The Adventure Together Begins

On June 12th 1971 in the hot & muggy Wisconsin afternoon, we tied the marriage knot. I was 19 and Susan was 21. After a brief honeymoon in Spooner, we returned to spend a few nights in a tent staked out in the backyard of the farmhouse where Susan was raised. During that time and those nights, we planned our upcoming move from Shell Lake, Wisconsin to Spokane, Washington and the West Coast. I have to admit that I spent far too much time watching fireflies those nights in the warm, Wisconsin evenings...but Susan eventually forgave me. My firefly fascination also played into a quote that she enjoyed throughout our lives together...

"Good decisions do not make for good stories."

Here's a poor scan of our escape in the VW after the wedding.

...and so our Adventure Together Began...

Close Friends and Loved Ones Matter Most, Hold Them Dear!

Keep Kicking Ass Susan!

Adventure and travel always have been a part of our lives. We visited and explored 55 56 countries, visited all 50 states, and especially loved traveling with close friends and relatives as we journeyed around the world. We could never have guessed how fortunate, happy, and well traveled we'd become when we first met in Madison, Wisconsin in the Fall of 1969.

Susan was diagnosed with stage 4 peritoneal cancer in the Spring of 2017. Although many are saddened with her passing, I am extremely thankful to have had almost two more years of her companionship, love, and warm smiles than her prognosis indicated. I wish to thank the wonderful and caring staff of Steelhead Specialty Group and the associated Community Cancer Center in Roseburg for their support and empathy. I also wish to thank Mercy Medical Center in Roseburg for the exceptional Comfort Care given to Susan in her final weeks...I can't express the immense gratitude I will always feel towards everyone there who expressed concern, treated her with dignity, respect, and helped her escape the pain of her cancer.

After almost 48 years of our marriage, Susan Helen Stansbury passed away peacefully in her sleep on May 5th, 2019. I firmly believe she has gone ahead to seek new adventures, travel, and explore what we all hope lies beyond this life.

In trying to summarize Susan's life and adventures for an obituary, I realized that it was an impossible task to reduce the almost 50 years we've known each other into just a few pages. So, my solution is to try and recount as many of our adventures together as I can through continuing blog posts under the tab Living Well Together. I also am aware that my memory is nowhere near as good as hers was, but I hope you will enjoy our tales and travels as I remember them.

I will continue to try living up to her mantra of 2018: Wake Up, Kick Ass, Repeat!

Susan's full obituary


We both believed in donating to worthy organizations that served our local communities and contributed to the betterment of everyone through their efforts. Since we did not have children, helping those organizations succeed became our legacy goal. If you wish to donate to a great cause as a tribute to Susan's legacy, I can think of no better one than the Roseburg Community Cancer Center. I've put a link to their donation page below if you would like to make a contribution.

Roseburg Community Cancer Center - Donations

Out With The Old or Unwrapping Your Inner Oven

Now that the oven is safely wrapped by its new enclosure, it’s time to remove the old temporary oven cover. As has been said for many generations, I wish I would have done this differently. I initially thought that by waiting to remove the temporary cover until the permanent structure was in place was a good idea. I don’t think so anymore! I neglected to realize how difficult it would be to remove the higher parts when I now had a low ceiling to work under. I also was unable to envision that getting behind the oven with the added plywood walls would have worked better if I was the size of a six year old kid...oh well, as Swoosh Logo Shoe slogan says,  I’d have to “just do it”. After a week of bonking my head and back and elbows, I’m really glad that bruises heal, skin repairs itself, minor cuts stop bleeding pretty quickly when it’s cold...and I’m especially thankful that I inherited an exceptionally hard head from my parents.

It’s also now confirmed (at least to me) that simply putting more nails and screws into a temporary structure because you are only using scraps of wood while cobbling things together because you are too cheap to do it right for a temporary structure...is a really poor building strategy in both the long and short run. (Yes, I acknowledge you have just experienced a single, extremely long sentence–composed poorly–of 57 words. I further absolve both my third grade teacher, Mrs. Parch, and my fourth grade teacher, Mrs. Balzer, of any responsibility for this breech in grammatical etiquette.)

It was good to finally get the oven exposed again. I was actually amazed how much junk wood and materials came out of the den during this phase. You’ll be happy to know that I only saved the pieces of metal roofing from the temporary structure...I just don’t know where I’m going to use them yet.

One last fix was for a gap, jag, and exposed piece of angle iron on one side wing edge (you can see the issue if you look closely at the first picture in this post) of the supporting slab. Following my normal pattern and extraordinary lack of common sense, I used every scrap piece of wood I could find with multiple clamps to hold wood together at impossible angles. (So I guess you really can't teach an old dog new tricks...)

I took the picture of my clamp and wood frame just because nobody would believe it otherwise. The scrap form didn’t have to hold much weight in any direction (and there were no pending inspections) so I got the top left wing “squared away” without any further issues and Voilà!

Now there is no evidence of my really shoddy top slab work– other than this blog of course...but then how many people will read it anyway?

Specialty Base Carts AKA Rolling Wonders!

(Back in 2010) As we were getting ready to install the den screens, I got a call that the carts we’d commissioned at the community college (UCC – back in post #4) had been framed up. They wanted me to pick them up and test to see if we all got our measurements correct before the cart tops were welded on. I borrowed a friend’s pickup (again) and brought the cart frames home.

Both carts fit into their oven stand bays, so back they went to UCC to be finished (they are waiting for the sheet metal for the cart tops). It was early June, the den screening was completed and I got another call from Ian (the welding instructor at UCC) telling me that the two carts had been completed and I could pick them up. They had taken a silhouette of a dragonfly from one of my pictures and used the plasma cutter to create appliques for the cart ends. (In addition, Ian had made a light weight, sheet metal cooking door for me with an old coil handle from a broken welding tool. He had also tacked a small dragonfly cutout on the handle.)

The plan was that when the student finished our carts as his term project, I wanted him to put his initials on the endcap. So when I picked up the finished carts, each had a dragonfly silhouette and the student’s initials JCH (JC Holloway) on the end. The two dragonfly appliques could be removed, so I took the carts to Double R Powder Coating company for the final finish. Both carts were coated with a semi-gloss black hammer texture and the dragonfly appliques were powder coated in almond to provide good contrast. Double R had the carts done within the week and soon I had to borrow a different pickup to bring them home. Problem was, the first pickup I borrowed was a full size and this pickup was not. I could only fit one cart in at a time, so after two trips to Double R, both carts were in our garage. JC had made rails for the cart wheels to guide them into the bays as an enhancement. Sounded terrific...and “forced” me to go to Home Depot to buy a hammer drill to drill and bolt the rails in place (shopping has obviously become one of my favorite activities during this oven and den build). Problem with the rail enhancement/addition was that the bay sides were a little too tight at the end, so that cart could hit the side walls as it was moved into place (apparently my ability to build something that’s square and level is not to be trusted...nor my follow-up use of a tape measure).

So, back to my new favorite word, Kludge. I cut and glued some thin wood rails along the inside of the cart bays, so the carts would not be damaged when I moved them in or out. I did this for both bays and then found that the added height of the rails in the right bay made it impossible to use the cart–nuts! As usual, two steps forward–one step back. I removed the rails from the right side and now I could push and pull both carts into their respective bays as planned. I’m sure there was a lesson in there, but I certainly didn’t get it. On the bright side, the carts are fabulous for the oven. Great working top on the left side with storage underneath. The right side provides easy access to wood for the oven and its top works great to cool bread loaves or as a place to serve the pizza or focaccia or whatever...

The carts provide the perfect on demand prep and storage area, accessible wood supply for the oven, as well as presenting us a serving table top for the baked item(s) of the day. And the best part is the ability to shove them into their bays when not in use.

They are indeed our ... Rolling Wonders!

Above is a picture of the completed oven, still standing and working after 10 years!

Ten Years of Good WFO Eats!

Wow! Hard for me to believe: Ten Years, +Three Tons of Dough, and +5,400 Bread Loaves

One of my New Year’s resolutions for 2019 was to try to be more consistent posting on this blog. I had come to the startling realization that from a dirt pad to a working WFO oven took about five months, the den enclosure for the oven was completed in about five months, and actually documenting the complete build through this blog is now approaching the 36 month mark (although I’m getting closer to finishing the original WFO build topic...so obviously, I’m improving my procrastination skills). At this point I thought it might be smart to at least confirm that we are extremely happy with the addition of the WFO and Dragonfly Den. Also, looking back at that first loaf of bread I baked in the WFO over 10 years ago, I’m amazed that Susan allowed me to continue baking for us and the neighbors. (I profoundly appreciate you continuing to read this blog after seeing pictures of that first loaf and first pizza...at least now people aren't feeling sorry for me anymore...I hope.) Since I told everyone that the oven and bread baking were intended to be my primary retirement project, I figured I needed to keep trying (I certainly didn’t want to go back to work–especially since I don’t think anyone would hire me now). Here’s my spreadsheet summary of dough product bakes for the period 2009 - 2018 just to prove I haven't been totally slacking off in my retirement (note: for those of you who are detail oriented, and blessed to see apparent discrepancies in text, titles, and stated numbers...the total loaves below are my loaves and do not include the nearly 1,000 guest baker loaves.)

As you can see, that couple of months at the end of 2009, saw only 10 loaves baked. I was only doing a basic bread from an Alton Brown’s Good Eats formula then, but it was still much better than what I could buy. In January and February of 2010, I starting to incorporate Chef Bill (my sourdough starter) to my bread doughs and using long, cold fermentation techniques. The three books that I considered really helpful to improving my bread during that time were The Village Baker by Joe Ortiz, The Bread Baker’s Apprentice by Peter Reinhart, and Bread by Jeffrey Hamelman. Our neighbor Diane is a great cook and loves to bake (as well as brew awesome beer). When she started to come down and bake bread with me, we shared a lot of bread making experiences (and her beer, of course). Since we had the oven fired up pretty much every week, another set of neighbors started to come down for fresh bread and conversation after the bake was done. Susan and Diane always shared recipes and ideas that always seemed to quickly evolve into gourmet meals that allowed us to all stretch our stomachs to the max. Diane’s husband Peter often brought down some tasty treat he’d made, while our other neighbors Bob & Deb pitched in with home made sausages and seasonally, white or black truffle laced appetizers.

Yes, we are officially spoiled now and refer to the six of us as the Densters...since we at least now had an enclosed area that seems like a pretty comfy den (especially after a couple of Diane’s great beers). Big jump from the 10 loaves of 2009 to over 370 loaves in 2010. Got a pretty good feel how to bake almost everything from baguettes to biscotti and soufflé to Thanksgiving turkey that year (even roasted asparagus & mushrooms). Definitely, baking output improved with practice and the realization that you can cook successfully most anything without a lot of temperature control. As they say, “A picture is worth a thousand words.”

 ... burp ...😎

We've Been Framed!

Time to start giving the set posts a real supporting role in this structure!

Double top plates were leveled and nailed to the posts. We started building roof trusses in the garage where we could lay them out flat and then bringing them out to set on the plates. Trusses were set at 16" centers on the top plate and 3/8" plywood sheeting was secured on top. One truss had to be “custom fitted” to go around the oven chimney stack.










The finished structure was not absolutely solid, so we added chunks of 4x4 at each post truss junction for bracing. That worked great and now we couldn’t budge the frame at all. Door frames were built and placed for the two entry door openings (front–French Doors set and back–wood cart access).

Horizontal boards and base plates were set between posts for attaching plywood skirting around the outside of the den. I borrowed a friend’s pickup and got some exterior plywood from the local Home Depot. Putting four full sheets of plywood on the outside corner of the den behind the oven, making it seem more like an enclosure for an entertaining place (instead of a car port for extremely small vehicles).

Next, we cut and placed pieces of plywood along the bottom and top of the den framing. Our intent was to have screened windows all around, so we could enjoy the great out of doors without the great out of doors residents (mosquitoes, yellow jackets, flies, etc.) enjoying us and our meals. 

Roofing felt and metal roofing sheets were put in place. Of course, a storm was predicted before I got the metal roof, so it was "throw all the scrap wood you can find up onto the roofing felt" so it doesn't blow off. Cutting and positioning the roofing metal around the chimney was a real adventure...I just don’t have the words to describe it...let me just say that the word kludge is now something with deep, personal relevance.

Kludge - A kludge or kluge (/klʌdʒ, kluːdʒ/) is a workaround or quick-and-dirty solution that is clumsy, inelegant, inefficient, difficult to extend and hard to maintain. This term is used in diverse fields such as computer science, aerospace engineering, Internet slang, evolutionary neuroscience, and government.
(Source: Wikipedia - not because I trust Wikipedia, far from it, but because it fits my definition of the word at this moment.)

With the roof on, the next job was addition of the window and door screening. Bob, our neighbor, is a fabulous wood worker and had some extra cedar molding pieces from their house build. We talked about the screen framing I envisioned and then we ripped the pieces needed for the job. Susan and I cut the metal window screening to length for each section. I wanted each section to be easy to replace (since I’d had a lot of experience going through screened doors as a kid). Each screen section was stretched tight and stapled in place.

Next, we put the cedar molding around each section to give it a finished look and to provide extra support for the staples (since I’d had extensive experience with staples pulling out when you least expected it). We did the same for the French Doors and back door. At last we had refuge from the elements and established for the critters in the area a "no flying or feeding zone".

Gimme (a Real) Shelter!

Over the winter, Susan convinced her brother Jerry and his wife Barb to come out and stay with us for a couple of weeks in the spring of 2010. She casually mentioned that if he could help me build a little enclosure over the oven it would really be great. Little did he know that the “little enclosure” would involve building a 16' x 16' roofed structure with French Doors, directing and supervising a total novice at building (me), no pickup to transport material, and needing a few tools that were pertinent to the task (note that purchasing a few tools would eventually mean helping the Roseburg Home Depot turn an unexpected and tidy profit for the month).

Fortunately, with the prompting and promise of good beer and great food, Jerry agreed to the task Susan had set before him. (Historical Note: If you have limited experience with the skills needed to construct a wood fired oven entertainment area, make sure you have access to a wide variety of adult beverages and a fabulous relationship with someone who is wonderful cook with brothers skilled in masonry and construction work who will travel across country to visit!)

After getting over the stunning revelation that the oven enclosure was going to be quite large, Jerry settled in to figuring out what we’d need to build it. First we had to buy a table saw and a large variety of various sized tools needed to accomplish the construction. Next I borrowed a 10" chop saw from my friend Dean. Adding up the basic structure’s wood requirements, we rented a truck and headed to Home Depot. Posts, 2x6 boards, and sheets of plywood were piled in the truck and brought home. Next came the staking out and locating where the posts would be set for the den. Digging, cursing, placing/bracing, and finally using post hole "RapidSet" cement got us to the point where it looked like we’d actually accomplished something other than spending money and drinking beer...not that those are bad things...