Move Joes Cabin 2: Electric Bugaloo

Move Joes Cabin 2: Electric Bugaloo

Sitrep Camp Even Dummer Aug 20-21

Joe asked me to write up the trip for lack of computer.  He also asked during the trip how I made all of the decisions pertaining to building the cabin.

A few weeks ago joe asked if I would take a look at the Yellow Submarine Cabin.  The floor was slightly warped.  It was from a rain cycle that would pool the water and make rot the floor.  the floor was constructed of 2x6’s that were on the sides going the long way bolted to dead tree’s.  across those on fourish foot centers were 2x6’s holding up flat layed 2x6’s that supported the floor.  Above that was two layers of 1/2 inch plywood and then another layer of 1/4 inch luan.  All was rotted pretty bad.  I did not take measurements and only vaguely looked over what needed to be done when we came up to do the work.

Then comes the fun part, figuring out how to lift the cabin, remove the old floor, construct a new one and then lower the cabin onto it.  I cadd’d up what I guessed would need to be made for the 8x12 floor to hold up the cabin.  I then went through all of the different permutations of lifting the cabin, moving the cabin, sliding the floor underneath.  So lets look at all of the choices.  

Disassemble the cabin build the floor and put it back together.  the cabin had many features that were built on top of the previous which would make this a hard task to accomplish.  

Build the cabin floor next to the cabin and slide the cabin over.  This would require surring up the cabin, lifting it and making tracks to roll it to the new platform.  This would require making an entire track set.  and moving the cabin in it’s widest state.  The cabin did not have much as far as structural support so this would be a gamble when under motion.  

Build the floor and just slide it under the cabin.  This would require a flat surface and the ability to lift 1000 pounds and position it.  Neither of which exist at Dummer.

So build under the cabin was it.  My original plan had me jacking up the cabin and removing the original floor supports, build up the new and drop it down.  I was also going to use the original plywood but after conferring with Joe, we opted for new plywood.  I had created a cut list so when we got to the camp site, we would not have to cut anything aside from the 6x6 when we got to camp.  My confidence was boosted when I handed the cut list to the guy at the lumber yard he said he knew exactly what I was doing.  With some lumber all cut up we drove back towards dummer and had some breakfast.  Joe had the worst coffee, and I had corned beef and hash(dog food).  we then drove back up to camp and let the festivities commence.  

Joe and I Both grabbed a miller high life, the champagne of beers, and looked at the banana jama shed to try and come up with a plan.  Joe came up with the idea to make the platform six inches lower.  This allowed us to work from underneath the cabin and build the entire platform then just lower the cabin onto it.  what could be simpler?

joe and I removed chunks of floor and slowly and systematically dismantled the outside floor.  we then built up the floor frame and installed the joists.  as Joe nailed on the outside sills, I moved through the inside carefully removing the floor by smashing it with a hammer.  We ended up replacing all of the bottom plates with 4x4’s since the 2x4’s were all rotted out.  We then jacked it up bits at a time to remove the remaining floor.  The back end with no support started to “shift”.  Joe showed some concern, I could have showed more.  I shored up the back wall with some cross braces and bazinga!  we then lowered the cabin using a pry bar onto some rollers I had machined and using a tie down strap slide the entire cabin over a foot.  From that point, we had nothing left to do but clean up the site and go home.  

The things left to do on the hit list are,

Fasten the floor down
seal the roof from bugs
fix the propaine line
put braces on the legs
build a porch
fasten the cabin to the deck
put new trim on the bottom of the t 111

I am now trying to find some material to build my own cabin  I think the annex would be a nice place to put it.

The Enchanted Scepter (Black pipe from home depot)

In 2001 I attended my first semester at NHTI.  I recommend that school to anyone it was a great time, and I did learn allot, it has been 10 years, and I might graduate by 2012.  But thats not the pont of this story.

I want to prefice this with, this is from 2001 and my memory may have been vague.  I want to state that NHTI staff did everything in there power to make a safe environment for all students attending the college.  In no way should you think that anything they did was wrong in this indecent.  It is all this kid Jeremy's fault.  he is a messed up guy.  I hope he got help and

This story is about Lary's Roommate Jeremy.   Strout hall had some interesting people, I really only took issue with one.  At first,  we all got along on the second floor of strout.  Larry, Brian, Jiro, Jon.  Some people got nicknames Random Kid, Soccer stud, and I am sure more than I can recall.  I mostly spent my time figuring out new ways to drink(Hot Pipe), hitting on Kate and Jen (They both have wonderful men and beautiful kids now), Hitting on RD Allison (usually a bit tipsy).  I did some studying when I got a chance(with any luck, I can finish my degree soon).  We had a big table where we all ate together.  We drank lots of booz together.  We wired a rouge network when our Res Life tried to install a wireless 802.11a network instead of wired network in this brick and steel Faraday cage. The Counter Strike 5 dollar Alpha server heating Koga's room.  Just some great memories.

I got my nickname because I told everyone on my floor that I was on Battlebots during orientation.  I did not know that a student prior to me had told everyone the same thing only was lying so they called me Robot Rob for a month until my episode of Battlebots came on and they all apologized.  As nicknames go Robot Rob is really not that bad.   I had a few others like Mr. Wizard, Battlebots Rob and I am sure more I can't recall.

Now lets say you try and give yourself a nickname.  Wolf Master or the Wizard or some other ridiculous thing.    Well, the first rule of Nicknames is you don't get to choose them.  The second is if you don't like the one you have been saddled with, it is now permanent.  One night, we may have been drinking.  Jeremy needed a run to home depot.  As many of my friends no, I am always happy to help whenever possible.  So off to home depot we went.  Turns out Jeremy needed some black iron pipe fittings to construct an enchanted scepter.  This was to accessories his enchanted black trench coat (also known as the girl repelling trench coat), Enchanted power crystal ( got this out for some tony hawk recently, still did not work), and enchanted fingerless leather gloves ( lets just not think about this).

Prior to the "Incident"  we would do normal college things like sneak booze and girls into the dorms, spoof mac address's and cut the roof off cars and set them on fire in the sears parking lot.  In the evening we played Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2 in Jiro's room and played ping pong.  Sometimes when we needed some extra ability for video games, Jeremy would put on the gloves, hat, scepter and power crystal and enchant us while we played video games.  When THPS3 came out it was limited to Play Station 2.  This ment we needed a console to play it on.  Since Larry, Jeremy's roommate already had one, we were able to borrow it and play it in my room.  While going back to the well, we went to Jiro's room to play some more THPS2 and Jeremy came in and asked for a Golddisk to a new drive.

For those of you unfamiliar with his made up term he wanted us to download an image of his 8 gig drive to his new larger drive.  No issue, Jiro, was the same, and when you can help, you help.  Jeremy said one thing, "don't look at my secret file"  We translated that to "you should hack into that password protected file as soon as I leave the room".  So we first found a smallish file with what we assume were photos downloaded from the internet of some girl he was stalking.  And then a one gig or so file marked PRON we were psyched we could see some photos of naked women.  As soon as we opened it, we realized it was photos of naked girls. Young girls.  Now in my current place in life, after having spent so much time with Emily I know how I would react.   I could pretty much guarantee he would have had a broken nose, and would have left in handcuffs or in an ambulance.  Back then, we did not know what to do.  I had some training from Boy Scouts on what to do, but I never payed all that much attention because I figured what kind of person would do that.  I will never encounter that in my world.  Jiro myself and a few others knew about this.  What were we supposed to do?  I looked up the info for the FBI from my BSA info.  They were busy with 9/11 but got us in touch with the state police.

It took a day or two, but they came to the tech to get our statements.  We went to the library and had them notarized.  Data changed hands and Jiro had to destroy the hard drive because we wanted nothing to do with that data.  A few weeks later during an intense game of SKATE, the NH State Police came to serve a search and seizure warrant on Jeremy's computer.  They took that and his broad sword.  He was asked to leave the dorms not to long after that.  After that, I recall one somewhat drunk night as Jeremy's mother showed up at the dorm.  The conversation was a bit fuzzy but it sounded like Jeremy had not been entirely truthful about what he was being charged with.  She went off about how all the kids stole software and it was unfair for her kid to be singled out.  The end was somewhat blurry, but I think she was informed she should read over the charges again.

Months later, I saw him while walking to the dorm.  He tried to justify what he had done by saying "I didn't take the pictures"  I guess those words had a huge impact on me.  The impact didn't start to hit for a while.

Women started to randomly come up to me and say things like "I was molested by my uncle as a child.  I heard about what you did and wanted to let you know my story and thank you for giving me strength so I can deal with this"  This was a lot for me to handle.  Mentally it took a bit for me to comprehend things.

I felt selfish for how crappy I felt, I was in no way a victim but I still was hearing about all this shitty things people had done.  I had no training, but I kept telling myself it must be hard to tell anyone about the violation by more often than not loved ones.  Numbers were thrown around 8 out of 10 women are violated at some point in there life.  Dave Elderkin the Head of res life, was helpful at the time.  I was likely a pain in the ass trying to rebel as a college kid.  He listened to me and helped me put things in perspective.  I look at things allot different.

This experience shaped how I approach ladies and life in general.   Try and treat people with respect and even though it won't be the same level realize that how you treat other people will stay with them.  Sometimes this gets forgotten but I always try and get back to it.

I am sure most of you were hopping for another hilarious drunk lady road head to the PSNh worker story.  But Sometimes my stories and experiences were not fun or hilarious.  I have told this story to be funny before, but it is really something that drags me down.  I am hopping I can put this experience to rest.

One of the things that makes my life worth living is I don't always take the easy or safe choice.  sometimes, I make the hard decision because of what I think is right.  In life so far I would say this is one of those defining moments, and so far the biggest.

I am going to leave you with a poem.

"I thought I someone should do something about this"
" I then realized I was someone"

Peace, I will try and put a bit more humor into my next post.