ARCHIE ENDO was in Thailand when a snow load took down his ten year old homemade, canvas, vinyl, and (thin) plywood-covered, metal-tubing-framed carport.  This was in February, and his area, above Discovery Bay, and everywhere north and west of there got the brunt of the snowstorm.

ARCHIE, still recovering from a stroke, asked me, possibly because I am a contractor, to help extricate two of his classic surf rigs.  “Painting contractor, Archie; don’t really do this kind of thing.”

But we’re friends, so, of course, I said I would get some of our mutual surf friends, guys with carpentry skills, on it.

Eventually.  Then Stephen Davis went to Hawaii, shit happened, and…

A couple of weeks back Archie came back.  Cars still buried.

Last week I got some eight foot two-by-fours, some ten foot two-by-sixes, five pounds of sixteen penny nails (who would need shorter ones?), and had a plan on how to prop the thing back up. Then I got Steve and his friend from Hawaii, Damon (here for the memorial for Stephen’s son, Emmett) to give raising the roof a shot.

Heavy.  Too heavy.  We agreed that a couple of jacks (better than the bottle jacks we had) might do the trick.  Luckily, since I’ve saved jacks from two recent prematurely-killed (by me); we agreed to return.  Meanwhile, we got the roof high enough that Archie was able to start up his Lincoln Towncar.

BUT THEN…

Two jacks, an extension cord, a Skil saw, a lot of swearing (by me only), and… (some amount of) success! We’ll fine tune it later.

Photo by Archie’s daughter, Lillian, of Archie propping me up. Or about to straighten out my moustache.

CAN’T WAIT to see Archie’s rides out on Surf Route 101.