The alarms went off at 4Am. Gabe had a 6:20 Am flight this morning to High Cascade Snowboard camp in Oregon … and we weren’t going to be late. Gabe and I are not morning people.. Diane kindly wrangled us into the car by around 4:30.. We picked up Luke and made it to the Airport by about 5.. Here are Gabe and Luke looking wide awake.. (yeah)..

Gabe is really excited to be going to High Cascade.. It’s his second
year.there. He loves the place and gets to work with some really
awesome coaches. (as well as play dodge ball and eat cobra dogs).
Gabe will have Luke, Sumner, and Ralph out there to hang out with. I
think he’s really going to love it. Sam went there for a year.. so Gabe
is taking soem more amsstones out with him.

We at there and watched Gabe’s plane took off.. It was about 7 when we got home.. I went to sleep for 3 more hours… and Diane stayed up… That made for a very long day for her !

Around 11 Diane and I drove in to John M’s. (aka Yolk’s)shp to begin work on the iron casting course I’m takign this week. There are abotu a dozen of us akign it.. Each of us will cast one or more objects in pure iron. It’s such and amazing process.. My friends Homer and Kat turned me on to it. You can transform any object.. even soft objects into a pice of iron.. like this hat !.

Or this fish (made by Thea)

Here we are learnign the ins and outs of sand casting.> that’s Elijah from NewOrleans teaching the class.. he’s a master caster who’s come up to Vermont just to do this class for us. The other folks in the class there today include my friend Kat the welder, her intern Lucie (married to my firend Cesar) .. her other friend Julia (I think) , Susaqua, Thea .. They’re all very cool people.

So far they are also all women.. which is … interesting .. for a firesport like Iron casting..I’m sure I’m going to learn stuff here.

BTW.. I had to switch back to my old camera..I as borowwing Gabes.. but he needed his for camp. The flares in these pictures hare due to dirty optics.. I’ll have to find a way to clean it.

Here Elija shows us how to tamp the resen impregnated sand into the molds.

Here’s the small furnace that Elijah and Yolk build.. it burns chunks of coke.. and can melt a 50 pound batch of cast iron (from broken up radiators) in abut 15 minutes.

Julia and Luci practice lifting the ladel.. on casting day this will be filled with glowing hot melted iron.

Thea and I got our forms ready to make molds.. I’m making iron SamStones.. and a few decorative ‘E’s (Iron-E’s… get it ? .. ughhh)

So we put 100 pounds of sand in the mixer…

Measured out the resin and catalyst..

And put it in the mixer with the sand.. Here I am holding Thea’s reperator so she doesn’t breath the nasty resin vapors or the silica..

4 minutes of mixing.. and we now have 25 minutes to work the sand until it becomes rock.

Elijah helps me cromble the resin sand into my mold..

Then I tamp it down .. and leave it to cure.. I’ll come back later int he week to do the other half of the mold.. then next Saturday we pour the iron.

It was about 4:30 when we finally left there. I’d gotten much more done than I thought I would on this first day.. Diane stuck there with me through the whole thing (and on less than 4 hours of sleep).. You know you married the right person when something like that happens..

We got home and played with the dogs for awhile.. then went on a 12 mile bike ride.. 12 miles may not sound like much.. but we hadn’t ridden bikes in more than 2 years.. Diane called this the ‘weekend of different muscles’.. yesterday’s tube riding had required about a 2 hour abdominal crunch to make it through the shallows of the Huntington .. then I did about 2.5 hours of sything on the Rivershore trail.. again.. differnt muscles.. then todays’ ligging of 100 pound sacks of sand.. and then the bike rde.. Of all of them.. the bike ride was the touhest.. that particular sore muscle is making it difficult to sit right now 🙂

Finally about 8 Pm we gt the dogs out for a walk on the upper Rivershore.. They neede the run.. they both got in the wter to cool off.. it was in the mid 80’s by late afternoon.

I came home and did some sheetrock spackling in the barn in prep for the painting we’re goign to do in there this week. Then Diane and i cooked dinner. We heard from Gabe in Oregon.. he’s there safe and already having fun.

That’s about it for the day. It was long an fun.. and I’m beat.. but I still have a few hours of IBM work to do.. So I better get on it.. Talk to you tomorrow !.. Gnite all.. Gnite Sam !

-me

Stayed up too late last night playing with linux.. it’s worse that ..video games.. worse than crack.. I am having so much fun trying to learn this operating system.. The tought that it was built for free by a ton of folks around the world. who didn’t get payed is fascinating to me.. Before I fell asleep, i noticed that our friend luna moth had mirated to the back door. he’s so cool.

I woke up after 8.. meditated then Dianem the dogs and I went for a run up Hiney Hollow The day was sparkling.. in the high 60’s and dry.. the way it’s supposed to be. The weather it always is in my dreams.

We got back around 10… and I took the opportunity to do some trail maintainance that I’d promised I’d do for our neighbor John. The job was to use an old fashioned sythe to trime a bit more than a mile of trail down by the rivershore. I felt like the Grim Reaper. or the Cream Whipper as Sam once said.. It was hard work. I have blisters on both hands even through I was wearing heavy work gloves.. It was great doing a few hours of mindless labor.. I may not think so tomorrow morning. i think I’m goign to be pretty sore.

The rest of the day was pretty nice too.. Mid afternoon, Gabe and Ian went on a bike ride, so Diane Tim, Jen, Martha and I decided to go tubing in the Huntington. .. I couldn’t take my camera .. but it was a hoot !.. We put in at triple buckets and spent about 2 hours floating through some of the prettiest scenery that I know of on the planet.
We drifted through fast rapids, quiet pools, rock cliffs, deep forest and rocky shallows. We saw tons of folks sunning on the rocks.. lots of dogs and soem big birds. We even found a piece of a 19th centruy mill that was stuck in the river.. It was the perfect vermont thing.. Last time I did that was with Sam and his friends..

We spent the rest of this evening getting Gabe readdy for High Cascade. He’s leaving at 6AM tomorrow for a week of snowboarding on a glacier in Oregon. My main job was to mount.. and remount and reremount Gabes new bidings ot get his stance just right. it was weird to be working on a snowboard in 80 degree weather.

OK.. We have to make a grocery store run for Gabe’s trip… so I’ll sign of here.. It was a really nice day.. Hope you had one, too !

TTYL folks.. U2 Sam..
-me

ps. Diane’s poppies are out !

I woke this morning thinking abut Sam.. It’s still so unbelievable to me that he’s not here to enjoy the 4th. This was probably his 2nd favorite holiday after Halloween. How can he not be here to enjoy it. I don’t think I’ll ever get used to things like that..

It was late by the time I managed to get myself out of bed. I woke Gabe and we all eventually made it downstairs. We only had about a half hour to eat, get dressed and get down to Richmond for the parade.

We finally made it ut of the house around 10.. As we left, we noticed thi guy hanging on one of our windows.. Pretty special !

By the time we got to Richmond, parking was crazy. we had to park about a 1/4 mile down cochran rd to get to town..

That gave me soem good bumber sticker browsing time..

We got there in plety of time for the start of the parade.

The Governor was there…

As were the St. Andrews Pipers.

Lots of horses this year.

and farm equipment.

Old fire trucks and trucks from neigboring towns.

One really Sad note is that the town was the recent death of the 27 year old Fire Cheif BJ Millard. Hs wife has helped us out several times at the bank.. I’m so sad when I hear of a loss like this .

WWe had racing tractors.

and 4 wheelers

Batman and wonderwoman

Some cool old cars

And only a few floats. This years theme was ‘Vegas in Vermont. .. Kinda a hard one to follow , I think

The town band was there.

As was the Land Trust.

And the Civil war buffs.

Cochran’s brought there prized snow making machine

Here comes the Buxton’s float.

And the venerable wild boomers.. They play these weird instruments that are broomsticks with drums, tambourines, bells and horns..

A little less military presence this year.

Addie graves and family came crooning by.

Chelse B had his ‘unplug the drug’ anti-TV float.. He handed out hand minted aluminum coins !

Finnally came Marshal.. who closes out all the parades. He was carrying a reference to the song ‘The General’ by Dispatch .. A great song for the day

Gary’s solar bus was also in the parade !

It’s quite a palace inside !

After the aprade, Diane and I went and hung out in the park and talked to people. There were a ton of people there on this beautiful day. There were all the usual things, lemonade, ice creme, french fries, funny games..

Cool cars.

… and old friends.. Her’s are Amanda, and Jonathan and friend.. and Amanda’s baby who’s a big girl now !

We headed home around 1:30 and hung out there for the rest of the day. Kids came and went all day.. Gabe went back in to the park late afternoon and I fel asleep outside.. not a bad day at all..

We decided to meet Jen, Tim and Deb and Tuscano’s for dinner this evening before fireworks.. Tim and Wendy decided to join us as well. it was an excellent meal.. andgreat company.. the perfect end of the day..

We heard the first firework just as we stood up to lee. We walked quickly down bridge street to watch the fireworks. it was an excellent display in a beautiful deep dark blue sky.. ..

And that was the day.. full. fun.. and missing Sam…
OK friends.. goodnight to you all. Gnite Sam.. Happy 4th
-me

What a beautifully lazy, rainy day. I took the day off from work.. took only a few calls. and basically did absolutely nothing all day. Mid morning newlyweds Scott and Mary came over with their new puppy Rilo.. It was great seeing them.. they head out to California this weekend… we wanted to see them befor ethey left..

.. and I had to adjust Scott’s claws. i’d fit them to my hands which are evidently much smaller than Scott’s. It took only a few minutes now that I have a rosebud tip for my torch..

I lazed around the rest of the day.. it was raining outside.. s I did a little fun computer hacking, a little reading, a little napping . I couldn’t have done any less.. and it was great..

Areound 5:30 we (diane, gabe, will avery and I ) piled in the car and headed to Burlington for thir fireworks. The rain miraculously stopped at 6 and it tunred in to a cool clear evening. There was a ton of stuff hapening down at the woterfront including these afro-carribe drummers.

The croawd was dancing through a circle of folkks.. Kevin .. of course.. had to try..

We set up for a picnic and began the 2 hour wait for fireworks.

jen. Deb and we all all brought food..

We were joined by a growing group of kids..plus Hannah T , avid and their kids.

It was a beutiful eveing.. I just milled around while the girls talked..

I found this kid wearign a Sam shirt. we didn’t know each other.. but when I told him I was Sam’s dad he said ‘I’m sorry’.. I told him..I was so glad to see him wear the shirt !

Around 9:45 the fireworks began.. Max had just turned up after work. The first boom brought Sam so close to me. He loved fire and anything related.. I thought of him through the show.. .. which was really spectacular !

One freaky thing that happened is that Diane was holding baby Senyah, a bottle rocket from the crowd flew past Diane’s ear and almost hit the baby.I was leaning up against Diane and the the thing went right between us.We both stood up quickly to find it still smoldering between us. Wewere so freaked out.. as were Hannah and Dave.. they had to take thegirls away..

After the show , we all walked up t the car to give max his guitar. It was nice to all be together. max has to work tomorrow.. so we probably wont see him.. we promised to take him lots of pictures of the Richmond parade…

OK. that’s it for this evening. tomorrow’s the fourth. one of Sam’s favorite holidays. he’ll be much on our minds.. I’ll tell you how it goes… See you everyone.. tall to you later Sam
-me