Northerly pre-func

First off. And totally un-related to the barely-bike-related post to follow.

Smarties should be able to figure out what the figuring is all about in this pic:

hm?


Maddie and I went up to the river property to take stock. We came back with a solid work item.

But first, the frog:

And the junk:

My dad was a junk collector. Actually, by Ferry County standards, his junk collection is child's play. In any case, I think he's got a lot of cool junk. A forest fire fired up around his land up there a couple years ago and really did a bang up job of separating the good junk from the excellent junk. Only cast-iron-excellent junk is left. In fact, I found an old cast-iron tractor seat in the junk up there. I'd like Glen to make me a chair out of it. Perhaps he'd take some nice cast-junk in trade.

Maddie found a stack of old cast-iron pans.

So here's the bummer --

See that right-angle behind the toilet.
Blown.

The "fix" was to by-pass the hot-water heater so you could turn off the heater while providing water for the toilet. This is so not bike-related.

ugh.

This non-bikey plumbing funk is in a little shed. It's the proper toilet and shower up at the property on the river. This proper plumbing is a big reason that the river hang works for mulitple days for Liza.

There's a lot of back story here. Dad had this dialed in so that it didn't blow up during the winter freeze. Last summer, some guy "fixed it" by re-plumbinging it. He's from Seattle. Nothing wrong with that, but he clearly didn't appreciate the "freeze" part of the equation and the plumbing blew up.

This is the work item.

I get what needs to happen, and I'm going to plumb it like my dad had it: with copper and running the pipes over head so that when you shut the water off and drain them, they drain. No sharp corners with PVC. But I'm a sucky plumber.

Yow.

More non-bikey, but the headstone went in and I'm pretty sure this is where I want to be planted too.

Room with a view.
(sorry, couldn't resist the cliche there)

The bike part of this deal is that this river property is ideally located for serious fun. Great road riding -- with a two-pass perfect century out the door. And of course, great forest road, Nat'l Forest exploration also out of the back door.

And now, there's a new local brewery: Northern Ales.

This property screams for a cyclecross event...