Day of the CAT!

Many days have passed since bobcat day, but for some reason (ahem Kodiak's writers block ahem) we were not able to share it with the world until now.

The mission of the day was to transfer all the logs from the runners in the middle of the field at the Organic Farm to the staging area whence we would launch the logs. Assisting us for the day was our friend the Bobcat. Named for the most feared hunter of the Northeast wilderness, the Bobcat S185 proved to be an amazing beast. First to climb inside was Lucas, who quickly began to showcase his heavy equipment driving skillz. Luckily, he was up at somewhere around 6 AM, like a kid on Christmas morning, mentally and physically preparing for the ferocious feline that lay ahead. The rest of us watched as he effortlessly shuffled into the pile and began to set up new runners at our staging area at the bank of the river. After he had gotten a good handle on things, he turned the cat over to the rest of us, and amateur hour began.

As we rotated through, all with huge grins and some with a vague idea of what we were doing, we slowly made progress moving the logs.

Then, as high noon struck, there was a disaster.

The log moving continued to move forward, but we suffered a casualty. The young Max "Mr. Badger" Friedman began to realize the full implications of the severely diminished hearing in his right ear. The symptoms had been growing on him for over 24 hours, but during his time with the cat things truly came to a head, and he was rushed to the ER. The doctors at first thought he may have to lose the ear, but eventually some sort of breakthrough was made with some rather advanced technology. Eventually after some deliberation it was decided that he has an unusually large buildup of earwax, and so he put in some ear drops and he was fine.

Meanwhile, back at the farm, we had a visit from Lauren "Duff" Cummings, who surveyed our setup for the log drive to come in several days. We continued to work through the pile, gaining skill and confidence as the day went on, which led to increased efficiency, as well as some interesting maneuvers, including Greg's wheelies, my failed attempts at carrying four logs at once, and Kodiak's alternative forklift bark raking technique for cleaning up the mess we left behind.

More to come soon, as we are now beginning the first phases of real log laying.