I've been gone for a while and haven't had a lot of time for posting although I did jump online from time to time to check what was going on here.
What have I been up to? Learning and working. Since I last posted at the end of March I moved to KY for work. The company gave me two weeks to move and since I couldn't find, nor did I have the funds, for an apartment in the area I choose to find a campground to stay while I got a few paychecks in my bank account.
Now a little background on me. I’ve always liked adventure and can find the adventure in most anything. I've lived in large cities for most of my life, NYC area and Miami. I've also lived in MI for a total of 12 years and only 3 of those years did I live in a country setting on 40 acres, in a small town of 2000 people. I've always loved the country. I was always uncomfortable in cities. When I was a kid I was in the boy scouts and loved going camping and getting out in the ‘wilds’ (at least as wild as campgrounds near large cities had). I grew up learning various trades mostly from my uncles; carpentry, plumbing, electrical, masonry, tiling, etc. Now I'm not the greatest at these things but I can get things done when the need arises. I've had various array of jobs; security, cooking, construction, manufacturing, scuba diving, advertising, stock trading, and others.
Fast forward to my move to KY.
I have very limited knowledge about camping. Most of what I learned is from the boy scouts, TV shows i.e. survivor man, YouTube, sites like this, and some common sense. I found a campground as close to work as I could that had water and electric at the site. I packed what I could in my car including some borrowed camping supplies (a tent, 2 sleeping bags, and a hot plate), a couple bags of rice, a few bags of black beans, a jar of peanut butter, several cans of tuna, 5 gallons of water, a suitcase full of clothes, various tools (mechanics tools, hatchet, etc), things to cook on an open fire, and my last $600 ($400 of which went to rent for the campsite for a month).
I set up my campsite pretty quickly and knew that the temps were going to drop a bit. Since I lived in MI for a while I wasn't to worried about the cold. I knew the tent wasn't meant for cold weather camping so i threw a tarp over the rainfly to help hold some heat in. I threw down a workout mat as a base, 2 sleeping bags above the mat, and a sheet on top. I would sleep in warm clothing and have a comforter on top of me. Then night came. It dropped to about 38F the first night. It wasn't to bad really, I woke up and went to my first day of orientation feeling good about my camping prowess. I went back to camp and cooked my first meal over an open fire in years (other than bbqs).
Then night came and so did high winds. The temp dropped to 25F the winds howled, the coyotes howled, and the tent laid almost flat on top of me. I threw on an extra layer of clothes and put my winter jacket between me and the comforter so it would be warm when I put it on in the morning. I woke up a few times during the night because anytime I would roll over the shock of cold would snap me awake.
After the next day of orientation I got ‘home’ and would talk to the managers of the campground to see if I could help them with things on the grounds. As they were fairly new to running a campground and had a very limited budget they gladly accepted my help but were wary of what I wanted in exchange. My intent was to avoid boredom and it would keep my handyman skills in use. I did a few small things here and there like staining picnic tables and patching a couple RV sites.
Then the night came, so did rain. I wasn't to worried about the rain until I noticed the tent's seams were leaking. I got a couple tarps from the managers to remedy this for the night. I tossed a few things back in my car and sopped up as much of the water inside my tent as I could. I decided to sleep in my car for the night and deal with the leaks after Fri's orientation. I stopped by Walmart and picked up waterproofing spray and took care of some the leaking and made sure everything was dry.
Over the weekend I helped on the grounds and I showed the managers some of the handyman work I've done via facebook. They began giving me other things to do such as tile work, carpentry repairs, plumbing repairs, etc. They caught hint that I could do some 3D modeling via sketchup and asked if I could design a cabin for them. I was happy to do it, they really liked the one I designed. After about a month and a half they asked me if I could revive an abandoned popup camper someone left behind the previous season. The old owner of the camper left it pretty trashed but I didn't have much issue fixing it up. Nothing fancy but liveable enough. They asked me if I wanted to stay in it instead of using my tent. I was happy to accept.
Since then I've learned to use a chainsaw, split firewood, felling trees, various ways to start fires, ways to stack firewood for burning, repairing/replacing frost free water hydrants, axe handles, gravel RV pads, etc.
Now that work is slowing down I'm hoping to post more as time allows.
The Black Dragon rises again!
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