The Bee Chronicles

Another chapter in the saga unfolded today. Earlier in the week the exterminator had been out to fog the hive that had taken up residence in our eaves with barnacle-like tenacity. The roofer had exposed enough that they could get the powdered poison into the space. [I’m really disappointed I wasn’t there to see the guy in the bee suit swarmed at the top of a 15-foot ladder; that would have been a hell of a shot!]
The exterminators were supposed to clear out the hive that was left in the eaves after all the bees were gone. Apparently, you can’t leave a dead hive in your walls / eaves / house after the hive has been killed because the honeycomb melts, the honey gets out into the walls and destroys things, not to mention the fact that it attracts other bees and wasps. Those incompetent boobs at Absolute Pest Control let us down again and didn’t get the entire hive out. Fortunately, they pumped enough powder in there to kill the entire hive dead as a doornail.
Friday, we were going to strike the death blow. Darlene took the morning off to meet with the carpenter, the exterminators, and the roofer. Of course they didn’t all show up when they were supposed to. The carpenter was, of course, the linchpin of the whole deal, because he was supposed to tear out the old pieces and rebuild after the exterminators got the entire hive out. I’m just certain they haven’t been able to kill the hive and the carpenter is going to get stung, but apparently my fear is unfounded.
The carpenter shows up and is talking to Darlene about tearing the whole front eaves off the house and rebuilding it, but she’s standing there with the exterminators asking them to describe where the bees were and where they needed to get access to. Apparently her questioning the guy as to why he needed to tear the front of the house off to get at the section under one or two sections of roof deck on a 20-foot section pissed him off enough that he said “I don’t do roofs,” stormed off and drove away without another word. THAT’S MY GIRL!!!
Of course the exterminators can’t do anything that involves a hammer, so they’re worthless at this point and leave. The roofers don’t want to finish the roof, knowing there’s some serious rot headed our way. I also suspect they’re a little afraid about being stung by an angry, undiscovered wing of the nest when they pull up another section of deck, but I certainly won’t blame them for that. So this, once again, leaves us holding the bag. Apparently, we have all become so incredibly specialized that no one fixes complex problems.
Darlene lines up some guy through the exterminator that is supposed to come Sunday to actually do carpentry work and exterminating and put this whole thing to bed. Of course, he’s a no-call, no-show this morning and we are at the end!
We drag out the 8-foot ladder and wrestle it in through the bushes to get under the eave. I climb this thing and have to stand on the very top step to get at eye-level with the lowest level of the roofline. This is the step they tell you never to stand on, that they actually PRINT on the ladder that you should never step here. I’m going to be perched on this prying open roof boards over a stretch of pointy little bushes fourteen feet below. I don’t think so.
Darlene locates an extension ladder we can borrow and calls her mom in despair. Sheila offers up her brother Ron out in Bastrop to come help us. Darlene calls Ron, and in saintly style, he says he’s loading up and on his way.
Ron shows up on his white horse [actually it was a white pickup], extends the ladder and gets up there to start prying things apart. He’s 16 feet in the air cranking boards apart while I’m standing at the bottom holding the ladder and hoping he doesn’t drop anything. He can’t quite manage to pry it open enough to get in there, but he did bring a circular saw and was able to cut out a small square so he could get in there.
He got one of those rubber dishwashing gloves and proceeded to drag out handful after handful of honeycomb, dead bees, and liquid honey to gag a healthy whale. Standing at the bottom of the ladder through all this was not the best time I’ve had, but I’m sure it was better than being elbow deep in this shit at 16 feet.
Oh, and did I mention that it’s hotter than a snakes ass outside?!?!?! We’re running about 104 and 60% humidity. It hasn’t rained since I think December.
Ron had a really good idea to use some flour to sop up the rest of the honey and it worked well. [You’ll be able to pick our house out by the smell of baking honey-cake from our eaves…] He put the whole thing back together, was able to caulk it nicely to keep them out and make things look good again. We are so lucky to have Ron to come out to help us when we were on our last leg!
You would not have believed the carnage at the bottom of the ladder I shoveled into the garbage can. Didn’t want to start a new hive in the bushes down below, although we might have a similar issue with a hive developing in our trash can…
The roofer is supposed to show up tomorrow to finish the roof, and with any luck at all, this will be behind us. Not that it hasn’t been a lot of fun…

Entry for August 20, 2006

Got up ugly early, loaded the bikes, and made the 45-minute drive to the Reservoir for the race. Got set up, into wetsuits and through a warm-up. I felt pretty good, despite the fact that the two of us were wearing blue swim caps that made us look like the Blue Man Group.
I went out a little hard, but still put together my best swim to date at 19:58, which leads me to believe the course might have been a little short. I didn’t get to see Tony, but apparently he was happy with his swim.
The bike was hilly, but I was able to big ring the whole thing. Averaged about 24 mph. Came screaming into transition, knowing the toe was going to force me to abandon. I scorched in with a nice barefoot dismount and started running through transition. After about the third stone bruise on my foot I asked myself, “why the hell are you running?” Not having a good answer, I strolled the rest of the way in, grabbed a quick drink from my water bottle, took off my chip belt, and wandered over to the official to report I was a DNF. Got cleaned up and waited for Tony’s arrival.
Darlene, Janelle, Tammy, Curtis, and Sierra were our cheering section and photographers while I was out on course. You can see the photos on Shutterfly at share.shutterfly.com/action/welcome?sid=9AZNWTFw3cMJ4. Tony looked to be having a good race from his bike finish and T2. He finished the run looking strong. He was hoping to have his run under an hour and it was 55 minutes. He was also hoping to be under three hours total and he came in at 2:46, which was fantastic.
Looking at the results later, we determined that I was in second place overall after the bike, so if I could have run, I would have been within striking distance.
We got back, cleaned up, and went for lunch and a few drinks to celebrate.