Saturday drove up to the cottage. Left-over stringers of thunderstorms kept hitting us, but it was mild. Stopped at our lovely little bakery in Woodville, on the way to Apsley. The lady told us about a fine young family going camping for the first time at Silent Lake, and they had no concept of blackflies! Lambs to the slaughter! The lady tried to tell them to get stuff, but I wonder if that sunk in.
The rain just stopped as we loaded the boat, so no blackflies. They came as we carried stuff up to the cottage. Thwack! Thwack! These things hurt as they hit you. I looked at them up at the cottage, and they were big and juicy this year. In fact, the biggest I have ever seen. They were mutant blackflies! Aaaaahhh!
Full bug suits! I had to put in the pump, and they were hitting us. First I do the nasty job of attaching the foot valve, and dumping it in the lake. Clouds of them! Then we have to carry up buckets of water to prime the system. The screen doors were getting black with them!
I fired up two Off Lamps to smoke them out. They were penetrating into the cottage! Most of the time blackflies know they are trapped inside, and stick to the windows. Not this time! I brought one of those poisonous smoking lamps inside. Who cares about cancer?
Now we started juicing up the water system. After a while, the sound of someone pissing under the deck. Oh CRAP! One of the pipes froze and blew a copper elbow. I'll never do copper again! So now I had to go under the cottage, and replace an elbow. I couldn't see much because we had to set up a wind screen, and the pipe was full of water. Blah! And the blackflies! I've never seen blackflies that could bite through socks saturated in bug spray, but these ones could do it! Pipe fixed after a few solder burns.
Then it became cold. There's going to be frost!! The blackflies will die! Yeah!
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