Sandy Dreams

 After around two years I got my old job back, back on my old boat! Castaway Three is a 80 passenger sail boat.  So far so good. The boat has been neglected a little and needs some love. But I'm getting her back into shape.  The view out my office window!

 Thank you Rob and Chaun for hosting Thanksgiving. Can't beat the view! Or the weather!

 Well it got a little too cold in Oklahoma for Sis so we headed back to the islands for the winter. Our plane from Oklahoma City to Atlanta got delayed by a mechanical so we had to spend the night in Atlanta. Sis did really good on the plane. Only one accident in the Atlanta airport.

 I have been expanding my Mom's garden. I cut a tree down and got rid of some of the fence which almost doubled the garden in size. We built a trellis out of hog panels for the plants to grow on.   It's almost 40 feet long and 7 1/2 feet wide. It doubles as a greenhouse during the winter. Come May the plastic comes off and it's trellises only. I also built a raised bed with a hoop house for the winter and a cold frame. I also built a irrigation system. There is a manifold that connects to a garden hose. Then there is a valve to each pipe in the picture. I drilled a lot of holes in the pipes to water the garden.

 The big debate to buy a new modern door or try to salvage the 70+ year old original door for the wine cellar.  I took the original lock off the door and took it up to Coopers locksmith in Stillwater. In no time they had two new skeleton keys made and I am back in business with the original door. The new Keys! The North wall  As you walk down the staircase the North wall was poured concrete. The forms they used were boards. The imprint from the boards to the concrete is really good. The wall looked like concrete boards. So we stained the whole wall to look like wood. It turned out really well.  So now we have a real fake concrete wood wall! All that is left is to paint some fake nail heads on the boards.

 I finally finished the South wall of the Wine Cellar. Now all I have to do is go buy around 400 bottles of wine/whiskey!! There is lots of history of the different wood I used. The wood used to build the X's are from the original shelves in the cellar. The house was finished in 1950 so I'm guessing the wood is from the mid 40's. The shelves besides the mirror, in front of the mirror, the top shelf and the wine display shelf came from the smoke house on the Brixey place from around 1880. The original log cabin and smoke house was built by Barney Brixey my great great grandfather. The smoke house. The legs between the shelves came from the trellises down at the Cimmeron River. They were built by Franklin D. Roosevelt's WPA program sometime between 1935 and 1944 to help with erosion when the river floods. They are heavily treated with creosote and will probably last another 100 years. The mirror was my grandmothers. I'm not exactly sure how old it is. I do know it was...

 I took 618 our lear 40 up to 51,000 feet. That is the service ceiling of the plane. It is challenging to get the plane up there. I am close to a stall and over speed at the same time. Once I get there my fuel burn is around 430lbs a side vs 600 a side in the lower 40's. Incredible fuel savings. 51000! I've only been up there 3 or 4 times! I didn't get a picture outside because it was night time. But you can see the curvature of the earth or the edge of the earth depending on what you believe in!