House, what house?

Usually I don't like leaving the island even to go home. Do not get me wrong, I can't wait to get back to San Francisco when I know I'm going but I also know it is a break in momentum. While it is primarily psychological the truth is I rapidly fall out of "work" shape no matter how much hiking etc I do at home. Sixty will do that to you especially when combined with concrete and form work. It is a brutal three weeks when I return to get back in shape.


San Francisco was wonderful as usual. Who would not like returning to your wife, Pacific Heights on Broadway and a Lexus coupe in the garage? I mean really folks, food, museums, movies, a bathroom, hot water, friends, and countless other distractions to help forget the clusterf'k that was the last few months on St John. All this and more concluded with a trip to Texas to visit my mother and other family.

Proving once again the old maxim that you take your head wherever you go there was a Chihuly glass exhibit/installations at the DeYoung and Legion museums when I arrived. Who knows what he named it but it looked like a reef in glass. St John on my brain.

Summer in San Francisco

In a blink San Francisco was over and we flew to Texas. Once there we decided to take my mother on an African safari. Only in Texas! This place was a trip. It turns out it is very close to Granbury where my mother lives.

Fossils going to see fossils!

She is why I don't eat meat. :~)

We were warned Zebras bite.

Ostriches are a whole lot bigger than you think. Once they get their head inside the car you are in deep trouble. Very nasty and fast. They will get any food.

Emu, a lot nicer than the ostriches.

The weeks went by in a blur. I returned to St John after July 4th, missing the Carnival.

To get back in shape I started removing the remaining forms from the retaining walls. At best I can work a four/five hour day to start. The heat exhaustion just knocks me down. The biggest hurdle is mental. Just getting up to start work knowing what I face is the hardest part.

These forms have to stay up now because of the voids. Another wonderful pour job with hot concrete. (These are the same pics from a prior post.)

With the forms done, I then arranged for all my steel to be trucked up from Elvis's where it had been stored since November 2006. I put it up by the water tanks. That will save $200 month. From the top of the driveway I'll be able to drag it down piece by piece as I need it. It was well worth keeping it at Elvis's. It is much drier down in the valley. The steel showed no real rust despite sitting open nearly two years in the tropics.

Heavy rains, a constant random threat, caused another small mud slide in the septic covering the rebar. Digging mud again! Yikes. The game here is every break in work has a potential downside. Until every project is completed the elements can cause trouble. Working alone or with another person has added inherent risk because projects take longer.

Bad news from home. Denise got laid off. Not good. It is one thing for me to be away for months at a time but at least Denise had work to keep her mind off my absence. Weekends were already tough. Now it will be seven days a week. With this as backdrop I start digging out the septic yet again. It is at this point Denise is very sympathetic to my digging in the mud--I'm being set up.

Usually it's, "that's the choice you made now get it done"!

For several years we have had an open invitation to sail Turkey and the Greek isles with our friends Dave and Patricia. They keep their 44' Beneteau in Turkey, spending summer's sailing in the Mediterranean. Denise gets it in her head that now is the time. I resist as usual. This house is never getting built!

To make a long story short I spend the next ten days trying to get tickets to Istanbul using mileage on United, which at the time is imploding with the stock market decline and rising crude oil prices. Truth is, I thought they were headed for their second bankruptcy along with our miles. Between us, we have several hundred thousand miles.

As anyone who has tried to put a trip together with miles knows, one leg is always easy with the other being near impossible. I spent the ten days mentioned calling from St John at midnight California, Chicago, London and Istanbul time looking for cancellations. My dates were open, any class of service. Why midnight? I was told by different United reps that each of those cities was the control point for the trip I was trying to organize and that cancellations would be posted midnight their time. Too funny, but I kept calling anyway.

Finally after several cancelled 72 hour bookings someone cancelled on the Istanbul-Frankfurt leg in business class. When could we return? In five weeks! That is why our trip was over five weeks. Business class round trip, upstairs on a 747. The last time I was upstairs on a 747 in the 70's, it was a bar and smoking lounge, I had hair down to my ass, all the while up to no good.

Hoo rah! Going sailing again!

Building a house, what house?

I got home, burnt about 50 cd's for the boat, scored a new digital movie camera and pumped up the ipod. Ordered everything on Amazon to be delivered to SF when I arrived. It was a hectic three weeks, SF-St John-SF-Istanbul. The pics link is on the blog home page. The seven hours of film will be a editing project on Denise's Mac Pro using i-movie, later to be burnt to dvd.

Istanbul.......

9 1/2 weeks

As previously mentioned in the last update the "blowout" had changed the nature of the pour sequence. The septic slab was not poured and all attention was directed to the driveway. After Denise returned home in the first week of April, Thor and I were left with a short punch list while waiting for concrete. I had previously put in my order and paid for it expecting to pour in about ten days.



Work proceeded very quickly in shoring up the upper and lower retaining walls. One blow out was enough!

The repaired lower wall.

Then we waited for concrete. The ten days came and went. The normal run of excuses, rain etc. Thor had to leave. He had hopes of jumping down to Antigua for race week and getting a crew position to either sail to Europe or back to New England. It's a well worn trail. I did the same back in 1974 and ended up sailing the entire Caribbean jumping ship in Panama and heading up to Guatemala. Years later I was to sail the South Pacific on the same yacht--the Diogenes--out of Sausalito no less. Go figure.

Bad news, good news, bad news. Thor didn't find any boat worth sailing on and returned to St John to plan his flight home. I was still waiting for concrete after three weeks and counting. What to do besides sitting here at Turtle bay in Caneel.

What to do? The lower deck!

Previously when the pool had been dug we distributed the earth to grade the deck to the level of the beams I had built and poured. Basically all we had to do was lay in the rebar and attach it to the existing foundation slab and tie it to the rebar sticking out of the beams. It was at this point I decided to cantilever the deck out three feet past the footing beam to extend my drip edge. Besides gaining a wider deck, at additional expense and labor, it allowed more of my fill slope to be protected. Just the thought of having a level work area was enough enticement to get the work done before the concrete arrived. I added to the concrete order bringing it up to 30 yards.

We laid a double grid seven feet wide through the center. Average pour depth was probably 12". I'd rather just pour extra concrete than try to get everything to six/eight inches. I used all my old galvanizing from my gravel chute for the floor in the center.


They are always inspecting the work.

In other great news, the road up the mountain was to be graded and paved--finally. This has been a rumor for years. The new Governor said he would get it done. Supposedly the money was allocated years ago when the road was designated a federal emergency access road. Is any of this true? I have not a clue. From my truck's perspective it can't happen soon enough. After more than 1500 trips I don't know how many more are left in her. It's hard to convey how difficult the road can be. It changes weekly depending upon the weather.

The view from Dr. Bob's driveway. The really only level part of the road.


Bad news again. The concrete got delayed once again. Thor had to go home. Now the waiting begins again. And wait I did for another 5 1/2 weeks. I can barely talk about it. I heard every imaginable excuse. From broken axles, hospitalizations, no sand, sunken barges, the wrong sized gravel to wrong parts from Puerto Rico. Worse still I was told a new excuse one or two days prior to my expected delivery date each week. After a while you start to take it personally. I don't do that well. I go to places I shouldn't. Yes of course I confronted the people, within reason, but what are you going to really do when they are the only folks that have what you need. Not to mention every delay has always cost me something--mud slides, money, warped forms, extra labor to name a few. What would it be this time?

So there I sat, stewing everyday. Waiting and waiting. I could go to the beach? Don't I wish. That only makes it worse as my mood got darker every day. That's all I'm going to say about it.

Before and after. I let the rain wash my work clothes. It's good for about three washings. Then they walk to the laundromat.

The bright spot, they started the road repair expecting it to take ninety days to grade and pour the .3 of a mile that gave the road its reputation.

The road before it was graded.

These guys along with several other heavy equipment operators were going to ruin my day.

During the middle of the tenth week Jeff called and said he was coming in the morning. Sure Jeff whatever you say. As always bring extra crew. I pay Jeff for crew. How smart is that? Had I not had this arrangement I would have been paying a crew one day a week to sit around and do nothing the previous nine weeks. I learned that lesson a few pours back.

He actually showed up!!! I'm speechless. While they set up the pumper truck Jeff and I go down the hill to talk to the road crew to arrange for the cement trucks to get by as they come up. They know the drill.

Jeff calls for the first truck to be sent. Typically it takes about 35/40 minutes to get here, weather and traffic permitting. After the first truck arrives they usually send the next one and so it goes until the pour is finished. I've got four trucks coming. Waiting for the first truck we have a little time to relax and get ready. The calm before the storm so to speak.

After about ninety minutes Jeff calls to find out where the concrete is. Where's the truck? We don't know we sent it over an hour ago! (of course there is no cellphone coverage coming up the mountain) With that Jeff and I jump in my truck and race down the hill to find the truck.

Not good! Sure enough the road crew is blocking the truck with heavy equipment while finishing a trench. The screaming and yelling starts. I just watch, it's in a language I don't understand. Jeff is not to messed with when he puts aside his buzz and his rasta love. Let's just say the equipment started moving very quickly. Here's the best part, there's not one concrete truck but two with another waiting at the bottom of the hill. Majestic screwed up and just sent trucks without checking.

What should have been a leisurely pour, if there is such a thing, with some hard work pouring the deck and slabs has now turned into a race with very hot concrete and I mean very hot--it was going off in the trucks. Stateside this pour would not have happened. The concrete would be discarded. But we ain't in Kansas anymore.

The first truck backing down the cul de sac. The truth is, it's a minor miracle that they can even get here. Jeff says I have the worst pour when you combine location, slope and the amount of pipe to lay, on island. I'm sure of it. It's hard on the equipment and workers. No doubt I get bumped at the drop of a hat.

Backing into the pumper truck.

Everyone is frantic now. If anything goes wrong we are all screwed, the trucks and the job. There is no room for error. We start with the deck. How hot is the concrete in the first truck? We poured 10x15 sections and we only had time to screed them with a 2x4. We could not bull float them no matter how much water we spread about. Same with the pool slab. Forget the septic, we didn't have time to put the pipe out and back. I called to cancel the last truck. Thankfully knowing our predicament they had not sent it. It had six yards.

Next to go was the lower retaining wall. We caught a small break as they changed trucks. I tried everything to smooth out the pool slab while they then jumped up to the upper retaining wall. Everyone was working as fast as they could trying to break down pipe and get to the upper wall. It can set up in the pipes.

As the lower picture below shows it plugged itself and didn't fill up the wall. Also by having to cancel the last truck we ran short on the other end of the wall which still stands unfinished waiting for my next pour.

The other end where we ran out of concrete. We are about two feet short of the top over the last ten feet.

At least the blow out wall is fixed.

Finally a level deck to work on. The small pool/jacuzzi will be under the blue tarp at the far corner.

When it was all done I had two unfinished walls, an unpoured septic slab for the second time and a deck and pool slab looking like lumpy gravy. If that wasn't enough I had concrete chemical burns blistering on my right arm and shoulder, both thighs and my ass from where I had accidentally sat down while straddling the upper retaining wall trying to screed the top. I could not sit right for a few days. I don't know what was worse, that or having to pay for this SNAFU.

So I did what any grown man would do, I cried and booked another flight home. I say another because I had already cancelled two flights with the concrete delays. Folks don't understand the chain reaction delays cause. This time it cost me two flights, Thor had to go home, a hectic pour with shoddy results, thanks to the road crew and majestic sending trucks without checking, unfinished walls that can't be back filled leaving the upper deck delayed, a septic still to be poured and Majestic owing me six yards that they may forget about by the time I organize another pour.

The silver lining? The road work continues. The parts completed feel like a magic carpet ride. I still have to pinch myself. Electricity, a paved road, cell phone connectivity and a wireless computer hook up, I don't care how slow it is. All that in less than two years where previously there was nothing.

I busied myself taking down some forms and smoothing out the pool slab with my hammer drill while waiting for my flight. The drill made short work of the slab and keyways for the coming walls.

Someone lost control of this short 2x6 when they were pouring the small columns inside the small room we made for the pool equipment.

At last off to the ferry to catch a plane.

I have since found out by reading other accounts that other folks have suffered even longer concrete delays all with the same excuses. In some cases they had to pay the crews. Yes I know I should have gone to the beach.