6/13-15/16 I went up to Camp Serendipity for 3 days: Monday through Wednesday.

My schedule was a little crowded this week. I had an appointment with my cardiologist mid-day on Monday and I was scheduled for cataract surgery on Thursday. So I went up to Camp Serendipity as soon as I was done with the doctor on Monday. I arrived at 4:00 PM

There was a light rain but it was intermittent and didn't amount to much. I carried my gear up to the cabin, got my work clothes on and went out into the woods. I checked on Paul, the giant sequoia tree, and then beat a path through the brush to the big snag on the edge of the cliff that I wanted Robert to cut down for me. I had talked with him earlier and I expected him to come to Camp Serendipity the next day, Tuesday. If that snag falls by itself, it will go all the way across the road and could cause a problem. If it falls on my property, it will give me a good supply of firewood and not hurt anything. That's why I want Robert to take it down.

Next I worked a little on the staircase tread and then got a call from Dave. We had a nice long conversation and we agreed to have a telephone conversation every week.

On Tuesday I went down to the truck and got Cindy, the loppers, and brought them up to use cutting through the brush to make a trail over to the snag. I also cleared the cliff edge so that Robert would have good access to the tree in order to cut it down.

Next I went to work on the tread. After several trials using carbon paper and the Bulldog I got the tread to fit nicely into the stringer notches. Then I drilled the holes for the lag screws. Just about then, Nancy Bartholomew stopped by and invited me to dinner at 5:00.

After she left, I mixed up a batch of Board Defense and sprayed it on the tread and the stringers. Then I went in for lunch and a nap. When I got up, I stained the tread and stringers and bolted the tread into place. Robert still had not showed up, but I took a risk and went in and showered anyway. There was still no sign of Robert when I left for the Bartholomew's at 4:50.

At the dinner, I met Stacy, who is renting the house directly across the road from Camp Serendipity. She has been living there for the past couple months but this is the first time I had met her.

Dave and Nancy served an excellent dinner of barbequed lamb, salad, rice, Nancy's special chocolates, and a nice rhubarb sauce she made from some rhubarb she picked at Camp Serendipity when she came over to give me the invitation.

Stacy walked back to Camp Serendipity with me after the dinner and I showed her around the place including the cabin model and the bronze Mt. Rainier model.

On Wednesday morning, I tried planing the next tread and discovered that the planer blades were woefully dull. I took them out of the planer and ground them to a sharp edge again. When I put them back into the machine, I adjusted them to be a little more aggressive than they had been before.

When I tried the planer on the tread blank, it worked much better than ever before. I planed the curved side of the blank and the ends. Then I used the planer to chamfer the curved edges and to fashion the tread nose. Finally, I screwed the small plywood boards to the ends of the blank and packed up to leave. I left for home at 1:00 after having my lunch.