12/28-30/15 I went up to Camp Serendipity for 3 days: Monday through Wednesday.

I adjusted my schedule this week because Bill and Cam and maybe even Dave planned to visit up there on Monday. We had planned to meet at noon so I cut my visit with Uncle Charles short and didn’t play a game of checkers this time. On the way, I stopped and delivered a jar of Ellen’s jam to Marilyn and then proceeded on over the pass. Before I lost cellphone service, I called Bill’s phone and Cam answered. He told me that they wouldn’t be up until the next day.

Since my schedule was moved up, I had called Mike Dickinson before I left and asked him to plow my driveway before noon. About a mile before Camp Serendipity, I saw Mike on his tractor going the other way. We waved at each other. I arrived at Camp Serendipity just about exactly at noon.

The snow was over three feet on the ground so it was a good thing the driveway was cleared. Mike did a good job so there was plenty of parking space.

I made trails through the deep snow to the foot of the concrete staircase and then used my aluminum scoop to shovel the steps clear. Then I made the trail from there to the back door of the cabin. I raised the flag and went back down to the truck to get my gear.

When I got down there, Ron Siderits drove up and we had a nice visit. When he left, I brought my gear up, had my lunch, built a fire in the stove and took a nap. Then I frittered the rest of the day away working on the jigsaw puzzle and talking to an old friend on the telephone.

On Tuesday morning it was clear and 20° outside. There had been no new snow and the trees were still loaded with frozen snow. It was beautiful. I cleared away a bunch of tarpaper from the front porch that had been left over from the roof repair job and I re-measured for the front stoop. Then I replaced a few light bulbs that had burned out. And then I had my lunch.

Cam called me and told me that their ETA was 2:00. They showed up at 2:45 and made their way through the snow to the concrete staircase. They didn’t have the proper footwear so the going was a little tough, but they both made it up to the cabin. I was delighted to see them.

I had a bunch of questions for Bill and I started right out asking him. I wanted his advice on how to design the front porch stoop and how to build the rails for the front porch stairs. I also took him down to the crawlspace to give me his opinion about how to deal with the groundwater down there. He gave me some good ideas. His advice is always good and much appreciated.

Bill offered to give me some leftover eggs he had down in his truck and was worried that they would freeze. I offered to go down and get them. When I looked in the cooler, I saw that there was some beer in there also and I was worried that it would freeze, so I brought the whole cooler up to the cabin. It was too late for the eggs because they were all mostly frozen and broken. I said that we could eat them anyway so I put them in the refrigerator.

We had a great time visiting around the warm wood stove. I decided to have them help me make a fire piston like I saw on YouTube. I had all the piece parts so I got out the tools we needed and we set to work. Cam cut the copper stubout to length, Bill cut a bunch of cloth patches we were going to reduce to charcoal and he cut the head off the screw for a drawer knob and sharpened the end of the screw. I cut the dowel to length, cut the kerf for the O-ring and drilled the holes in the ends.

When we tried to make the char-cloth, I bungled it and dropped the cat food can with the cloth patches into the fire. There was no hope. The fire was so hot that it melted the can almost immediately into a little glowing blob. We made the char-cloth by lighting the cloth on fire and then extinguishing it by placing it on the coal shovel and covering it with a big hammer head. It sort of worked.

When the thing was ready, we greased up the O-ring with Vaseline, loaded the char-cloth in the end of the piston and we each took turns plunging the piston into the copper cylinder. We never did get the char-cloth to glow and catch fire. After a few attempts, we gave up and turned our attention to dinner.

My culinary skills rank among the lowest of anyone and yet Bill and Cam wanted to eat whatever I usually fix for myself. I usually cook yams in the microwave and heat up some pre-cooked meat. I don’t use any seasonings or sauces or anything like that but I offered them some salt and pepper, which they declined.

After cooking three yams, I got a big pre-cooked beef roast of some type out of the freezer. Cam helped me read the time to cook it in a microwave, but neither of us caught on to the fact that the instructions were for refrigerated but not frozen meat.

After the microwave dinged, I brought the meat to the table but I couldn’t cut through it. It was frozen solid in the middle. So I stuck it back in the microwave and tried again. After three or four of these attempts, we agreed to eat it the way it was. We had already eaten our yams while we were waiting, so now we ate that meat. I have to say that it really was good meat. It was just the preparation that got low marks. After dinner we shared one of their dark beers and that really was good.

I showed them the options that they had for sleeping. After due consideration, Bill choose to sleep on the single bed in the loft and Cam slept on the inflatable bed which he also set up in the loft. I slept downstairs in my usual bed. Cam said he slept well and Bill did too early on, but he woke up early in the morning and couldn’t get back to sleep.

I also woke up early in the morning. The moon was so bright that it seemed as if it were already daybreak but it wasn’t. I felt the first tickle of a cold coming on, so I got up and gargled and sniffed some warm salt water and went back to bed. It seemed to help.

On Wednesday morning, it was 16° outside when we all got up. We decided to try those frozen eggs for breakfast. I expected Bill or Cam to cook them up, but they evidently hadn’t had enough of my cooking. They told me to go ahead and cook the eggs my usual way and they would follow my recipe.

My recipe is to put one tablespoon of olive oil and one tablespoon of milk in a Pyrex one-quart container. Then crack two eggs into it, beat them up with a spoon, and cook them in the microwave for 2:40 minutes. I also showed them my recipe for toast, which is two slices bread in the toaster. I also heated some little smokies on a plate in the microwave.

When my breakfast was ready, Bill followed my recipe, but toward the end of his egg-cooking time, there was a mild explosion in the microwave. He cleaned up the pieces and finished cooking his breakfast.

But when Cam tried to do the same thing, there was a fairly substantial explosion in the microwave and his entire breakfast was splattered all over the inside of the microwave. I simply cannot explain why that happened to them and not to me.

Cam declined to try any more eggs and said that the toast, the smokies, and the banana were enough breakfast for him.

We did some more visiting and laughing and the two of them left around noon. After they were gone, I went down to the crawlspace and put the Styrofoam blocks in the vent openings to keep the plumbing down there from freezing. Then I packed up my stuff, closed the place up, and left for home at 12:45. It was a great week. I had a delightful time visiting with those two.