Have tarp, will travel.

It may possibly raining harder in the Seattle area than it is in Portland right now. When Dan Hughes set out for Pier Park he came prepared. There are eyelets in the top of the full pipe, thoughtfully added there by Sage Bolyard. Hughes brought a tarp and set it up. Hear what he had to say and link to more pics after the jump.

Basically it took us about an hour to install the tarp, and we would have been skating if the concrete would have dried out. It was 62 degrees, and the concrete was colder than the air. So what happens when warm air hits an ice cold glass of water? The outside of it condensates. The exact same thing was happening to the concrete. We would have been fine if it was a normal rainy day. A weed burner would have allowed us to skate all day. A few seams also leak, in the pipe and the bowl.

I had a 30X40 tarp, and it would have been nice to have a slightly larger one. The key was making sure the water ran off the tarp into the adjacent smaller bowl, and not onto the deck. Because water on the deck came back into the 9 foot bowl.

The eyelets on the top of the pipe were invaluable. If I was to do it again, I’d do it slightly different. I’d probably use a rope and thread the rope through the eyelets, and tie the tarp’s eyelets to the rope instead of how I did it, which was to try and attach each eyelet of the tarp to the eyelets of pipe.

We didn’t try and tarp the mouse hole, while small, it looked like my other tarp (30X30) would have been barely enough to cover the deck leading to the hole.

Hmm… sounds like it might be time for the Portland Locals to take up a collection for a weed burner. Dan’s got a few pics up here with more promised.