"Carl's Lounge" (Off-Topic Discussion, Traditional Knife "Tales & Vignettes")

It's snowing here again, on my driveway that was almost clean.

Get out from around that corner, Spring!

 

Warm vibes sent to everyone !

 

After five days without power, we are back in our home with both power and internet (Oregon). I can now enjoy my knife collection again and catch up on the Forum.

 

Great news! I have a sister in Dallas, their power is back on as well.

 

Glad to hear it! (that the power is back on, I mean. Not that it was out in the first place)

We'll be boiling water for a few more days in Austin, but that's just a mild inconvenience; I'm grateful to have water at all right now.

 

I just got back from the most amazing walk. It's finally above freezing and the sun is out. The ice covered trees are shimmering and making crackling noises as they drop slivers of ice.

 

Looks like one to remember

 

Oh what a difference 5 and a half decades makes! When I was a kid, weeks like this would have been wonderful and magical. Snow on the ground for a full week, icicles, staying home from school! We don't see this very often in south-western Tennessee. Apparently this is in the top 4 snowiest periods since we have history of weather, and 3 of those have been in my lifetime (and quite memorable).

We've been lucky at my home - we did not lose power or internet, but the city water pressure is a mere trickle and they are telling us to proactively boil water before consumption. I have rinsed and reused a number of old whiskey bottles (of which I am well supplied) for water storage, after boiling of course. And I am making sure to disinfect all water I consume (generally in the form of ice cubes) with some of the contents of the not-yet-emptied bottles still on the shelf. Purely for public health reasons, of course.

I work from home already so no snow days for me, but my wife has had all week off. Nice to have her home full time, at least until next week. It should warm up to above freezing tomorrow so hopefully most of it will be gone in a few days.

 

I took a short trip to slaughter a goat and get it butchered this morning, but got there before the slaughterhouse opened. While I was waiting I went to the nearby park along the C&O canal, where I found this very interesting old lift bridge, now repurposed as a pedestrian crossing. I read it was originally built to allow rail cars to cross the canal to deliver coal to a power plant.


This benchmark was set on the abutment at a much later date:

The nearby industrial buildings are now used by the park service, but there is a brick plant nearby which operated until just last year, I think. There is a large creek which flows into the Potomac here and it was very swollen. I’m guessing by the gauge on the side of the building that floods are pretty common.


As it turned out, they didn’t have any goats left, so I got a sheep instead. It really gets my goat when you go to get a goat and they don’t have any goats to get...
(Not really - I enjoyed the excursion!)
@Jack Black - I’m “ping”ing you here because you seem to like industrial history and architecture...

 

I read your post as meaning you brought your own goat to be slaughtered and thought, "How nice for the goat to get a walk along the banks of the canal on his last day."
So do you pick out the sheep, like from the lobster tank at a seafood restaurant?

 

Pretty much!
[edited to remove irrelevant parts]
They have a large barn where the animals are kept between delivery from the farm and slaughter, and you go there to select your animal. I usually tell the guy how much I want to spend and let him pick it out and weigh it. My wife sometimes likes to choose the animal herself, but I trust the worker’s judgement, since that’s his job. It’s always the same guy.
[edited to remove irrelevant parts]

 

Believe it or not, I have seen goats in trees many, many times! I never stopped finding it amusing, even after a couple of years.

 

Goats in trees? Money grows there too right? Next it will be swimming cats

 

Has anyone communicated with Randy @r redden lately. I think the last time he posted was in August 2020. Enjoyed seeing his escapades with his knives and guitars.

 

Sorry to make you homesick! That was indeed Williamsport.

I have not biked as much of the canal as you did, but as a child and teenager I canoed every part of the river from Knoxville (a little bit downstream from Harper’s Ferry), down to Swain’s (just upstream from Great Falls)- many times. We used to camp on the islands in the river - by “camping” I mean we spread a tarp out on the ground and passed the night. By the time I was in high school, my father had no problems dropping me and a friend in at Brunswick or somewhere and saying “see you at Swains in a couple of days!”.

He used to drop us off on the Appalachian Trail as well, and pick us up a couple of days later at a predetermined rendez-vous. All this being many years before cell phones of course.

This last November I did a short overnight bike trip from my house in Rockville to the hiker-biker near Edward’s Ferry and back, to test out my budget setup, and hopefully this year I can find the time to take a couple of longer trips.

You may also be interested and possibly sad to hear that White’s Ferry has finally ceased operations.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White's_Ferry
(Funny, I was unaware of the somewhat, uh, dubious Confederate associations of the place until I just now read that, despite having read a book about Ball’s Bluff many years ago.)

 

Small world! We really did share the same stomping grounds.

At one point my dad helped me build a john boat out of I think 1x16(!) lumber, with a 1/4” plywood bottom and a 1x4 keel. It was about 16’ long. That thing was heavy (car top carry only -we didn’t have a trailer), but once you got it launched, it drew almost no water. In the summer when the water was low, you could take it through the small channels on the Virginia side of the islands, and places like the Washington Canal, and even if there were just a couple of inches of water, you could push yourself through with a pole.

Another favorite memory was fishing for channel cat out in the middle of the river at Point of Rocks.
Sorry if we are boring everybody else here...

 

Anyone hear from Prestor John?

I haven't noticed Vince around here for a while.