Day 3177 No outcry?

29th April 2026

Another drive down to Byron Centre on a sunny day, the trees now have the green hue that signifies the growing time of year, I love it.

The price of petrol has hit $4 a gallon, and the smugness of the Tesla drivers is huge, it fills both lanes of the highway. You can just tell they are saying, “this trip is costing me nothing”, as they engage hyper drive to overtake everyone, who are not bothered to look as they are all watching their fuel gauges drop.

There is no national outrage, there are no demonstrations about it, every last cent is being wrenched out of their apathetic hands.

They are not like the French who rally together and dump piles of shit outside government buildings. The Americans have plenty of shit, but they elect them to serve in Washington.

I was thinking about all this as I noticed in my rear view mirror two large trucks side by side on the highway effectively block it. The speed limit for them is sixty five and neither of them was conceding, sucks to be behind them.

John was waiting for me, he had a large section of trees that had been chopped down, and cut into chunks, that he wanted transported to the barn.

I rolled it out to the truck, and with groin wrenching effort got it into the back.

He was surprisingly joyful today, but I didn’t understand most of it, but somehow I responded in all the right places.

The barn was in the same state as last week when we left it, the clamped timber sections were still standing in the same place.

I unclamped them and laid them out on the bench.

Today was the gluing up of all the sections to make the table top. I referred to my sketch to make sure I put them in the correct position, that is when I noticed I was one strip short.

How did that happen? I found the strip hidden in the offcuts. I machined it to the correct thickness then placing it in the right place.

This glue up was a bit stressful, but a lot easier than joining ten strips together although using biscuits helped with the alignment.

Halfway through John had a phone call, but couldn’t find his phone. He had left an incoherent voice message to a customer asking what sizes they wished the timber, that thy had left, should be machined to. This was a bit painful to listen to, at one point he asked me what his address was, I couldn’t remember, so I called his wife. Of course she was concerned as to who he was talking to, there I was in the middle of the now four way conversation trying to reassure his wife that John hadn’t had an accident. Once that had been sorted out I insisted that we write down the conversation in his notebook. Unfortunately the one I got him for Christmas he had lost, but he had another pad in his bag. I then got him to write down the name of the person who called, I then wrote out what the call was about, and what was happening next, if he showed that to his wife, at least she who know what was going on.

All this was exhausting, we had another cup of coffee and a chocolate chip cookie.

As I had completed the glue up I suggested that I help John work on some other timber that he had to machine for another customer.

These were ten foot long planks of pine, they had to be cleaned up and all thicknessed the same.

What thickness was acceptable? John gave me various numbers. “ Which thickness does he want?” In the end I managed to get all down to 0.80”. Then he brought out another two planks!

So I had to reset the planer and work my way down to match the others.

“Are there any more you have hiding John?” 

Fortunately for me there wasn’t.

After a sweep up it was time to go, I’m sure next time I see him there will be more confusion and mayhem, but with the table top ready to cut and sand there will be things for him to do.