Legend of the Mothman

The Mothman is a fantastic bit of WV lore and is celebrated by a large festival and many paranormal activities each year.    As soon as I spotted the statue, I knew what had to be done.  Well, after that, I knew we had to come back and see the Mothman statue a little closer.  Remember, pit stops come before the Mothman, every time!  That is a rule of the road, my friends and is non-negotiable, even in the presence of the Mothman.

I licked the Mothman!

So, anyone who has been reading of our adventures knows that when we find a big metal object, maybe like a bell, we have a tradition…of licking said object.  Although the Mothman is a near religious icon in WV, we decided to press on with our tradition and give the Mothman a good old lick.  Yeah, he needs a bath.

So friends, if you ever pass through Point Pleasant looking for a rest facility, there isn’t one.  But if you can possibly make it, stop by and give my old pal the Mothman a good lick.  He’s had a bath…you’re welcome!

The ridge board that supports the rafters at the top end

So, I became a city boy and all that friendly stuff had to be put on the back burner.  It’s not that people in a city aren’t friendly once you get to know them… it’s just that you have to find a way to get to know them first and sometimes even neighbors aren’t interested in getting to know one another.

So, fast forward a bit.  The folks from whom we bought the property still live on the land they retained the next hillside over.  Larry, Granny Sue’s husband, delivered some scaffolding he had over at his place a few weeks back.  He showed us how to set it up and use it and has let us keep it up there as long as we need it.  And then last weekend as we were working on setting up our rafters.  One of the boys (they are grown men but we call the brothers that live near us, “the boys” and I think they would be ok with that) came by on his 4-wheeler to ask if he could hunt on our property.  I told him that any of the boys and their family could hunt but I didn’t want anyone else who didn’t live up there hunting.  I would have never known whether they hunted or not during the week but I am really glad he asked.

Anyhow, we agreed that he could hunt so I figured he would go on to do other things with his day.  Instead, to our surprise, he asked if we needed help.  I was thrilled because Emily and I were trying to maneuver 16 foot long 2×8 boards around by ourselves on the second story of the deluxe shed.  It was going to end up with a bout of intense negotiation.  So, our friend climbed up and we started to work.  We worked an hour or so before we had to head home.

That’s about half of the rafters done!

Now that’s one thing, helping a guy for an hour, but the next day we got up there and my friend came over and brought his brother with him!  We worked together all day long and got half of the faters in place and secured!  They were a huge help and I was delighted to get to know them a little better.  We had met on other occasions, but we hadn’t really talked or goofed around before.  Aside from their tremendous help, I absolutely loved the sense of community and belonging that we have felt up on the ridge.   The neighbors across the way (she’s a sister to the brothers) came to visit the first day we showed up.  Our kids have played with their kids every time we are up there.  They invited us to a potluck dinner one night where we talked about all sorts of things and may have solved the world’s problems.  The brothers who helped with the rafters along with Larry and Granny Sue have been so kind and helpful as we work on the new place.  With the utmost respect I say that I am so glad to have country neighbors!

See all of the progress on the cabin

Anyhow, I have a few vices, mostly centering around sugar and sweet stuff.  I like pop and sugary candy in a bad way.  I guess I only drink 1 pop per day but I would live on it if I thought I could.  Corn syrup sucks, I know.  It’s in everything though.  Heck, it’s even in new car tires.  So, when we wander around in the Club, sometimes we ponder life and the future and stuff and I lament the tragedy that is corn syrup and how it is shortening my life.  As we toured around one time, we noticed bottles of Coke…glass bottles.  It caught my attention because I fondly remember walking after school to my Mom’s office in the court house in my hometown.

They had an ancient pop machine on the first floor that sold $.25 pop in returnable bottles and I loved drinking straight from the bottle.  So, I checked out the Cokes in the Club…and then I saw the price…24 bottles for $19!  Back in the courthouse, I could get those same bottles, already refrigerated for $6!   Emily was quick to remind me that my pop machine memory was from 30 years ago.  I guess inflation happens.  Still, it seemed silly until I considered the price I pay for corn-syrup filled pops at the gas station in the morning.  The bottles of Coke at the Club are the famous Mexican Cokes made with pure sugar – healthy Cokes, right?

We scooped up a case of the Healthy Cokes  and Isaac and I have been having one a day for…well, the last 11 days.  Yes, dear friends, there are only 2 left.  It looks like it’s about time to take my lady back on another date to the Club.  Only the finest for my woman!

By the way, sorry about all of the pictures…I was feeling so healthy that I just got a little carried away with the camera apps on my phone…

We had great help…both Emily’s grandfather and her uncle came by to help on Saturday.  My brother tells a funny story about working on stuff with our Dad when we were kids.  He claims my Dad said, “I don’t know if you’ll ever amount to anything son, but at least you will make a good clamp.”  Both of my helpers were much better than clamps though that is all they would likely claim to have performed as during our work.

We fixed up some mistakes we made the previous week when we were framing the walls on the platform.  Once those were fixed, we got more walls set up and we installed some of the OSB on the walls.  Without our helpers, Emily and I could never have lifted and held the OSB on the high points of the “deluxe shed”.  The ladder was steep and the clay was slippery so someone had to hold the ladder while I screwed the sheets to the framing.

Lunch!

Uncle B. claimed that he was not handy but he seemed to be pretty good at hitting a nail and reading a tape measure.  I think he is holding out on Aunt P.  So, working all together, we made great progress.

Emily and I returned Sunday to see how far we could get.  Actually, we built a few more walls and were able to set them up ourselves.

Emily makes a great mule.  I think she has a similar term for me…

We got quite a bit done and we didn’t even brawl too much!  Like so many things, now that we are so far along, we are finally getting the hang of this whole thing.  Emily was a little hard on some of the tools though.  I am not exactly sure how I feel about the look on her face with the skeletons of my former glorious tools.

Anyhow, we went back out again last weekend so stay tuned for more pics of the progress we made.

See all of the progress on the cabin

Bears don't read very well...

Not much will really stop a hungry bear, but the official recommendation is to enclose all “country bees” in an electric fence.  When a bear attacks a hive, the bees always come out in great number to ward off the attack.  Bear fur is typically too thick to present a problem.  The only sensitive place on a bear is apparently their nose/mouth area.  While my electric fence is a little more “juiced” than a bee sting, most folks agree that a bear has to learn about the fence with their mouth or nose.  I’ll talk more about that another time, but it makes sense that an electric fence properly set up should deter all the Poohs out there.

So, you may be wondering how solar power can deliver enough juice to make a bear even notice it was there.  It turns out that the people who make electric fence controllers make a version that runs on DC (i.e. deep cycle batteries, not house current which is AC).  The controller I bought is designed to power up to 25 miles of fence.  All told, I have maybe 1000 feet of wire strung on a few poles, so the charger will deliver a good shot when it fires.  I won’t bore you with the calculations about the capacity of the battery but it is roughly the size of a car battery just for perspective (a car’s starter battery would not work here though…this application needs a long continuous  draw on the battery rather than the quick hit when you start a car)

The battery, fence controller, and charge controller

The instructions show that the fence will run for 2 weeks on a fully charged battery of the proper specs but I do not want to have to worry about whether the battery is still charged if I don’t make it out there for a few weeks.  Instead, I bought a solar panel and a charge controller to keep the battery full.

See? It's pointed south

I pointed my solar panel south and angled it to the optimal angle to get direct sun.  Output wires from the panel go into the charge controller which regulates the power going into the battery.  The charge controller makes sure the power is the proper voltage and that the battery does not get over or under charged. The charge controller also has a “load” connection so I connected the fence controller to that connection and we’re off and running!  All of the charging/controlling/shocky-shocky stuff is inside a beehive surrounded by my other beehives as a sort of a theft deterrent.

Oh, by the way, without thinking I tried to use a regular household switch at the gate to turn the power on and off.  Of course, the fence controller pushes somewhere around 10,000 volts which didn’t even slow down for the switch rated for household current of 110 volts.  If you want a switch, make sure you get one rated properly…same with any wire you may need to use (I only used fencing wire which handles the charge nicely)

So, I hope some of that makes sense.  So far it is alive and well.  Let me know if you want more details…

We didn’t talk about anything in particular, but I so loved sitting there, relaxing and just talking with Isaac.  Middle school is going to be ok…

The start of the birdseed saga!

Jump ahead to our move to Kentucky for graduate school.  We were in marital bliss.  I suppose we didn’t see the world around us very clearly as we missed some obvious things…you’ll see in a second.  So, we were poor and all that but it was cool being married.  Emily seems to remember a rough few years as she attempted to train and civilize me.  Once she gave up, things got much better.  Anyhow, part-way through school, we moved to an apartment above a funeral home (more on that in another post!).

We noticed some wormy things in the backseat one day while unpacking groceries or something at the funeral home.  I didn’t think much of it.  I squished them and went on with my business.  Days later, we noticed them again…and again and again.  It started to get serious pretty quickly.

The car...already doomed!

I got a wild hair and decided to remove the back set of the car to see what was going on.  Why oh why didn’t I just remain ignorant?!  The entire back seat was infested with meal worms!  I don’t just mean there were a few crawling around.  Oh no, the foam in the seat was full.  The carpet in the floor was infested.  It was a regular larval zoo in our car!

I often deal with things like that with extreme overkill.  We had a Chevy Celebrity which, incidentally, was the best car ever made!  I loved that car!  Emily and I sanded the thing down in the weeks before our wedding so we could get it painted.  We wanted to make a flashy exit from the wedding ceremony.  Anyhow, back to overkill.  A Chevy Celebrity has maybe 30 sq ft of cabin space.  An insect bomb for a 2000 sq ft house seemed about right.  Makes sense, right?  If some is good, more is better!

On two separate occasions, I set off house-sized insect bombs in our little car.  The worms remained.  It’s a wonder we remained!  I am certain that a concentration of insecticide like that was not all that good for us.  After losing on the second bomb, I just re-installed the back seat and we looked no more.

How did we finally deal with the issue, you may ask?  Well, we traded that car in for a Chevy Prizm, the second best car ever made!  It was new and worm-free!  I blame those worms on the birdseed.  I have no doubt that the seed had meal worms in it.  They lived a good life for a couple of years on all of the birdseed in the car.  That wedding birdseed was the gift that kept on giving!

After we ate, they started with the awards.  There were awards for various things and initially, Isaac didn’t seem to be called for anything.  He was not the best singer in the chorus or the best at archery.  We didn’t know what to expect but, as parents, we just wanted him to get some award so he could walk up in front of everyone to receive some applause.

Finally they called his name.  He marched up sort of shyly and shook hands.  We were relieved.  Then they called him again…and again…and again.  All told, Isaac ended up receiving 9 certificates of various types including the American Citizenship award, the National Young Scholars Award, the DAR Good Citizen award, the President’s Award for Academic Achievement (which included a letter signed by President Obama…very exciting for Isaac!) and the technology student of the year award.  I was so worried that he would just receive some award and he blew me out of the water!  By the end, his face beamed!  He wasn’t arrogant at all.  In fact he was a little embarrassed by his repeated trips up to the front.  To me, that was all the more indication that he truly deserved every award he received.  I could not be more proud!

Jump forward to this weekend.  Isaac tested for his blue belt in tae kwon do.  The blue belt is the last step before black belt.  The testing gets a lot more serious and the number of students testing thins a lot.  There were only a few people testing so the the spotlight was really on those folks to perform.  Each person did their forms (basically, a routine that shows skills such as balance, focus, etc).  Isaac did his cleanly and without problem.

The part of TKD that always worries me is the sparring portion of the instruction and testing.  Of course, a large part of TKD is fighting.  I mentioned before that it’s a weird feeling that sort of comes over me when I watch my son fight.  I want him to be disciplined and focussed and also prepared for things out in the real world.  Still, I would much rather he never have to be in any sort of threatening situation.

So, Isaac was paired up for sparring and they started the fight.  He quickly landed several punches and kicks.  At one point, he knocked his opponent to the ground.  It shocked me a little but the boy jumped back up and they continued.  Sparring is pretty much full contact.  No head shots and no blood are allowed but otherwise, there is quite a bit of freedom.  He has gained so much confidence and so many skills in TKD and that was evident as he sparred.  I was so proud to see him fight and watch as he just did what he needed to do to fend off the other boy.

I am so proud of my boy!

So, we got to the cabin after navigating the Grand Canyon road back to the place.  The cabin itself was nice and did in fact have a hot tub.  The kids jumped right in as Emily and I unpacked and prepared for supper.  I am not sure why, but the power went out and we were without water or AC.  When you are not prepared, both are pretty important.  Anyhow, several hours later, it came back on and all was well…even the well.  We could shower and do dishes, etc.

On Saturday morning, we gorged on cheap powdered sugar donuts and Doritos then headed to Coopers Rock (it seems like there should be an apostrophe in there but there isn’t).  Little did we know, but there was a celebration of the anniversary of the founding of the park.  The place was teeming with things to do as all sorts of groups offered nature talks, projects,  and hikes.

The kids built cool birdhouses and painted rocks.  We played on the play ground (where I tried my best to dislocate my shoulder).  We saw rescued birds of prey from the West Virginia Raptor Rescue Center and even got to touch a red tailed hawk who was very friendly.  It turns out, she was essentially raised in captivity so was not bothered by people.  The other rescued hawk and owl were not so friendly.  Still, they were awesome!

I think the best part of the park though, was walking the trails under the rocks.  We explored some and saw great rock formations.  The kids and I walked into a cave/tunnel and went all “Dora the Explorer”.  Abigail fell in the dirt and got muddy.  It was perfect and cool and a great time to be together as a family.

If you ever pass through the northern part of WV, stop in at Coopers Rock.  Its views are breathtaking and there is all sorts of fun to be had there.  It turns out that the hot tub was very popular, but it paled in comparison (for me at least) to the beauty of our state, just as it is!

That’s right…in my kitchen, as we speak, I have an industrial strength, commercial grade milkshake making beast!  This, my friends, is the Hamilton Beach 94900 which is capable of bringing frozen goodness and delight to men, women and children alike!  The price was right and karma was with us so we scored a gem!

But before you get too jealous, let me take you back to its beginnings.  Mainly, it was gross.  The sanitary status of the machine was questionable.  In fact, there was still a chocolate chip and gooey icecream on the impeller when I received “the Beast”.  After much Mean Green and elbow grease, the milkshake machine was made whole again.

So, we have made several milkshakes with this thing and it is so much nicer to use than a blender.  It’s  faster to set up, faster to clean, faster to produce a milkshake and it makes smoother milkshakes hands down.  I love the new milkshake machine and I think it is a hit with the family too!