Webster Art

I haven’t published a post in 7 weeks. When I feel like writing I’ve gotten in a habit of writing privately on my MacBook in the Notes application. Notes is my replacement for the more expensive Evernote…which I used for 15 years and loved. But like Photoshop, I don’t have the funds for expensive software.

A ton has happened over those 7 weeks. I’ll start with the most recent and work backwards. Today Sue and I drove up to babysit our grandkkids while Lisa had their potential new house inspected. Dan was working so she had asked us to help out. This was the first time Lisa had been involved in a house purchase. Dan owned a house when they got married.

She was understandably nervous. It is lot of money. The house they are selling is less expensive so their payments will take a big jump. But it will get them out of the sticks and into a decent town where everyday life will be much easier.

Working backward, our 24 year old gas water heater needed replacement. Sure, it might have run another 10 years, but Sue said the temperature was getting wonky, and common wisdom said a replacement was overdue.

Lowes ball parked it over $2000, and that was on the phone and without seeing our old pipes. And for a $500 heater? They said that a gas plumber had to come out first for an inspection, then more people had to come for the installation and removal.

I thanked him and hung up. I’ve installed two electric water heaters at our old house. But I was nervous about capping the gas line. However, I’ve been using propane campfires and camp stoves for decades and had some comfort level with gas. I called our gas company and explained I wanted to keep our gas fireplace but disconnect the gas water heater. He agreed that it was a simple diy job to cap a gas line. Turns out it’s just some yellow gas tape and a brass screw on cap. Plus, there is the original red shut off valve. It’s in the off position, and if for some crazy reason it gets knocked into “on”, the cap is there to seal off the gas. I did the standard test with soapy water…several times…and all is good.

Getting the gas tank out was really hard. The vent-chimney was two layers of 1mm 7 inch steel pipe enclosing an inner tube of 3 inch 2mm thick walled steel pipe. I spent at least two hours cutting that out with an angle grinder.

The heater is squeezed into a slot between the wall, the door and the washing machine, with a thick galvanized pipe directly in front blocking its exit. That pipe is the overflow drain and dumps excess pressure outside. It was a nightmare getting the damn thing cut out, drained, and hand trucked down the porch steps to the back yard.

Plumbing Nightmare

Unlike the original install, I wanted to install an expansion tank per current code, as I’d done at our last house. But the torque of the tank on the new galvanized steel plumbing created leaks.

After failing twice, both times with brand new steel I went back to youtube. After some research I realized an entire generation of plumbing had come and gone while I wasn’t paying attention. Copper had become the new standard, replacing galvanized steel. After 15 years, copper became yesterdays news in favor of the new latest greatest standard called PEX.

I’d seen it while Chad was rebuilding his Index cabin, I was like, “What the hell is that plastic junk? It looks like aquarium plumbing”. We took another trip to Home Depot. The ladies in the hardware aisle knew our story by then and were happy to assist us as we spent another $200 in PEX tools, piping and fittings.

But the fun wasn’t over. I had a tee joint exiting the wall in 40 year old galvanized pipe. I wanted to start the PEX there but the 10 inch steel pipe coming up out of there was frozen at the joint. Nothing would loosen that 1980’s joint. Not force, not a heat gun, nothing. I was deathly afraid of breaking the pipe down inside the wall. It would have cost us upwards of fifteen grand if that broke. Because at that point Sue would have called a plumber for a complete house re-plumbing job.

More internet searching found a youboob video of a guy heating a steel pipe glowing red hot with a torch. Looked like a great way to light the house on fire. I built a heat shield from aluminum sheet metal and a turkey roasting pan. After heating that thing red hot, Sue standing by with a fire extinguisher, it finally broke free. I put a steel to brass PEX fitting in using my best dope over tape joint and plumbed the water heater. This time I supported the expansion tank properly on the wall to studs. So there was no tension on the joints.

In my new plumbing job #3 there were only two non PEX joints: wall to the PEX and exp. tank to the pex. The wall joint weeped. I cut the first section of PEX out and discovered that joint was not tight. It had been tight when I installed it…but it got loose. I used a new fitting, only 3 wraps of tape and a new brand of dope over the tape. And I reefed that sucker down like a mofo. I’m talking 95% of everything I’ve got. I put it all back together and no leaks after a week.

I bought a leak detector from Amazon and installed a floor drain. One of the detectors is under the house to detect both fresh water leaks and drain leaks.

We had a little trouble with hooking up the power. That is a lot of wire to pack into a tiny cavity on top of the heater. I won’t go into detail…but we called our electrician back and he got it hooked up in no time

Chris and I went up and did GM to Heart of the Country. I was feeling weak and she had to lead every pitch. Against doctors orders, I’d lowered my PMR medication to the point where my knees hurt.

While all this was going on I spent a couple weeks tinkering with a portrait of Rose. While building a frame for it I realized my son’s Rigid miter saw had a bent fence. I got a new DeWalt and it is flawless.

My old cast iron frame clamps were causing me trouble. I’d been hearing about people using ratchet frame clamps so took a break from plumbing to drive up to Rockler and buy their clamp.

My portrait of Rose was very troublesome. It kept looking like a doll and I couldn’t see the problem. Lisa immediately saw that the chin and cheek were too long. Finally, since I seemed to be blind, I brought the painting in to Affinity (like Photoshop but cheaper). I set the painting above the reference photo layer and made the painting layer semi transparent. This allowed me to see where my drawing errors were. I noticed that her right eye was completely wrong…almost anime wrong. Note the guide grids I’ve drawn over the photo defining eyes, nose and mouth. I drew those guides with the pen tool.

Below is one of my many failures. Note how the portrait of the face doesn’t match the grid I built over the photo, errors shown in red. Affinity is great for this. It replaces Photoshop and it’s super cheap. Like a one time purchase of $70? In an ideal world I’d be able to see these errors without technology. To that end I bought some artist calipers. Sculptors have used these for a thousand years.

After several more hours over a couple days she began to look real. Not perfect…but so close that more tinkering was irrelevant.

Going even further back in history I had fun trip with Chris to a new 4 pitch route called Cloud Flare at Look Out Point. My knees were pain free and strong on the way up. Only one rest break above the idaho turn off. The climbing was fun 5.7 though I grabbed a cam 15 feet up. i should have gone right. Pitch one has a senior citizens style crack, very sticky and shorter. Bring 15 slings and long sling any sharp corners. Pitch two has a Klahanie crack capped by a undercling traverse on sticky slab. At the end of that you have to pass a bulge with great pro and the crux move. I stepped right on steep slab which worked on follow.

Pitch 3 goes thru what they call choss, but I found moderately good gear. No loose rock, just steep water polished gully style stemming. Gear is minimal and not inspiring but not truly dangerous. l was glad I’d recently done front 180 to have my friction feet dialed. 

At the bottom of pitch 4 we were looking up from the shade at the flagpole 70 feet away blowing in the sunlight. Chris didn’t have summit fever and wanted to rappel. I kept thinking we were so close and I’d never seen the summit. I wanted to summit  but knew she wanted to rap. There was no need to summit that day, I could always come back.

Plus, to summit, we’d have to climb right by or over the two huge 4 foot stacked blocks 40 feet directly above us. They were completely undercut and the worst one was only held in place where a 3 inch corner was jammed precariously against an overhanging wall. Draped over the two blocks was a stiff and crusty handline. 

I was trying to be a good partner by agreeing to rap, even though I wanted to summit. She was aware of this and offered to summit, but only if I led the pitch. It was an interesting dialog where we were both trying to be good partners despite differing desires. Neither wanted to be a dick. Finally we checked the time and realized that at 3, we had up to four hours to summit and deal with any stuck ropes on the 4 rappels to the ground. 

I led up, using knots in the cheesy handline for protection since there was minimal gear. There were two lovely splitters on the summit block. One needed two 4’s and a 5, which we didn’t have. The other was a steep hand crack, overhung at the bottom. Both looked fun for a later trip with more time and gear.

The raps were uneventful, there are anchors all over Lookout Point. As we started hiking down there were some shockingly exposed sections of cliff directly above Private Idaho. It was “one slip and you’re dead” trail. Fortunately the route developers have done a ton of trail work involving huge trees shoring up the exposed sections.

My left knee got some kind of a fluky crap out syndrome. My right has been doing that lately, but it was fine. The left let loose a burst of pain and collapsed, causing me to sink down into a crack between boulders. It was extremely painful and completely unexpected. That kind of bullshit 40 minutes up a climber trail can be very bad.

Chris was a hundred feet downhill and saw me having trouble. She offered to take the rope, despite already having the rack. I realized that was smart and sat on a boulder during the changeover and took a couple ibuprofen. Prior to that, back in mid September:

Squamish with Craig

We did 9 pitches of super fun bolt clipping on Front 180. I easily navigated each crux. The worst one was where the face is streaked with rising thin finger cracks. You have to step off right to get a reliable side pull on the cracks. Other cruxes were simply tucking my toe into thin pockets on the vertical seams. Bolts are always close.

Craig needed more exercise so I drove him to the top of Mamquam road, a 3000 foot hill. He mountain biked down and back up 3 times – not electric, just muscle power. And pedaled to Saveon where I was waiting.

We bought a burger from Flipside. Eating out in the dark with the firepit warming us we talked about our shared interests. He is my son’s oldest friend. We all used to climb together so our memories go back 30 years.

In the car, Craig said: “You want to go do Penny Lane by moonlight?”

“Ah, shit, I can’t say no. This is a thing we do, repeatedly, going back decades. If I say no it means I’ve gotten old.”

“Yupp, can’t have that.”

When we arrived at Penny Lane in the darkness we found a couple dudes drinking beers by headlamp. They had been there all afternoon and had just finished working on the route to the left of Crime of the Century, in the dark.

“You guys here to do a lap of Penny Lane in the moon light?”

“Yeah, we were sitting in the tavern drinking a beer and eating a hamburger. I was looking forward to sleeping when Craig asked if I wanted to do Penny Lane by moonlight”

“Oh man, we all need someone in our life to ask us that! You’re a lucky man!”

There was no moon light yet on Penny Lane, plus it’s a built anchor with a traverse to the rap station. That was too many red flags for me so he led Quarry Man which has aligned top rope anchors. I had just led it with Joan a week previously and found it very do-able in the dark.

There is more, but I’ve covered the major stuff. Keeping a blog is a lot of work. I’ll add more photos later.