Female complications, day 37 Do you feel lucky?

I really should do something about the local regions navigation to make it safer. It's really mostly about the shoal down in the strait that Asta and more are worried about, it's only about half a meter below the surface in the middle of the southern entrance and ships with larger drafts like the Millennium Eagle need to travel east of that shoal to be safe, and it's less than 70 meters wide there, which isn't a problem, but still a bit worrying. It's not the only shoal on the west side of the strait, as there's also another shoal about 150 meters north-northwest of it, and many more to the south and in the larger region.

There are limited options for markings, and it may simply be a tripod of wooden poles that if it can't be hammered deep enough into the bottom, is stabilised with a pile of stone so the tripod endure weather and waves well, but so it comes up and is visible with a large octahedron or double triangle wooden marker on a centre pole, and that marker is painted orange because it is among the cheaper and most visible colours. Primitive but works. Maybe the ships crew want to earn a little extra from building that, and not just fishing or making Risk games? They have already built a small boat of their own, and they only have work occasionally to keep the ship and its ropes and lines in good condition. They should be motivated to make the local region safer, and stone is nearby.

Is it possible to build larger white boards or corner reflectors that are made of white wood or brass? That together with a powerful directional oil lamp or preferably arc light lamp from the ship to make the shoal markers be seen more easily if it is dark. I could mount them to certain islands and shallows via buoys.

It's annoying when I think how easy it would be to build and deploy many small solar charged navigation buoys with powerleds that light up automatically when it gets dark, just from the stuff I had in my hobby room in Midgård. It wouldn't have taken more than a couple of days to build permanent durable solutions even if they weren't pretty. I could do some here, especially if I take apart the solar panel, but those are too valuable components to sacrifice to something like that that rarely sees a use, and it is better with something 100% Alfheimr made that can spread and is the same.

A few buoys would be a good idea, maybe with a small bell. The biggest problem will be the anchor line although heavy rope might stand up to sea life and work well enough, especially if its tarred, because chains seem quite labour intensive to make, and is quite expensive and they rust. Maybe a brass chain instead? I could simply test a bunch and see what is best in cost and durability. But the ferry's rope seems to work well enough.

I hadn't actually considered the fact that the hand-held modular arc lights could also be used on board ships and other vessels, so it's good that that project has started and that the three prototypes are almost ready. They have even adapted headbands to fit the bodyguards' helmets, and they will also be trialling shield-mounted arc lamps. It looks rather silly with such a big and quite clumsy arc light strapped on a helmet, but it is reasonably practical, especially compared to carrying a lantern or such in the hand, and far brighter light. There will also be trials with the battery pack in a small backpack, because if they need to fight, they obviously don't want something heavy dangling around their body. A heavy small backpack is better.

The idea about buoys and markers has stuck and I go for a walk with Jane, Ciara and Caecilia to take a look from the coast line, and visit the village, and of course we are escorted by bodyguards. Ciara has finished the RY1 revolver holster, so it's a good opportunity to try that on a longer walk. Considering I also carry my pump action rifle, I am very well armed, but I need to get used to carrying firearms, and I have to admit that at the moment they feel like quite a 'shiny thing' that I want to carry.

Of course Jane has realised that the pump action guns are not black powder guns but air guns, partly because she thinks pump action guns look like a paintball gun, and there has been no smoke, smell or shell casings when I test fired, and of course she didn't buy the 'sejd' explanation. But she is very impressed that I made air guns that are this good and leathal, and wants to have her own pump action gun and hunt with it. Sure, they are heavier firearms, but the heavy tank gives the pump action gun a nice balance, and pump action guns are just nicer to shoot than black powder guns, especially as you don't need ear protection. Filling an air tank doesn't 'consume' anything valuable either, and when target shooting with bullet stops catching the lead, we can recast most of the lead bullets too. For tactical shooting and short distance practice at less than 50 meters, we will also mostly shoot wooden bullets. Shooting small game with wooden bullets is environmentally friendly and doesn't consume anything valuable at all, and magazines can be used. Jane is also impressed with the RY1 air revolver, and thinks it looks cool, but too heavy for her taste to carry often. She would like to have one though, because it is cool and very practical, and this is a potentially very dangerous world so it will feel good to have a compact 6-7 shot firearm available.

Since it's possible to refill the RY1 air revolver well enough and several times from a larger tank, and we can reuse ammo, I'll let Jane and Ciara try it. There is pretty good recoil in the RY1, and air costs nothing and recasting rounds works fine, so I refill and fire one more time. Baam! Baam! Baam! Baam! Oh! Idea! Heh! Heeehehehehe! Baam! Baam! Baam!

"Hey! Jane! Get this one?" With my bad Clint Eastwood accent, I continue: "I know what you're thinking. Did he fire seven shots or only six? Well, to tell you the truth, in all this excitement, I've kinda lost track myself. But, being this is a .47 RY1 - the most powerful handgun in the world, and would blow your head clean off - you've got to ask yourself one question: Do I feel lucky? Well, do you, punk?"

Tragically, Jane doesn't know it, although she guesses correctly that it's from a movie. She doesn't even know who 'Dirty Harry' is! But then, I know Jane has hardly seen many famous movies from the 90s, so it's not surprising that she hasn't seen several classic films from the 70s and 80s like 'Alien' and 'Aliens', 'Predator', 'Blade Runner', 'The Abyss', 'Cocoon', 'Close Encounter of the third kind', 'Lethal Weapon' series, or 'The Breakfast club' and she's only seen two of the three 'Indiana Jones' movies. It's damn impressive that she missed some of them! Jane is hopeless when it comes to the likes of 'Gone with the Wind', 'The Godfather', 'Clockwork Orange', '1984', 'Maltese Falcon' and possibly worse on classic war movies like 'Guns of Navarone', 'The Dirty Dozen', 'Bridge over the River Kwai', 'Where Eagles Dare', 'Platoon', 'Apocalypse Now' and 'Full Metal Jacket'. I can completely forget references to rather obscure older TV series like 'Police Squad' and 'Sledge Hammer', but she barely even knows of British 'Black Adder'.

But I'm still very pleased that she got the Boomstick reference. That was worth so much! Thank goodness they made that TV series 'Ash vs Evil Dead' and that zombies have been in fashion.

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Jane hangs over my shoulder and half whispers: "Darling, that pump rifle and RY1 revolver have made me realise I have a serious 'Vitamin D' deficiancy."

"What?"

"Yep. I need several Vitamins. I need D. I. C. K."

I snort when I realise and try to gather myself to play along, but can't help but smile when I answer: "Well, that is a very serious health issue, and we got to fix that once back at Thrymheim."

"I require it more urgent than that! Send the others to the shooting benches, and lets 'inspect' that over there. I'm gonna ... shoot, as you shoot!"

I should make simple plank bridges to both the larger rocky island on this side of the strait and to the island on the other side of the strait so they are easily reachable. It's not deep, and probably less than a 100 meters to both.

I should also spread navigational aids, buoys etc around the regions navigable waters so that those who are to be trained in navigation and shiphandling can be trained in using proper markers and navigation aids, and motivate the rich to pay to have the same system built when they return home or travel around. So it becomes a standard.

A squawking seagull motivates me to try hand loading a wooden bullet into the pump action rifle, and I get a nice hit. Muhahah! One less annoying and pooping seagull bastard!

We walk the path round south via the beach and on to the village and the carpentry, forge and metal workshop. I leave drawings so Engdrid can make nicer revolver grips. We still need to do a destructive test of a small pressure tank, so that everyone gets a good idea of the forces involved. So in addition to more pressure tanks, Olafr is commissioned to make two special vessels. The first is a cylinder with round ends that has a small filling nozzle for water, and made it in the same thickness and principle as the steam boiler but smaller. Second vessel is two hemispheres with fastening loops that are clamped together, has a flange with edge on the inside and a leather disc in between that I can hopefully make enough vacuum in. This will be used to try to repeat the famous experiment with horses trying to pull the halves of the sphere apart when there is a vacuum in them, to prove the power of atmospheric pressure. While I'm here I talk to Olafr about my ideas for marking the shallows and shoals and that workers may need iron bars to hold the tripods together or heavy duty nails etc and he promises they will do some straight away, but he'll use some bronze instead which will withstand salt water better. He likes to get a bit of a break from other jobs and do simple things when there is a problem and frustration with those jobs.

The milling machine is going very well and Olafr is so happy with it. Olafr has definitely understood how a machine can save a lot of work and make goods cheaper, because we have talked about a tool for the eccentric press to just make files or punch out saw blade teeth, and about a simpler tool-machine that just steps forward, much like the saw blade in the sawmill, and shapes the saw teeth alternately in each direction. The automatic hammer is simple, and the sawmill mechanism is only somewhat more complicated, but together with the power hammer they are an excellent step-by-step help to explain other and somewhat more complicated mechanisms. And a water-powered saw blade machine is fairly easy to explain, but reasonably complicated to build well. In contrast, the saw teeth should be electro-hardened so the blade is flexible, while the teeth are hard, and that is more magical.

Work on clock towers double function as a water tower is progressing and seems to be working, but longevity, maintenance, and icing remains to be seen. The water from the lake runs through large sand filters to be purified and pumped up by the wind turbine to the water tank, then water flows out to the five main water pipelines in the village. One to the Academy. One to the apartment buildings. One to the workshops. Two to the buildings on the north side of the stream through the village. The plan is that few people will have to fetch drinking water from a well or such; it's just a matter of turning on a tap. We'll see if copper sheeting needs to be introduced into the clock tower water tank, or perhaps a chlorination mechanism. The most important thing is that the water is clean and healthy. Whether the amount of water in the tower's tank will be enough for all the inhabitants is a completely different question. Thankfully, there is no toilet flushing, and most people shower instead of filling bathtubs.

I'm still thinking about whether, and if so how and for what, to use the clock tower floor space.

We continue our walk by walking across the valley to where Haera's mansion will be built up on the mountain in the west, where the sea is about 200 meters away in both the south and west. The test well works very well, and there is a small overgrown pond of about 80 by 30 meters there that Haera plans to hire people to clear so that it becomes nice and open, which will then be about 40-60 meters on the other side of her courtyard and in the northeast, and she will have a nice view of the rest of the island and the valley and village. There are a couple of areas that can be fenced off for her horses to graze on as well. We haven't decided on the boundaries of her land yet as it was previously uncertain whether her mansion would be built here or not. It will probably be a really nice mansion, with better all around views than Thrymheim, but I wasn't interested in that location myself, partly because I expected noise from the village and blacksmith shop, which doesn't bother Haera, and honestly it sounds less than I thought. So far. If I had thought about radio etc before starting to build Thrymheim, I might have chosen this place instead, especially as we might want more garden and lawns.

Haera's land probably starts about 40 meters south of the pond and makes an arc from the cliff wall to the east and down to the west and back along the shoreline and back up the cliff wall. It feels very small considering the land I got from her inland on the mainland, but it is what it is, and Haera gets about 300 by 250 meters which becomes her area plus fishing rights. We've been thinking of making the pond and surroundings become a small park in the future, which Haera really likes. She doesn't want to isolate herself, she wants people to be nearby and socialise, and it could be a nice park and pond overlooking the valley and for students and children to play in. It just needs to be some kind of railing against the vertical cliff side.

A couple of hares get spooked, and I draw my RY1 air revolver and manage to hit and kill one. Yep, the RY1 is a very nice creation! Maybe it's just as well to actually always have 7 lead bullets loaded? However, pump action rifles are better for even this kind of hunting, for several reasons. Bodil proves her skill with a bow by hitting the second hare that stopped to look a little too close to us. There will be some meat tonight. The prototype air revolver works fine, just like the pump action rifle, and I look forward to usually having a better pump action rifle with me because it is better at shooting hares, birds or the like, and just as the prototypes have been upgraded to, the next generation of pump action rifles will have four power modes where two lowest are for practice and hunting birds and small game.

There is so much construction work to do.

It should be a couple of weeks before the workers who left before mid-winter return and the pace of construction will sharply increase. But those that stayed have done quite a lot for the roads and bridges, as well as a lot at the Academy, and the first apartment block is completely finished. The workers from Kari's estate have definitely stepped up the pace, and work have started on the second apartment block.

We find Pedr and bring him, a couple of stone workers and a carpenter up to the viewpoint north of Thrymheim. We discuss the projects a bit, including that they will make a simple railing here that covers the outer part at the cliff, and the carpenter will build and fasten a simple wooden bench with a back here, for four people. It's a nice place and view, and we want to feel a bit safer walking up here, especially as it's often a bit windy, and can be slippery after rain.

I think Ciara has been a bit neglected, especially so due to the recent quickie with Jane, and as the weather is good I take Ciara for another walk. We enjoy the sun that has come out and have a little fika at the far south on the other island. We just sit there on an insulated blanket in the grass, with Ciara in my arms and wrapped in an extra blanket, kissing and enjoying ourselves. We hardly talked, because we don't need to talk. We listen to some music, and as Ciara gets to choose it's both instrumental and Gaelic and we just enjoy the weather and each other's company. Music, kissing and cuddling.

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