I replenished the firewood pile behind my garage today, but I plan on taking most of it with me camping next week. I drove out to a dirt road off Airport Road, and found a stretch along the road where they’d dug it up for a gas line running to all the gas wells. There was mostly juniper that they’d dozed over to clear space for the line, but every once in a while I’d come across some pinyon pine, which is exactly what I wanted. I didn’t cut much wood up there because the chain on my chainsaw was extremely dull–I’ve had it for five and a half years without ever sharpening it or replacing the chain. It was so bad that it was burning through logs more than it was cutting them. I didn’t want to make another trip up there, so I loaded up as many of the larger branches and logs as I could find, then went home and dropped them off in my back yard. After buying a new chain, I swapped it out and started cutting. It was like cutting butter–I don’t remember it ever cutting that quickly, but I’m sure it did when it was new.
Our camping trip will last five days and four nights, which will be the longest I’ve ever camped all at once. I’m pretty bummed because Sam and Mark aren’t able to go now. Most of the other people who’ll be camped there are just acquaintances, and I’m sure there’ll be others who I don’t know at all, so hopefully it won’t be too strange hanging out with them for that long.