Yesterday I met with three young men who have volunteered to work for me in exchange for food and lodging. Based on their profile pictures I assumed they were gay. It was obvious, within seconds that this was not the case.
We chatted for half an hour and we agreed that this would probably work out for both of us. I indicated that the weather was nice for a change and that they should take this opportunity to spend the afternoon at Bluff Beach, that following day they should take the 7:30 shuttle to town with all of their stuff.
This morning I returned to town and was hailed by the threesome who were eating breakfast at an upscale hotel. I grabbed a cup of coffee and sat down. Three brand new top of the line backpacks were stacked next to the wall. It became immediately evident that these were not experienced travellers and that they came from money.
The three met at a Coast Guard school which they dropped out of and hit the road. Sam and Campbell had presented themselves as a pair and Jess had joined in after I accepted the other two. They all knew each other from school and enjoyed the same lack of academic success.
We stocked up on food and other necessities, gassed up and headed back to my house. Eight bags of food, 150 pounds of travelling gear, a propane tank, a gas tank and 30 pounds of dog food where hauled up the 100 stairs to my house. I only made one trip, the guys did the rest.
I showed them to the guest bedroom checking to make sure that all the drawers were empty. I removed the women's pants, panties, and shorts and added them to a pile of forgotten clothes and suggested that they each take a drawer and unpack their backpacks as working out of backpack is a pain in the ass.
What I saw looked like a catalog of high tech backpacker gear. I'll go into that later, but consider this camping stove. They then pulled out their high tech nylon backpackable hammocks with mosquito netting and special nylon straps. These were secured around poles on my deck. As I write, on Tuesday morning, each of the three is suspended in their mosquito netted hammocks, looking very much like occupants of high tech cacoons.
In the process of refinishing my floors the stove, refrigerator, and household furnishings were still on the deck. Pretty much everything but my bed. We cleaned off the stove and oven, inside and out and did the same with the refrigerator and moved them indoors. The grounds were picked up, things that had blown off the deck during Sunday's squall were retrieved. A large cache of groceries was put away and I prepared lunch.
I prepared chicken veggie wraps with a slight seasoning of Thai curry, pinto beans and rice. Jess announced that he eats like a bird, Campbell that his habits were more like a bear's and Sam couldn't finish eating long enough to state much. Campbell was barely touching his food but consuming copious quantities of water. I asked him, "how much hot sauce did you put in that wrap?" He had added nothing. The other three diners had spiced theirs up with a fair amount hot sauce and I applied mine liberally, as usual.
Seeing a break in the weather I suggested that we enjoy ourselves while the opportunity presented itself and we toured around, visited some people and returned. Sam demonstrated how to use a casting net. As he caught the minnows, intended as bait, my dog Hayu ate them as they landed on the dock. While this was going on I was rewiring my bilge pump switch as the idiot who had been working on my boat had just used wire nuts. That would only be good for a few days. I tried to unscrew a nut and green cupric oxide dust fell out to reveal the connection had nearly completely failed. Stripping further and further back I realized that capillary action had pretty much wiped out the wiring for this switch. I shall have to buy another and see if I can solder on new leads.
Back to the house broccoli and other veggies in a improvised teriyaki sauce, rice, lentils, beans and for must of us, plenty of hot sauce.
The cupboards were emptied, sawdust on everything wipe off, all of the dishes washed and put away. It was still going on when I went to bed at 10.
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