Cabin Love

Wow, you guys, way to come through on cabin clean-up day!!  Big BIG thank you to everyone who came, or contributed their labor before this weekend, and special GIGANTIC thanks to Esther, for planning, organizing, and making lunch.

Suzanne reports:  The clean-up day was fantastic, joyful even. The cabin was getting so much love after languishing for almost three years! It loved the attention. The pizzas Esther made were scrumptious. 

  

And super cabin chief Esther provides this report: My family had a hard time getting out of the house yesterday and arrived 15 minutes late to our own party, which I was pretty unhappy about. But it didn't even seem like it mattered because so many people had arrived and felt empowered to go ahead and assign themselves a job and just get to work, including Greg Stamolis, who spent the night and had himself a nice quiet Friday evening organizing the basement, then just stayed and kept going on Saturday morning.

 

Also, some of the people who weren't there yesterday (and I'm guessing were more involved in the past) did a lot to contribute to yesterday's success. Like Jim S (and Elizabeth?), who took a bunch of the mattress covers home and washed them, so yesterday people were able to recover the mattresses and be done with that. Or Frank and a few other folks who have been absolute heroes in taking on the packrat that was trying to live in the wax shed and/or on the porch outside the kitchen. We would have been starting in a completely different place if it weren't for that.

 

I didn't do a great job keeping track of who all was there, but we had 22 people signed up, most of whom came, and then a bunch more people showed up whom I wasn't even expecting. So I didn't count, but I think we may have had around 30 people (including 6 kids and a real mix of newer and older members), and stuff got done! Between today's big group effort and a few people who worked ahead in the past couple of weeks:

·  The chimney has been swept.
·  Windows were washed.
·  Outhouse walls and surfaces got scrubbed.
·  Outside the kitchen door, the shelves, floors, and stairs were scrubbed.
·  We made a plan to add more fire extinguishers and figured out where to mount them.
·  Bed rails got added to all but one of the top bunks upstairs.
·  The fire escape ladders were tested and deemed to be in good operating condition.
·  The leather sofas in the living room got scrubbed down with saddle soap.
·  The cabin was vacuumed all over.
·  The wax shed was cleaned and sanitized.
·  Mouse traps were maintained and re-baited all over the cabin.
·  The entire downstairs and race office were organized and spiffed up.
·  Super-old lost and found stuff and clutter was hauled away.
·  A serious inventory of household and race supplies was completed.
·  Several microbiology experiments were prematurely interrupted, and the refrigerator was scrubbed clean.
·  The ovens were cleaned.
·  The showers and sauna are now spotless.
·  The tank for the kitchen hot water faucet was found to have a slow leak, so we are going to replace it.
·  The kids decluttered the table under the bulletin boards and created a new cabin bingo board for 2022-23.
·  Bulletin boards were decluttered.
·  Kitchen cabinets were organized.
·  The cabin is now stocked with surgical masks and Covid-19 rapid antigen tests.
·  Mattresses were stripped, covers washed, cleaned, and re-covered.
·  Surfaces were cleaned and sanitized all over the cabin.

A few people left early for soccer games or to attend the CCWRA meeting in North Bend, and all the rest of us stopped at 5 minutes before noon for lunch. We went through 6 good-sized homemade pizzas and a fair bit of salad.  Some people brought yummy home-made treats, and there may have been some eating of leftover Halloween candy, too.

There was not enough snow to keep a Prius from being able to thread through the potholes and drive in on the road, but enough for some folks to get their rock skis out for the afternoon and others to have a good adventure postholing up Ozbaldy following a bunch of elk.

Seems like the cabin is going to be ready for the season!  It was a good time and people had a chance to build community and socialize and show the cabin some love after a few years of not being able to do that in the same form.  Maybe it will inspire more members to check out future parties! 

Here are some fun photos and added commentary from Heather:

We had a GREAT day and the time flew.  Here are some pictures, including of the sparkling outhouses (cleaned by Karen and Kirsten, I think?), Miranda on the vacuum (who was a champ at organizing a little kid work brigade), and Esther and Lillian (and one other whose name I didn't catch), presiding over their delicious pizza!