at least).
They came in waves and were often rather striated. At times some color came out even to the naked eye. However, they were best viewed through the camera so we took many pictures. While viewing from the Cabin is fine, the field of view is very narrow given that you are in a valley surrounded by trees. So we went to the airport.
The group of us headed to the airport to get a clearer view. At times the colors came through more strongly, but never vibrant, to the naked eye. In the camera, though, the sheets of colors stood out. It was quite spectacular. The group from Kalamazoo saw them over the bridge and on their drive up.
As noted in the introduction, the main work was to cap the chimney, fix up some of the burned logs from The Fire, and get the insert back in place. As also noted above, this took far longer than expected.
The work on the roof was relatively straightforward if not time consuming. The old "hillbilly roof" was removed and Mikey created a saddle to protect the chimney from water/ice/runoff. The previous chimney did not have such protection and, though it survived decades of use, it did eventually succumb to just being pushed over. Hopefully the new chimney will survive even longer. A lot of work went into it! The design and construction of the saddle was led by Mikey and involved contributions from many people. To commemorate its construction a bottle of "Old Corn" was passed around and left inside the saddle as a "time capsule" for future generations. The next time the roof is redone on the Cabin there will be some confused people!
Repairing some of the fire damaged sill logs was undertaken by Andy. He masterfully cut some replacements to help shore up the region. He and Bill sealed it off to keep the water and cold out. This was detailed work requiring multiple measurements and rounds of cutting.
Capping the chimney was undertaken by Bill and it, by itself, was not too challenging. Getting the chimney liner in place was much harder. Bill had to stand on a latter and pull on the stretchy liner countless times before we could finally get it set correctly.
Getting the insert back into the fireplace was its own struggle. Conceptually it was easy, attach the liner to the top of the insert and slide it into the firebox. Firstly, having the attachment on the top was a challenge since this fit was already very tight. Jon had brought up furniture moving straps so he and I could haul the very, very heavy insert around in the tight space (which we did multiple times). But even with that it did not go smoothly. The floor of the firebox had been repaired (it had holes in it from the time it was used as a fireplace) so it had gotten raised up. It turns out this reduced the clearance and the insert did not slide in easily. The old flue in the fireplace continued to get in the way. It was a problem when we first installed the insert, and that was when we had access to the back. Without back access it was even more difficult. The insert also does not go all the way to the back of the firebox so the liner pipe had to be bent in an "S"-curve, which was a challenge when you could not get inside to do the work. Finally, it turns out an extra layer of stones had been put into the lintel of the fireplace some long time ago, separated by a metal blade from the original lintel. We did not know this until this extra layer broke, .... This did give us more room and is probably better for air flow. It remains to be seen how well it heats the Cabin in the winter.
When the chimney was completed the crew doing the masonry also hauled away the debris from the old chimney. The new chimney was built with bricks from Frank's old bar in Detroit, of which some remain. We also had logs left over from the repair of the kitchen wall. We finally cleaned all of this up. Stacking the remaining bricks behind the shed and getting the left over logs off the ground and better protected.
Though the work took longer than expected, there was still a bit of time for other projects. The remaining portion of the huge branch cleaned up last trip was set aside for Mikey to use. He set up an Alaskan sawmill to work on cutting planks from it. Unfortunately due to the limited time he could only do this late Saturday night and early Sunday morning. Not much progress was made. It remains for future trips to pursue.
Of course throughout the weekend a fire was constantly burning. We burned through another brush pile I had built along with scraps from the work on the Cabin and the usual dead branches that can always be found. We now do have a fair bit of old gas up there. Bill started working on getting rid of some of it. It was poured on the ground to try to get a trail leading up to the fire. Of course the ground being rather sandy this just meant a bunch soaked into the ground. We had burning ground for awhile and even as we dug it up the ground continued to burn.
What would gentlemen's weekend be without food? What would gentlemen's weekend with Jon be without absurd food? Jon has started the new custom of bringing up his outdoor griddle. With this he can make an even more crazy breakfast, so he does. On Saturday morning he took advantage of this, though on Sunday it was "more traditional".
We also tend to have a large number of apples on gentlemen's weekend. A natural thing to do was to make pie. Since there were already trips in town for building supplies, pie crusts were acquired and pies were made, spear headed by Jon and Ed. They turned out great, even with Jon having misread the recipe and using twice the amount sugar for the filling!
As usual on Sunday we did not do much besides close up the Cabin. The standard packing and cleaning was done. We had a bit of time to finish up a few tasks from all the work, but otherwise just hung out around camp.
It was another great trip and it was great getting the work done. The multiple years of heavy projects has paid off. The Cabin is now set for more trips. Though there are other projects in mind, so far they seem less pressing. Hopefully next year we can have a less project driven trip. Maybe we can get back to having a larger group of people. Regardless, I am already looking forward to my next trip.