Craig Sisterson had never volunteered through Workaway before. I managed to snag him the moment his profile came up on the Workaway site. He decided to squeeze 2 weeks out of his busy travel schedule in the States to come up to my place. He was not the most skilled worker I have had, but he more than made up for it with strength and enthusiasm. He was also a lot of fun.
Craig is from New Zealand. He started his working life as a lawyer then switched to journalism. He writes a variety of stuff, a lot for for law magazines and sports magazines. But his great love is crime fiction. He has interviewed hundreds of crime authors, mostly New Zealanders and Australian, but also some of the world’s most famous like Canada’s William Deverill, US’s Michael Connelly and Britain’s PD James. He blogs about crime writers: www.kiwicrime.blogspot.com . He started the Ngaio Marsh Crime Writers award, named after New Zealand’s most famous Agatha Christie style detective fiction author.
Sounds impressive. But with me he worked very mundane jobs. First we put the structure for a ceiling in the new cabin. (He was nice and tall so that was a bonus!)
Before we could complete it, we had to work out where the stove was going to be, and install the chimney.
Et Voila!!
Craig had learned the basics of using the chain saw while carpentering so now we turned to falling trees for firewood. He learned how to do the wedge cut:
The back cut:
And to run away when the tree came down!
Finally, we spent a couple of days using barn boards to do the remaining side of the little cabin by the waterfront. I hope to sell the property beside the river and obviously need to spiffy up the cabin before I can list it.
Craig loves to run. Often, before breakfast, he would run the 4 km to the Highway 20 and back. My previous volunteer, Lily, did too – a pity they were not here at the same time.
At some point in his past, a friend suggested that if he liked running, he should run a kilometre for each of his years on every birthday. On the 20th of September, he was 35. He had not run more than 17 km at a stretch before and wondered how he would make out. He did the distance by running back and forth on the bush road to the highway. Four times there and four times back plus a short run at the end to make up the difference. I stretched a bit of flagging tape across the road to greet him at the end of his ordeal. He looked remarkably fit!
The winner!!
Craig had already planned a trip through the States with a friend and had to leave for Seattle. Yesterday, there was a big wedding south of Tatla Lake and we figured all sorts of people would be driving back to Williams Lake today. I drove Craig to the Tatlayoko Road junction with Highway 20.
Craig had never hitch-hiked before and I promised to come back in about one and half hours to see how he was faring. I waited out the time at a lake near Tatla Lake.
When I came back, Craig was gone. No doubt I will hear about his hitch-hiking adventures when next he gets on-line.