Tag: boundary waters

I used the saw to save some pennies

We’re fairly careful with saws around this Woestman household after The Incident in the Boundary Waters two summers ago.

However.

Several weeks ago, I stopped being able to get anything out of my Prime Time foundation primer, but I just knew in my soul there was still something left in the bottle.  So I set it aside until I had a few free minutes, because I was going to cut that bottle in half, don’t you know it, and scrape out all the renegade primer.

Because I didn’t want to waste any pennies unnecessarily.

Joey was gone to pick up a pizza, and some friends were coming over for dinner (if you can call it that when we eat order-in pizza) and to help Joey study for his ordination exam on Sunday.  But I had a few minutes before they arrived, so I dug the hand saw out of the tool chest and set to work.

Plastic wasn’t designed to be sawed through with a cheap hand saw, that’s the first thing I learned.

The second thing I learned, was that it’s a good thing I didn’t saw my left fingers clean off.  Plastic is slippery.  Not to mention extremely thick.

Ten minutes later, I had dented the plastic container and made a channel for the saw blade.  There were little plastic shavings covering our patio, and I was occasionally making un-ladylike grunt sounds while I tried to force the saw to go back and forth over the gnarled up plastic container.

Then, it finally broke through.

Halfway.

I brushed off the saw and carried my now extremely damaged Prime Time container to the kitchen…where I discovered that I could have just used a pair of kitchen shears in the first place and the entire project would have been over (and with quite a bit less danger to my left hand) about as soon as I’d begun it.

The good news is that I retrieved quite a bit of primer from the bottom of the container.  I think I probably saved myself $4.00 by doing so.  I deserve a medal.

And when Joey came home, he said…”You used a saw on WHAT?”

Hey, at least I didn’t fall on it.

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Backpacking, attempt #2

On Friday morning, I sent Joey an email that contained something to the effect of:

“What do you think of going backpacking over Labor Day, because if I don’t get out of Dodge and see some nature, I THINK I WILL SPONTANEOUSLY COMBUST.”

The response to said email was quite positive.  In fact, Joey said that not only should we do it, but I should be in charge of finding the location for us to do a mini backpacking trip.  I was all over it, ya’ll.  I was on the website for Texas state parks looking for ones nearby with walk-in primitive sites, I was looking for spots in Arkansas, and I was checking out Oklahoma.

What we’re looking for is not easy to find, nor probably normal.  We’re looking for Boundary Waters-type seclusion that’s close to Texas and backpack friendly.

It’s like looking for jeans for The Kid at Kohls – it just ain’t gonna happen (because they carry all the wrong sizes and The Kid is really picky).

And so, as we were driving home from church today, Joey said, “Well, what about Ouachita…how far away is that?”

“Four hours,” I told him.

I’d been looking for places that were about 2 hours away, so we’d get to maximize our outdoor exposure while minimizing our carbon footprint.

We had a route all planned out for Ouachita for our cancelled Memorial Day trip, and we’ve both been itching to do it.  It was so awful; back in May we had our packs all loaded and ready to go because we had been taking walks with them to get used to the way they felt.  One afternoon, the week following my surgery, I heard Joey unzipping everything and putting it away…just when we should have been gearing up to go.  But, as I recall, on Memorial Day weekend I was doing good to stand up straight for one minute together, so backpacking was most definitely out of the question.

As we whizzed down 75, our collective blood pressure shot up at the thought of potentially getting to go to the Ouachita after all. (And after all we’ve been through this summer!) So, the minute we walked in the front door, Joey pulled out the backpacking route file (yes, we have one) and whipped out the trail we had selected.  ”If we go here, there’s lots of reliable water and we could easily go in a day and then come out a day, too,” he said.

I stared at the map and the sites we had marked along the Kiamichi River.  He had sold me, but I couldn’t let him know it that quickly.

“Look it up on Google Maps,” I said.

Sure enough, 4 hours.

“If we went to be super early on Friday night, and got up at 4 on Saturday, we could probably be there in decent time and have a good day’s hike,” Joey suggested.

“Sold,” I said.  ”Let’s go to REI to restock the trail bars and Clif Rope we ate in Mexico.”

I really hope nothing happens to me to force us to cancel this trip.

And I absolutely CANNOT WAIT to get on the trail and splash through a few river crossings and get wet-footed in my Tevas.  There is nothing like hiking with freshly wet feet from crossing a creek, or portaging a canoe.  I’d rather be portaging, but when we live this far from the Boundary Waters, I’ll take the Ouachita Trail, thank you very much.

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