IGLOO and Sonar survey....

Things are starting to fall into place quite nicely for the February sonar survey on the river. I am pleased to announce that Wayne Hodges from W.E. Hodges Surveys Ltd. of Drummond will be donating his time in staking out the site. I had to call him this week for work related stuff and we started talking about the locomotive project and he quickly donated his services. Thanks!

The next item we will need is going to be a portable shelter. We need something light, no too big so we can move from hole to hole easily. The shelter is needed to house the laptop and other gear that we will be using on the river. If anybody has any suggestions, please do not hesitate to contact me.

On a different note, me and the kids (Alex & Andrew) had a heck of a time this weekend building our very first IGLOO!!! I know, I know.....where did you get the snow to build an igloo? Well, it just so happens that the wind created a snow bank behind the house that was really hard and we decided late Saturday to start building it. We had JUST enough snow to build it. We used one handheld saw, two sleds for trucking from the snow quarry to the site and lots of energy! The bottom pieces were cut bigger and as we progressed higher, we slowly diminished their size until the dome was complete. Let me tell you the dome section was really difficult to build but thankfully I had help from one of my buddies, Butch Paradis, to complete it. All of the pieces where cut at angles to give the structure some strength. My parents were over last night and we patched it all up good. I hosed it down with water after that in order to give even more strength. We have put approximately 20 hours in its construction but it was all worth it. The igloo can easily accommodate 4 adults standing and is about 7 feet high (interior) with an inside diameter of 8 feet.