I'm trying desperately to get caught up here before the summer ends. The weekend before Mom and Dad came to visit was a busy one. Nathan came down, Sarah met Livia for the first time (her international student-friend), I rented an "Electric Eel" from Home-Depot to snake the clogged main drain from the house, and Sarah and I took Zhora to her first lumberjack competition.
These first few are gratuitous and self-indulgent shots of my own small forays into lumberjackdom.
Jonas loves to go to Pat's to help me work the horses, mend the fences, and process the trees. He does get a little tired after awhile... or lazy; it's hard to tell. Anyway, he loves to ride on the tractor. We do this a lot, but since I'm normally the cameraman, I don't have any pictures of it, so I asked Pat to take this shot.
I took this one because I wanted a close up of Jonas and myself. I just trimmed my beard yesterday and, looking at this picture makes me miss it. It was a good beard, but it
was getting a little silly. Anyway... that was Friday. On Sunday we got up early and headed to
Boonville, NY for the
last day of the games.
We were surprised (at least Sarah and I were, Zhora seemed to take it in stride) to see A. how big the event was and B. how many vendors there were. Usually this kind of blatant commercialism bothers me, but apparently when what is being sold splits logs into 8 sections in one step, my punk rock attitude takes a back seat.
There were several food huts, but not as many as you might think. There were smoothies and hot dogs and cheese steaks, lots of fries, pizza, and of course ice cream and funnel cake. This one sold all things elk. We were all pretty impressed with the size of the antlers.
The size, quantity, and variety of the machines was surprising. These were what our fore fathers had in mind when they wrote about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; cut from the original document was Jefferson's eloquently written, but questionably placed prose on the
TW-Pro MP XL Firewood Processor. "The tree of liberty must be felled and split from time to time with the sweat and blood of lumbermen and there is no better machine that I can think of than Timber Wolf's Pro MP Firewood Processor." Franklin argued that the Declaration of Independence was no place for Jefferson's proclivity for lobbying and self interest and the sections about Timber Wolf, Coca Cola, and Monsanto were all removed from the final document. Still, the Pro MP
is a heck of a machine.
So, after we wandered around for a little bit, got some salted potatoes, ice cream, and thick fresh cut fries with malted vinegar, we settled into our bleachers for some competition. This is my favorite event, called
springboard chop.
The competitors start on the ground, chop a bite into the trunk, throw in a springboard, jump up and repeat that, then jump up again, and from what is essentially a pirate's plank, chop off the top foot of the pole! It is very exciting and cool to watch. The guy on the right is Mr. Waterfield. He is one bad lumberjack. We rooted for him all day, and although I don't think he won, he was awesome in all his heats in all his events. I'm not real knowledgeable about the whole scoring of this thing, but there were a couple events he didn't compete in, and he got DQ'd in the open hot saw event (probably for going faster and more hardcore than was acceptable). Anyway, we had a good time choosing someone to cheer for. Zhora still talks about him... so does Sarah.
Here you can see Nathan Waterfield relaxing and waiting for his competition to catch up. He placed two springboards and highballed up the pole in 66 seconds. He could have lit a pipe while he waited for his heat to wrap up... and done the whole event again before the last man finished!
Zhora was in the minority, being neither overweight nor attired in flannel or truckers cap. She made up for these deficiencies by cheering, clapping, rooting, and generally being more enthusiastic than most of the people around us. She even yelled at me a couple times for taking pictures when I should have been shouting or clapping.
The materials of the games have been standardized in the last decade or so. Apparently until very recently betting on the games wasn't especially difficult; bet on the guy with the smaller log with less knots. Now they take pains to make sure everyone gets a fair shake. The posts in the front are for the springboard competition, the horizontal posts were used for the crosscut competition and for the hot saw, and the tall tall posts in the back were used for the tree felling competition.
Between events we walked around some more. There was an great little tent filled with raptors and this beautiful lady vulture. I've really come to appreciate turkey vultures of late. They are impressive and under-appreciated birds. This one was in a playful mood and flew off the handlers glove and scared the crap out of several small children. It was pretty funny... once I knew the bird was ok. The woman who told us about all the rescued birds was very nice and brought most of the birds out for everyone to see. There was a barn owl and a barred owl (who don't like each other), a peregrine falcon, a Harris's hawk, a kestral, and two screech owls. We learned that the odd calls we've been hearing at dusk lately are screech owls. The evening campfires feel more exciting somehow.
This is a hot saw. It's like a snow mobile and a chainsaw had a baby. It is a very exciting animal.
Also, it is loud. Speaking of, I had my hearing tested in a booth at the show. Turns out, according to the test at least, that I have great hearing. So now I really don't know what my problem is. Probably something in my auditory cortex.
Strong like Mr. Waterfield! Check out the size of the wood "chips" the woodsmen were chopping! Incredible!
I have no idea what happened here, but got a real kick out of imagining that somebody just got overzealous and defoliated everything that resembled a tree in the area.
On our way out at the end of the show. A lot of big wood had been turned into smaller wood.
Life is good.
