Sunny and warm during the week and rainy and cold on the weekend, was the weather forecast for most of the week. They said that it might rain on Friday but the weekend was definitely not going to be good for outside activity. I agonized all week about what to do about the scheduled dock work day. My experience is that a lot of the time the rain is a day or so late in getting here, so I waited. Friday, late, I got an email from Ashley Hawkins who lives in Forsyth asking that if I decided to call off the work day to send him an email early Saturday and an email from Ronnie Hartley saying that it did not look good. What should I do? Call it off or wait. Felt like I was in a poker game and trying to decide if the weather player was bluffing. Decided to check and wait until Saturday morning. Got up early and looked out at the lake, like being dealt another card, and the weather raising the stakes. Got a call about 8:30 AM from Bob Horan who said it was raining in Warner Robins. Bob and I both agreed that the rain usually moves from West to East, so it was probably going to start raining here soon. I knew that Bob always has a long list of projects he is working on, so I told him that we would forgive him if he stayed at home. Then I got a call from Pete Ekstrom who lives in Madison, and he said the weather looked like it was clearing and the sun might break out. I decided to send out an email saying that we may or may not be rained out, and I left for the club and arrived there a little after 9 AM. I was the first to arrive. Put on a pot of coffee and started hauling the tools and supplies out. Still no rain and the weather looked better. Shortly, a few hardy workers started to arrived and by about 10 AM, the official start time, work was well under way. One crew started tearing out the old deck boards, another started sawing deck boards, another started preparing the new stringers, another started hauling the old dock boards off the dock, another started pulling nails out of the old dock boards. Then the wrecking crew moved over to reinforcing the old sub structure which was barely hanging on, others started removing the old temporary walk way and rebuilding it, others started to attach the decking. Another very important crew started preparing a gourmet hot dog lunch prepared by Grayson and her crew. We had 12 workers: Charles Ballard, Mike Bragg, Brian and Erin Davis, Howard Gregory, Ronnie Hartley, Ashley Hawkins, Dick Mueller, Calvin and Grayson Smith, Jack Sterrett, and me. (I know it is risky to list the people for fear of leaving someone out. If anyone was left out please let me know.) We finished about 20 feet of dock and about 15 feet of walkway before the rain looked imminent, and we ran out of lumber at about 1:30 PM. We quickly attached a few critical cleats so we could retie the boats and put the tools and supplies away. The food was good, the fellowship was good, and we got a good bit done. We also created a large pile of debris which we decided to wait until later to clean up. Check out the photo link below. If anyone has a little time and wants to help out a little, here are some tasks that can be done at any time: 1. Pull the nails out of the old dock boards that are in reasonable good shape and stack them on the concrete pad beneath the deck. 2. Discard the old boards that are in less than reasonable shape into the dumpster. 3. Discard any bits and pieces of new lumber that is less than 1 foot long. 4. Discard any old boards that are less than 3 feet long. Several people have said that they are available to work on a weekday. I would like to schedule a weekday workday between February 27th and March 3rd. If you are able to participate, let me know at jimmy.harrell@riverside.net or 404 234 8463. [Feb 18 Work Day photos->http://www.osyc.net/photos/2006-02-18-Dock/page_01.htm]