Like any boring old married couple, we talked about the weather today. It was a lovely day today, but things are going to change dramatically on Wednesday. A big cold front is coming through Wednesday night, and there will be a hard freeze overnight, a 70% chance of snow, and the daytime high on Thursday will barely pop above the freezing mark, if it does at all. We made plans for bringing inside the little potted lemon tree and for putting the pumpkins in the garage so they can still be carved and or cooked this month. Yeah, that's the boring stuff we discussed. Most average people never have to ponder the freezing point of beer, and how bad the mess would be if a full case of canned beer were to freeze hard and explode in a wooden cabin. We had one single can of seltzer freeze in our garage beer fridge, and it popped the top and bottom out dangerously far. Our son in law drank it last week, but it was awkward and we wondered what was going to happen when he opened it. I wouldn't lay money that 20+ beer cans would maintain structural integrity over an entire week, where in the middle of that week temperatures dropped well below freezing and stayed there for two days.
Murray had a vet visit this afternoon, for his usual recurring UTI (a curse among paraplegic animals), and as soon as he was back, the Mr and I loaded up the truck and dashed off to his mountain. I had whined most of the summer that I wasn't able to get up and see the cabin build a single time this year, because of the surgery and all the rough treatments I had to go through. I wanted to give it one solid try before the snows to make it up and see progress. Today was going to be my day. I had no time to talk myself out of it. It was just "as soon as I get back from the vet, I'm going," countered with, "can I go too?" I grabbed several layers of warm clothes, slathered on sunscreen, and fed all the animals early, so we could go while there was daylight.
Traffic wasn't bad on the way up, but we still took a few alternate routes. In Lefthand Canyon, the one I took by myself last week in my aborted attempt to leaf-peep, he pointed out Lickskillet Road, and reminded me that it would have led up right to the Gold Hill Inn, where I had paused for poorly aimed photos yesterday. He then took the next turn, a steep but well graded dirt road. This was the one he had offered as a choice when I elected to drive through Gold Hill. I chided him for thinking it was a good fit for my little car, and he said, "hey, this is a perfect road." Less than a minute later, right after we waved at a couple in a SUV going down the hill, who squeezed past us on the narrow road, our truck started making a funny noise. We thought maybe his heavy swing-out bumper/spare tire holder/gas can holder had come loose and was rattling. Oh, no, it was way worse than that. He had known in advance it needed a little maintenance, because the mount on one side was showing some metal fatigue. Today it had taken its very last bounce, and the right side of the bumper had ripped off and was dragging on the road. We stopped to remove the other side (held on with two bolts), and a lady coming down stopped to see whether she could help. She could, and she really made things easier. She accepted our thanks with a smile, and said, "We mountain folks look out for each other."
The rest of the drive was less eventful, and we got parked without further incident. I didn't wait for him to prepare a load of wood siding on the cart from the staging area. I knew my trip up was going to be slow and painful, so I started shuffling up the steep section immediately. I had only traveled 50 yards, with maybe 25 feet of altitude gain before I was gasping for air, my heart pounding out of my chest. I gave myself plenty of breaks, but I didn't stop for long in any one spot. I had a goal to see the cabin, and I also needed to get up the hill to go to the bathroom. (Amazing what intense motivation that is to keep climbing!) He didn't pass me with his cart full of building materials until 2/3 of the way up, well into the clearing that marks the end of the uphill section.
I didn't do much work at the top. It wasn't that sort of day. There was a little tidying so that some things won't get snowed on, like putting the neighbor's wheelbarrow inside the cabin against the newly-finished west wall. I collected a bucket of wood scraps and discarded small pine branches to put inside, so that on the next build day, they can start a fire with dry wood. I got to stand on the beautiful new deck, and assess how much smaller it feels inside the cabin with the back wall finished. (It is four inches less visual space, after all, and it felt like four feet.) Mostly I was just proud as hell of myself for making it up there. I mean, last year, while the cancer was still eating my body, I was climbing that stupid hill while carrying actual windows, for god's sake, so maybe it wasn't that big of an endeavor just to bring myself and a bottle of water this time. But two months ago, I could barely walk from my bedroom to the kitchen. Today, I climbed a mountain, and made it back to the car under my own power. Achievement Unlocked!
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