February 5, 2011

35th birthday today for me, and I spent most of it downstairs with Cam and Dan Hamilton getting a lot of stuff built. We like to term it “boning the fish” for the sheer fact that when you look at the 2″ tall bits of plywood extending out from both sides of the central wall, it looks much like a fish skeleton. We stopped short of where we wanted to be for want of more 2″ wide strips of plywood, but still some fine progress made!

Cam and Dan also got a fair amount of the helix base assembled using 4″ wide strips of plywood, though it’s not complete for the lack of a few more cross-braces to be put in for riser support for the base rotation of the helix trackbed.

Afterwards, much fun was had at dinner Michaelea made and a game of Empire Builder was played until the wee hours including Murray who came over just as we were getting started. Dan left early and Michaelea took over his empire and Murray ended up winning (Beginners luck!) despite his promise to his wife that he would let me win… Oh well, at least it was a nice win this time around compared to some of his past wins which were… shall we say “not nice”?