Winter Needs to Back Off

Now that we've been working on the Bath House on the West Side for a couple weeks we're doing less demolition inside and more cutting outside.  The problem with that is when we get 8 inches of snow overnight.  Takes away some of the comfort and space I like when I'm ripping down a long piece of glass board.  Another frustrating thing is that we have to rip down the glass board into thin slices.  The Bath House had a lot of exposed pipes that we've boxed in with glass board.  It's great that we've enclosed them because they were smoking hot heating pipes, but it's really hard to install glass board on this tiny little box.  So all that to say that we didn't make much visual progress on the project, but it's still hard stuff that needs to be completed.  Now we're ready for the next section, and usually these keep going faster and faster as we get more experience with them.

So after we cleaned up a lot of wet, heavy snow our main focus shifted back to the Bath House.  Dan Haines continues to work hard on the tile in Crosscut.  I think he can see the light at the end of the tunnel for his tile work down there.  He still has to work on a little bit of tile in the Bath House and more in the East Side Dining Hall Staff Room.  Oh... and then there is the rest of the stone for the outside of Crosscut.  Well that's all part of our plan to keep him working tiling/masonry for a solid year of camp.  Just kidding.  But seriously, we'll see if he gets to work on something else.

This weekend I headed home for an Alumni swim meet at Battle Creek Central's new pool.  I really enjoyed seeing a lot of familiar faces and catching up with people from high school.  Without training I still swim about what I did in high school, but I may try to work out a little for the next alumni meet on Thanksgiving weekend.  In the meantime it was just fun to see the graduates from the 80's and the 90's smoke everyone else.

So here's hoping we don't get anymore snow.  Especially on a weekend of raking like last year.  Thanks for following.

A Messy Project

The West side bath house is one of the original buildings on camp.  It's been worked on many times over the last 60 years, but the writing is on the wall for the building.  But not yet.  With Crosscut Lodge on the precipice of completions, this summer could be the first summer that campers don't use the bath house.  It's still the most accessible restroom facility on the West side, located very close to the West Side Dining Hall.  So now we've been working to replace the most dilapidated aspect, the ceiling.

You can see what the inside of the bath house looks like, and the state of the ceiling in these pictures.  Mike Baker spent last week tearing down the ceilings, mostly by himself.  After we used the tube to take care of the insulation nicely, Mike just started ripping the ceiling down and cleaning it up from there.  It sounded absolutely miserable.  So it made quite a mess, but left us with a better idea of what we had to work with.  As you can see in the pictures below, the ceiling joists were about four feet apart, so Mike decided to put new joists in with two foot spacing.  You can also see the swimming goggles Mike tried to use at some points to keep the dust out of his face.

Now we have new ceiling joists, and supports that will help bear snow weight over the Winter.  After the joists were complete in that section, Mike Alchin put in some rolled insulation and we started in with the glassboard that will sharpen up this ceiling.  After getting one piece in, we were out of time for the weekend.  Then Mike Baker went in on Saturday and just plugged away at it with the help of whoever happened to stop by.  So now the room is almost finished.

So we'll be working on this for the next couple weeks.  In the meantime Dan Haines is still plowing through tile down in Crosscut.  Since September Dan Haines has spent his whole time at Barakel mixing mortar for hanging stone and laying tiles.  We try to visit him periodically, and he's progressing very steadily.  We're all very glad to have someone who can do such a fantastic job.

You can even see Randy trying to encourage Dan for his good work.  So we're really hustling on projects to improve camp over this Spring season.  Soon we'll see campers and workers returning, just the way it should be.

Spring Break in Minivans

This week was Spring Break for a lot of the Michigan Public schools.  Since camp workers tend to use this time to go on vacation, I decided to take the time off to spend some time at home.  Like usual time at home turned into time on the road.  18 hours in fact, and most of it in a couple different minivans.  Here's a breakdown of my time at home:

Monday/Tuesday- Catching up with some friends.  Catching up on some tv (the Office mostly) and On Demand movies.

Wednesday- Spent the morning driving with Tim Wygant, our Youth Pastor, to visit Rob for lunch in Chicago.  He gave us a quick tour around campus and showed us "Go Roma", a nice pizza shop with a crazy drink center that makes whatever drink you want using a touchscreen.  After lunch we met up with the Ford family from Camp Barakel and brought Samuel and Isaiah on the El Train and then the Subway.  They said the Subway smelled bad.

After the public transportation adventures we headed over to the University of Chicago Oriental Institute.  It's a neat museum that holds many special treasures from the Persian Empire and beyond.  Rob, Tim, and I enjoyed looking at these artifacts that Daniel used to walk by everyday on the way into the King's Throne Room.  There was a lot of information to take in, then we pretty much headed right out of town after that.

Thursday- Trip to South Haven with the Youth Group.  It was still cold outside but we still enjoyed a meal at Captain Nemo's and some cards on the beach.  The highlight of the trip was honestly some crazy kids who were doing donuts in the parking lot.  There were four cars that were driving me nuts with their shenanigans.  One of them was trying to power slide out of the drive way and slammed into a sand dune.  He hit it so hard he bounced up onto two wheels for a moment.  The crew gathered up, picked up the pieces, and then hustled out of there before the cops showed up.  In the end we couldn't even watch the sunset because the clouds were too thick.

Friday- Normal day with some time at Pizza Sam's.

Saturday/Sunday- Trip with Dad to Chagrin Falls (Cleveland Area), Ohio.  We visited some of his old motorcycle friends (the Stoners) on Saturday, then visited Parkside Church on Sunday morning.  I've been a long time fan of Alistair Begg, so it was a lot of fun to visit and see him speak in person.  I also met Matt McAlvey who is both Barakel and Battle Creek Central Alumni.

After returning from Ohio Sunday evening I was able to get in a couple hours of Tennis with my friend Grant Penrod, and then a bunch of Monopoly Deal at Tim's house.  The weather was plain shocking to me on Sunday.  Every time I walked outdoors I expected to feel a cold blast, but was greeted with warm winds.

It was a great week of catching up.  I always like seeing Battle Creek.  I'm sad to see it deteriorating slowly, but it's the way of the world.  We're all sort of falling apart in this worldly state we're in.  Amongst the troubles of the world it's fun to slow down and walk through history with some friends.

Projects

After finishing up the cleaning on the East Side this week, we've been able to attack the staff room of the East Side Dining Hall.  The carpet is all out and we've placed cement board under the main walkway in preparation for tile that will cover that section.  We've also tied up some loose ends around camp including the Hillbilly Porch.  It's a fun little porch that we used to greet the campers on the West Side this Winter.  It's kind of rickety, so picking it up can be quite a challenge.  Like usual, Mike used his Skytrak wizardry to move it back into the maintenance yard fairly quickly.

Another project was justed started on Friday too.  The Bath House on the West Side needs a lot of improvements, and we are working on the ceilings.  Our first step in replacing them is to get all the insulation out.  Well Mike Baker went up there to cut a hole in the ceiling and start dumping it through.  Since there are no lights up in the attic, Mike had to take a headlamp and a dust mask to try to deal with the enclosed space.  Once there, he found three layers of insulations.  It's not a joke, we've been dealing with styrofoam, rolled, and blown insulation.  To help get it all out of the attic with a minimal mess, Mike brought a caterpillar play tube from his house.  So while he slaved in the attic I just swapped out trash cans at the bottom of the tube and carried them out to the truck.

Now I'm home for Spring Break.  I spent Saturday playing in an Ultimate Frisbee tournament with my good friend from college, Evan Winer.  Our team was a mash up of experienced players and we didn't play really well together, but I think everyone had a lot of fun.  Usually after spending time in Grand Rapids I enjoy an early morning ride through the country.  I don't know if it brings me back to my childhood in East Leroy or if it reminds me of my Grandpa's house near Duck Lake, but I've always enjoyed the rising sun as I cruise towards Battle Creek.