Now Why Don't He Write?

One of my favorite lines from the motion picture Dances with Wolves is when the teamster Timmons, observing the skeletal remains of a previous traveler, says " I'll bet someone back east is going, "Now why don't he write?"

I haven't disappeared off the face of the planet and my bones aren't (yet) bleaching in the muskeg or tundra, I've just been keeping myself busy around the place.  In all truth, there hasn't been all that much to write about since I last posted on Sunday.

On Monday I was "Tommy Domestic", tidying up the house a bit for an interview with Scott Chesney.  Scott is my partner in the Serum Run '25 project and is planning to produce a documentary of the reenactment from start through finish.  You really should check out some of his work on his Loco Lobo Photographic Arts site.   I think you'll agree that he does some phenomenal work.

The weather has taken a wet, blustery albeit warm turn.  That hasn't slowed me a whole lot, though.   One friend, cleaning out his freezer, gave me a big stock of hot dogs he was storing for Armageddon or perhaps Y2K or something.  He needed room for some moose meat so gave me those old hotdogs.  I repackaged those into groups of 8 for dog snacks while on the trail.  With a nice load of protein and fat, hotdogs make handy and quick snacks to help recharge a tiring team.

Another friend enjoyed good fortune in this year's moose hunt, so gave me several trash bags of freezer scrap.  He trims his meat close, but I nonetheless was able to grind up 22 pounds of meat with a fair amount of fat to make up meatballs I can also feed out as snacks on the trail.

Wednesday I made a quick trip to town to run some errands.  I had to pay my dog food bill at Cold Spot Feeds, as I took advantage of a nice sale by having my handler pick up a dozen bags of kibble at the sale price, saving us a few bucks that can spent on more dog food.

That leads us up to my current project.  Remember those big shipping crates I scored last month?  I'm converting one of those into a dog food storage shed, so I can buy kibble in larger quantities and take advantage of some savings by doing so.    I bought a steel exterior door at Home Depot to mount in the front of a crate, which along with a bit of interior framing and reinforcing should make a pretty tidy little shed. 

Yesterday was spent tearing one of the crates apart for materials and installing the door in another.  Today I'll finish framing that in, reinforcing the crate and filling in some gaps, and hopefully this evening I'll be able to recruit my handler to help me move it into place.  I'll install the lock set, and that project should be finished.  It's too cool and wet to paint the thing, so I'm afraid the last step will have to wait until next break up. 

I only have a few more days left in this R&R so I feel the need to hustle right along and finish up my honey do list.  Only a couple of more items to strike through and I think I'll be pretty well set for winter.