About that little Truck...

Its been a while since I posted about it, but you might remember that I bought a beaten up little 4WD truck a couple of years back, with the intent of "restoring/renovating" it...
But, that was before I headed off South on my second motorcycle "odyssey".
Since then , the little truck has gone through a couple of "phases"...
Before I bought it, the poor little fellow was languishing in someones large back yard and being used by teenaged sons to "mess around in the mud". As far as I can tell, the last time the truck was officially registered for use on the road was back in 2001. After I bought it, the first phase was a little different to how it had been treated before because it was now "left alone" but still out in the same back yard. And it got no further attention till I came back from my long riding trip about a year later.





At that point, I spent a day doing some really basic and rough work just to get the little fellow running again. But there were significant problems with it, and I really didnt feel I could successfully drive it back to Vancouver without breaking down and then having to tow it... So, at that point I decided to enlist some local professional help to do the big mechanical and body work down in Oregon rather than up in Canada.
What I wanted to do with the little truck was basically a full "body off frame" restoration (in order to get rid of the inevitable rust patches after 40 years in the Pacific NorthWest), and even though this is a small, simple, old vehicle, I knew that this was going to be hundreds of hours of work that I was going to have to pay for... And I felt I really needed to earn some money before I started in on this big project...

And that was over a year ago.
And so, after I rode back North to Vancouver I got myself a contract job and then started working on the motorbike project through the winter and since then the big house renovation project and then the table top too...
And the little truck lived much the same life as it had for the previous year... Languishing in a back yard (although now it was in a different back yard).


... and so, working I have been...


But, earlier this year (In the Spring), I called up the workshop where the truck was waiting and I gave Mike (the professional ) the go-ahead to start working on it... And "work on it" he did!!!

First thing to happen was they rolled it into the big workshop and took off the old cab top... It was rusty and dented but fixable, but I had decided that I wanted it changed to the "half cab" version. So, the guy doing the work did some research and found a disused original steel half cab (much better and more authentic than the fibreglass after-market versions). So, the bolts were undone, and off came the old top and the new one was fitted on to see how it looked...

And sure enough, I like it better than with the old full cab :))

But that was just a trial fitting, and then the top came off a gain and they really went to work.

The rear tire carrier was removed and the holes were welded and patched.

And the auxiliary fuel-tank filler was removed and patched.

And the passenger side engine bay panels were rebuilt to fix extensive localised rust (presumably from spilled battery acid over the years).

 And then the body was removed from the frame and all the removable doors and panels were seperated and all the paint  was ground off, and the little dings and dents were patched and filled.

And the mechanicals of the suspension and chassis were given a going over too.
Its a V8 engine of almost 5litre capacity (Ford Widsor 302 "small block") with a three speed automatic (that was in very bad condition). I decided that I reallly didnt like the old auto transmission, and I comitted to paying $5000 for a new specially designed substitute 5-speed manual gearbox.

And then the engine got a going over... It was working OK but it was "rough" and you know how it goes with reno' projects of any sort... One thing leads to another and you may as well do this extra job while your doing the other stuff... etc...
So, the motor got its share of attention... Though the only major work it needed was a new competition cam cos the old one had a flattened lobe.

And then the body and the panels were ready for primer...

And then it was time for paint... I decided I wanted a dark but "deep" blue, and it took me quite a while to find a colour that I really liked. I just watched cars on the street till I found one that I liked in different weather conditions (Cloud and sun effect the appearance so much I find). It is a Toyota colour called "Indigo Ink Pearl".

And then it was time to bolt it all back together.
The whole process had taken well over six months by a professional shop, and unfortunately for me it had taken a lot more time and a lot more replacement parts than I had hoped (and than Mike the professional restorer had expected too), and that all added up to lots more cost.
I had initially hoped that I could do a basic restore for about $10K or so, but Mike had corrected me early on that it would definitely be more than that...Like probably TWICE that much!
It turned out to be even  "significantly more" than that! and I have to admit that I was quite stressed by the accumulating costs and felt that I probably made a mistake undertaking this project through a professional... Even though it was undoubtedly going to be a "top notch" job and Id get all the big fixing done in the one effort....rather than spending several years with the car alternately on and off the road etc.
But, what can ya do once you've got half way through the project?... You carry on and finish it of course :) ...

So, after monthly calls with Mike and monthly visa bills that always made my eyes water!, it was DONE!
And this is what that little truck looks like after all that work...

 The pictures dont do the colour justice, but in short Im "very" happy with it.

 Pretty much every lead and wire and hose in the engine bay as well as all the auxiliary systems like power steering, brake master unit, and alternator have been rebuilt or replaced new. But its still a pretty "Plain Jane" engine bay with the original "points" ignition system and old four barrel Webber carby... Nothing fancy in there.

And the interior of the cab is very rudimentary at the moment... No carpet or radio or liner panels at all, just the bare painted steel cab... I find I quite like it, and I think Ill probably keep it largely as it is.
Call it Simple, or Basic, or Utilitarian, or Spartan, or Rustic... you pick   :)

And so, thats the transformation of the little Truck...
And though I didnt end up doing all the work my-self as was the original idea, on review I have to say that I definitely made a good choice to work with Mike from NW-Autofab in Oregon to do the bulk of the work... He did an amazingly good job on it and having gone over the receipts for all the hours worked and the parts replaced,and looked at the quality of his workmanship over the entire vehicle, I have to say that I think I got a real bargain, despite the painfull cost.
And while Im probably never going to undertake another project like this, if I did, I would not hesitate to get Mike involved... I really appreciated what he did for me and the little truck :)


Now I just have to go down to Oregon and get it...

And Now its Shiny Too

Ive continued working on that table top, and with a bit more work than planned I now have a very pretty, flt, smooth , and shiny table top :)

I had quite a few options of how to finish the wood... Oil, Stain, Varnish, Epoxy etc.
I pretty much already knew that I didnt want to sttain the wood since it has a nice rich hue as it is and it will get darker and richer as time passes... Exposure to warmth/heat enhances the yellows in wood, while exposure to UV light enhances the reds... Though too much of either will degrade the wood.
So, the wood would be left its natural colour, but I still had to decide how to seal it.

After due consideration and some consultation with the guys down at the specialty wood shop where I bought the wood, I decided that I would try using an epoxy.
Ive used epoxy quite a lot for bonding things together in all sorts of applications, but this would be my first effort at using it as a coating.
The particular version of epoxy I was going to use is specifically designed for this type of application. It is "food safe", finishes very "hard" (not slightly soft like many epoxys), and shinny (miror like finish), and best of all, it is "self leveling".

So, the theory is that you carefully mix out the right proportions of the two componet liquids, mix them thoroughly together and then pour the resulting clear viscous goo onto the table top (which you have carefully leveled beforehand). spread the goo out over the surface ... and then you just watch and wait!...While it cures.
So, I set the table-top up in my spare room, and carefully leveled it. Then I made sure it was all clean and dust free.
Then I set about mixing up about 2.5 litres of the epoxy. It was easy to measure out but I didnt have quite the right set-up for thorough mixing, and I had to do it in two sb-batches. Anyway, one batch at a time I poured the goop onto the table and spread it around with the brush till it was right to the edge of the table and pretty even all over. Then I brushed over the edges and the epoxy then started to slowly drip off the sides...
That all took just about an hour to complete.
Over the next three hours I would visit the table and check on its progress about once every 15 minutes or so. Initially this was to ensure that the "self-leveling" was going well, but then it focussed more on "dabbing" out the few tiny little bubbles that were not coming out by them selves, and finaly I was just giving the edge a once over with the brush to remove a few "runs" on the sections where there was a bit more dripping.




And then I had to wait another two days before it was cured enough to handle...
At which point I discovered that I had a couple of issues.
First off, there were a few areas near the edge of the table that were a bit rough still and were sunken in from the rest of the level top... It was in areas of the lighter "sap -wood" rather than the "heart-wood", and the more pourous wood had absorbed the epoxy slowly and by the time it had absorbed, the rest of the epoxy was too "set" to flow back into the area and fill the void.
The second issue was that there was a fine swirled sheen on the to p surface of the table... I figured it was just resuidue and that it would "wipe" off, but it wasnt...



On closer inspection I found that it was lots of tiny pinpoint bubbles. Now they were not there when I was watching it set and only appeared once I cleaned the table after three days of curing time!.. I suspect they were little bubbles of the hardener component of the epoxy because I had not mixed it quite well enough.



They were extremely small however and Im sure they would hve quite easily been dealt with by applying a furniture wax on the table top. But that wouldnt fix the rough areas from the other problem, so I decided that a second coat of the epoxy was in order. So, a week later I went through the whole process one more time ... at a cost of about another $100  :)

And this time the finish was much better.



So, I left the epoxy cure for another week and then turned the table over (no mean feat to do by my-self !) and then I varnished the back side just to seal it so that humidity changes effect both the top and bottom surfaces in the same way... So there will be no warping :)
And now the table top is done.

 

I moved it out into the dining area where it is sitting on-top of a smaller dining table that I had.
Im really pleased with how it has turned out, and Im looking forward to finishing the project next Spring/Summer by building the legs for it :)

And Making it Smooth

So, after spending that whole day with the router, my slab of wood was now flat, but it was far from smooth, and a "lumpy" table top is not that great for using...

Actually the horazontal striations that were left by the router were, I thought, quite attractive, and I was tempted to preserve them by putting on some sort of very thick, self-leveling transparent coating on the table.... But I decided against it and proceded with the "smoothing" process.

Striations/ripples left by the routing



So, the process used for smoothing is good old fashioned sanding...
Thus, I spent several more hours using my 4" belt sander to remove the ripples.
I just stood there and moved the sander slowly and evenly over the surface of the table. Very coarse grit to start with, and then once all the ripples were nolonger visible, I changed to a medium grit and did it all again, and then changed to fine grit and did it all again, and then I changed to using my random-orbit sander with a very fine grit...
And after another 5 hours or so of work, the table top is now flat And smooth :)
So I routed the edges to a small radius and gave it all the "once over" with a hand sanding pad to get any last little rough spots...

Then I got some help to move the table inside where I can do any further work protected from the elements.

And then I disassembled my "flattening jig" with the router and put all the tools and planks of wood back in the garage.... And just in time too since the very next day, Vancouver weather announced the end of Summer with a couple of days of heavy rain!... and now its back to the regular dreary weather for fall.


But, not to worry, cos the table top is now in-doors and safe from the elements.
Next job will be to put a surface finish on it.... Hmmm Not sure what that will be yet (varnish, oil, epoxy???)Legs will come somewhat later :)

Making it Flat

Now that Ive pretty much finished renovating the house and have cleaned up most of the mess inside and out, Ive been doing a bit of work on that table top project...

The first problem was to get the huge slab of wood down to a more maneagable size... Like Id said, I was initially torn between two possible table formats and I needed to make a decission so that I could make the cuts in the right places... Well, I decided to go with the long thin rectangle styled table over the elyptical option since it keeps the slab of wood more intact and after all, thats what I really like about it... the size and thickness of the single piece of wood.
Having decided that, I set about trimming off the edges (they were very rough and had insect holes etc... I really couldnt have used them on the final table even though its nice to preserve the "live edges" of the original tree trunk). The slab was still over 3metres long though, so I also decided to make it just 2.4m long so I also lopped off 60cm of the narrow end (Ill use that for a bed-side table that ill make later I think).

Right, the slab of wood is now becoming much more manegable :)
But I cant work on it where it currently is (tucked up next to the house under the back deck), so I get some help from a neighbour and the two of us move it without too much struggle around to the front of the house.

I put it on work horses here and have a look at that "crowning" problem that is then next "issue" to be addressed...

Hmm, well its still there :)   See the curvature of the wood in the picture below - looking across the end edge of the slab.

Right, so Ive figured out how Im going to try to deal with that.
I get two big flat and straight planks of pine and I attach them to the sides of the saw horses as "rails" for my "contraption". These are going to be my references for making the table top "flat", so I spend a while making sure they are parallel to each other and that they are solidly attached to the horses at the right height.
But the big slab of wood also has a bit of an "arche" too it along its length... This is much more slight than the crowning, and while I could just machine the table top to be exactly flat, I decide that the little bit of arch is a good thing as it will resist gravitys tendency to make the table sag over time with a long unsupported span of over 2 metres... So instead, I decide to make my two side rails have the same arch by using a very coarse grit belt on my sander and spending about 10 minutes on shaping each of them to match :)

OK, now to make the "contraption"...
Which is just a carriage for my router so that I can run it over the whole surface of the table with a repeatable and solid height setting. Im more or less building a very large milling machine :))
The side rails (longitudinal rails) are bolted to the saw horses.  And a friend let me have the use of an old exercise treadmill frame that he had (its a very solid rectangular aluminum frame) and Im gonna use that as the "latteral rails"... essentially, Ill rest this aluminium frame across the side rails and slide it along the table top to whatever place I want it.
Now, I have to build a carriage for my router to run on the aluminium frame rails...
I looked at a bunch of roller and wheel options for this but I ended up deciding to use a couple of simple old "clothes line runners" as the wheels for the carriage...
They come as a pair of about the right size; They are pulley wheels that will run nicely on the edges of the aluminium frame (rather than wheels that need a track). They are solid and well centred (so there is no flex in them and thus variability in the hight of the router)... and finally, they are as cheap as dirt :)))

So then I spent an hour or two cutting up a 2x4 and screwing it together around my router to make the carriage...
And this is what "the contraption" looked like...





... You cant see much I guess, but I ended up with a router carriage that was very solidly tracking (not more than about a milimetre of lateral movement) and had virtually no vertical "slop" but was still acurately height adjustable with the routers built in height adjustment system :)))

So, I layed it over the table and moved it around to see what sort of cut depths I was dealing with....
Hmmm quite a lot !! 
It looks like im gonna need to take off about 15mm of wood in some places... Thats a lot and more than the router can do in a single pass, so Im gonna do two rough cuts to get the bulk of the material off and then one more finer finishing cut... This is gonna be a lot of work because I can only take "swipes" of 10-15mm width with the router bit (channel cutting bit of about 25mm diameter). and after each swipe, I need to physically slide the whole router,carriage, and aluminium fram along the side rales by 15mm before I take another swipe...
Oh, and I have to be carefull too, cos this isnt a professional milling machine... If I move too fast or carelessly, the router carriage could jump off its rails and then the router would dig a lovely big and un-hidable hole in the top of that very expensive lump of wood... we definitely dont want that, so I need to pay attention and go slow (The "pay attention" part is no problem, but the go slow is definitely a challenge for me!)
Oh well, just have to get started...
... push, pull,slide, push, pull, slide ... repeat about a thousand times: and all with the wood chips flying and the whine of the high speed router... great way to spend a day :)))

 ... And about five hours later, after spending the whole day in the sun working on "the beast", this is what I had...

                               

Yep, it is now "Flat"... but its still, far from "smooth"... I figure Ive got about the same amount of time again to spend sanding it down to make the surface good for coating.

I spent another hour and a half with the belt sander using 50 grit to get the router lines out of the surface... next is 80 grit, then 140 grit... etc, etc...

But look at the beautiful grain :))) ... its really gonna be nice when its done I think :)

Im gonna keep at it when I can after work in the evenings, but time is rappidly running out.
The leaves here in Vancouver are starting to change colour, and the sun is now set by 8pm. Im definitely not going to get this project done before the rains come, so Ill just try to get the top smooth and flat and maybe a "sealing, coat of finish so that I can bring it inside the house for the winter...

Work in progress... Ill keep you posted.

Lost Summer

House reno' update... and life in general too.

OK, so once I'de "done" the floors, it was time to put the kitchen back together...

Well you see, Id removed a section of one kitchen wall before I did the floors so as to open out the space a little more... Obviously, it would have been silly to do the floors first and then remove the wall and try to patch the floor... and as a result, one side of the kitchen was something of a disaster...

And if I was going to rebuild one half of the kitchen then I may as well rebuild the other half as well of course... You know how these things go!... Actually, I consider myself lucky that I managed to "contain" the "chain reaction of destruction" just to the kitchen... It could have just kept going until I was left with nothing but a bare plot of land with no house at all :))

So the first task was to refinish the wall in some basic form and get the stove and fridge back to being useable... Drywall work; which is not hard but is always very dusty! 

Then I hung a new extractor hood on the wall hooked up to the duct and power where the old one had been, and wheeled the fridge and stove back to their original places.

That was easy enough, and to fill the gaps between the appliances I installed a couple of reasonable quality premade cabinets with some solid wood "butchers block" counter tops (I like wood and its a cheap solution for the benches on this "low use" side of the kitchen).

The next challenge though was the other side of the kitchen...

It was all old "built-in" cabinets and very ugly and over used counter tops... Id already chisled off the matching (and equaly ugly) back-splash tiles when I jackhammered out the old tile floor.

... Oh well, nothing for it but to "get started"...

I was hoping to just have to replace the cabinet doors and drawers with new ones and leave the cabinet boxes as-is (built-ins are nasty to try to replace), so I was just going to replace the old stainless steel sink with a nice new pocelain one... I used that most imprecise of modern power tools - The reciprocating saw!

And I got the sink in, but it was larger than the old one and it didnt really fit the cabinets that well... and by the time Id finished "hacking" away at the old cabinets to make it fit, there was not that much of the old cabinets left ... And after due consideration, I decided to remove that section entirely and replace them with some more of the new pre-made ones that Id used on the other side... So, it was back to work with the demolition tools!  :)

And so, I removed the old cabinets, rebuilt the sub-floor, refitted the telephone line (that ran through the old cabinets), and put in the new section of cabinets... And they fit quite well... and the sink fit in nicely too :)

So, then I bought a bunch more doors and drawers for the remaining old cabinets and set about sanding and repainting the old boxes (very dusty job but I guess Im used to it after all the drywall work Id just done), followed by installing the doors etc. (actually quite a bit of work because the cabinet openings all had to be "resized" to fit the standard sized doors and drawers... But it looked good on the lower cabinets when it was done, so I continued with the upper ones too.

... And then it was time for counter tops and back-splash.
I spent quite a while looking at counter options and what I found was that there are about three or four basic choices... In order of my preferences...
    Concrete (DIY is only real option, expensive, difficult to do well, looks great)
    Stone/quartz/corean (very expensive, low maint', looks great),
    Wood (few options - DIY if you want more, high maintenance, cheap, looks great)
    Laminex (lots of style options, lowest maint', cheap, looks average)

After looking at it all I came to the depressing conclusion that it was going to cost lots more than I wanted (of course)!... It seems that although there are a huge number of laminex options out there, that look nice and although it is tough and low maintenance and easy to install and cheap... Its just not "done" any more... It seems that kitchens in Vancouver are done in "stone" these days... Laminex is considered the cheap and low quality solution... Which if I ever want to sell my house (to go off and live in a tropical paradise?) will matter...
The wood counters option was a real possibility, not least because I could build them myself out of any wood that I want... And so I'm sure I could make them look good... But they are the least durable and require the most maintennance... Again, Im sure I could live with those aspects and I actually enjoy the "character" aspect that the petina of wear and tear gives them.... But, again if I want to sell or even rent out my house (while I go traveling again) then I think its a really bad idea... So wood is out too.
The concreate counters option is really expensive to have done professionally and is a great deal of effort to do myself (not to mention that I dont know exatly how to do it)... Its also got a high probability of being a bit of a disaster if I do it myself!...
And that leaves me with Stone... It can look great and as I said, is effectively du riguer' in kitchens around here these days... But its pretty expensive (fortunately the popularity has meant that the prices have been reducing :)

Anyway, I looked at assorted options and dident see anything that I really liked for a long time. Eventually I settled on a quartz (which is a "manufactured" material with lots of "sand" in it) and ponied up the cash to have the counters made... And about two weeks after that a couple of guys showed up and installed the counters while I was at work (I started another contract to try to earn enough money to pay for all the spending Im doing on the house!). In the mean time I went and selected some tiles for the back-splash.
And so, about a week after the counters were installed, I had tiled and grouted and seald, and then a couple more days to install the light switches and the under cabinet lighting, and all of a sudden, the kitchen was basically done!

I have to admit that Im not completely happy with the overall apearance (it just ended up a bit "dull" if you know what I mean) and I probably should have gone with a darker/bolder tile colour choice, but its done now and its not bad enough for me to want to rip it out and do it again! :))

So this is the new and now finished (well for a few years at least) Kitchen...

And so I find that I have at last got my house back in order and I can finaly relax a little more... Ive pretty much spent the last eight months working all my available time either on contract to earn some money, or renovating the house. Ive not spent more a half dozen days when I was not working on the house and as a result it seems that Ive more or less "missed" the summer!

Although, Id have to say it wasnt a very good summer season here in Vancouver anyway... We had more rain and grey days than I can ever remember having before. I honestly think there were not more than three fine days in a row all the way in to late July... And, its only late August now, but already I can feel the evening and morning air has that cold edge to it and its getting dark before 9pm again... Summer is "on the run".

But I guess I dont really mind :)

Ive had a great time working away on the house... learning new skills and feeling good about working with my hands to make something that I enjoy using. I admit though that I am now feeling rather "tired" of all the renovating and Im ready to spend my time doing something else for a while.

There are still plenty of jobs to do on the house, but none of them are urgent and I can take my time getting around to them :) Im going to spend the next week or so clearing up all the construction mess of tools and materials that have accumulated, and then I can start working some more on the "big lump of wood" table project.

Other than that, Im faced with the usual problem of trying to figure out what that "something" that I should be doing is?

For the time being, I think Ill potter away at smaller things and just see what "life" brings into my path :)...

Nibblit

I bolted on all the new bike fairings... The ones I had painted by a professional.
Rather than a somber gunmetal grey, it is now a warm yellow with subtle flame/smoke markings. It looks really nice, and I think I can pretty safely say that this bike project is now done!

 Now though, people seem to want to give it a name, but there are not that many yellow objects that you can name it after... The current two favourites are:
"Ra" (after the Egyptian sun god) or, more light heartedly, "Nibblet" (after canned sweet corn kernels)
... although, I should note that I vetoed both "Daffodil" and "Daisy"   :)

It only Hurts when I Laugh!

Well, while everyone else in Vancouver was experiencing a "Hockey final to remember" and splashing their vitriolic oppinions about regarding the post-game antics of the less "mentaly enabled" denizens of the city, I was having a far more "internal" experience...

I dont suppose you recal my "Judgement" post of a couple of years ago??.... Probably not, It wasnt that special :)   But I sure as eggs do!

...And thats because Ive just had a rather indellible reminder of it.
To refresh peoples memories, that old post was about a spontaneous gastro-intestinal "blockage" that I had and that lasted several days before "clearing" by its self.
Well, two and a half years later, more or less the same thing happened again, but this time it didnt "self clear", and after a week of discomfort (but no seriouse pain or disability), I went to see the doctor....
.. By that time, Id had a while to think about it, and I told the doc' that I figured I probably had appendicitis...
The doc prodded and poked and asked questions and listened carefully to my responses and said he figured it wasnt appendicitis for the moment and then sent me off to get blood and urine tests.

So, I let the labs have some of my fluids and I went back home and , well, waited... and waited...
But things didnt clear themselves, so after a few more days I went back to the doc' and said "something is definitely wrong"... which he agreed with and promptly sent me off to get an X-ray and some more blood tests... and they also set about scheduling some more "imagery" in the form of a sonogram, and a barrium meal and followup x-rays, and a CT scan... I have to admit that I had no faith in either the blood woork or the X-ray since they have never shown anything on me in the past for obscure illnesses, but of course they have to be done.
Now, saddly, it all takes a while to schedule for this imagery (about three months for the Barrium meal, and about six months for a CT scan... assuming of course I survived that long while ot being able to eat!!), but the sonogram was only a couple of days of waiting... So, again I waited and things continued to "not clear themselves" and at the duly appointed hour I turned up for my scan...
And the sonographer did his thing and when he was scanning away in the lower abdomen, he made a couple of "hmmm" type noises and then excused himself from the room for a short while and returned with another person,.. a doctor, and they both looked at the screen and pointed and "hmmmd" and had a bit of a conversation (the screen was not visible to me though), and then they included me in the discussion and said that they were seeing stuff that looked consistent with an accute appendicitis... to which I said that I didnt think the little guy was in the least bit cute and that I would be quite happy if we set about removing it as soon as possible!
So, agreement was reached, and they said I should go straight back to my doctor and they expected Id be off to the emergency room pretty much immediately!

But, I had something else I needed to do for an hour before I did that...
I had that great big slab of wood being delivered to my house in half an hour!
So I hopped on my motorbike and rode home to meet the guys on the big truck... And from there, we (me and three other guys) man-handled this slab of wood up the back stairs to my house... OK, OK it probably wasnt the greatest idea Ive ever had... hefting a massive lump of wood about while I am nursing a seriously inflamed appendix... But, it all worked out OK and the slab of wood is now safely stashed under my back deck.


After that I went to the doc' again and was then dispatched to get a small bag of personal effects before heading down to the hospital emergency department at about 2:30pm
From there it was about an hour wait to move through the ER process (it was a quiet day it seemed) and then they prepp'ed me for surgery...
And then at 6:30pm, I was wheeled into the OR and they put me under...

... and I woke up a few hours later with a sore tummy and no appendix!
So, now I think I know what it was that I was suffering from over two years ago, and Im pretty sure that that particular issue will not be back!


... and for the time being, It only hurts when I laugh!  :)

p.s. good thing that I got all the stone work completed in the house just the day before, cos I really cant do any heavy lifting for a few weeks now :)

Oh, and I got a new paint job done for the motorbike project, though I havnt had time to put the bodywork on the bike yet.


... and its been Prawn season in Vancouver, so Ive been enjoying a couple of "feasts with friends" ...yum yum :)))