Oct 4 - oil, wine, docks, gazebo, Matthew

There were two major activities yesterday -- a trip into town with used oil and wine empties and squaring away the docks and gazebo.

I had lots of used oil, mostly from car oil changes from the last couple of years.  The garage in town has a furnace that burns the stuff -- environmentally certified.  I had three of the large plastic cooking oil containers (16 liter ?), two full of motor oil and one with cooking oil, plus three 8-liter and two 4-liter motor oil containers.  The last two came from Jason.

On the wine bottle side, that was an exact count -- 60 -- and I got $12 in deposit back. 

So that was easy.

Up next -- the gazebo.  That basically took the afternoon.  With three docks in place, I went round and round.  It just takes time.  Included in that time is hanging the Christmas lights.

The tarp is in rough shape.  I told Jason that I was going to throw it away in the Spring and force myself to purchase new ones.  I should really look into those heavy duty truck tarps.  Don has panels that he's made up to secure his gazebo; Stan wraps his in plastic.  Don's solution is a good one but that's one more thing that would have to be stored, and they'd be big, since the gazebo is basically 14'x14'.

The last part of that project is then tying the docks together side by side; the easy part.

Jason and Lorraine laid out snacks and we ate and drank on their deck.  Tonight we're going to have chicken wings ... the swan song for our season.  They head back to Brantford tomorrow (Thursday) and we head south on Sunday.

It stayed cloudy all day but pleasant enough to be out there in shorts and a t-shirt working.  That's just me stretching the summer ! 

Meanwhile, back in NSB, Matthew is bearing down; now in the Bahamas.  Our hatches have been battened since we left in May but Lisa is going to do one last check around.  The current prediction is 80 mph winds on Thursday but that all depends on exactly where it tracks, how far out to sea and, hopefully not a direct hit. 

It should be out of the way before the Cracker Swamp 1200k next week, thank goodness, but the Taste of Carolina 1200k that's supposed to start tomorrow may have been a casualty.  I saw a post from one rider saying fugedabouit (sp?).  I don't know if that was just him or the event.

We'll be watching what happens in NSB as the National Weather Service (US) continues to provide updates.

Onward ?