Sunday-3-18-12

It was such a beautiful day today. Besides walking the dog with the boy and some yard work I also squeezed in a bike ride. And this year i have been tracking the rides using MapMyRide.com. With the app loaded on my phone it tracks my route and speed and all kinds of other shit. Then the web site gives me embed code to fly over the route. Here it is"


       
 

Pretty damn cool if i do say so. Oh  yeah I nearly forgot to mention. A big doe jumped out in front of me at mile 13-ish. i missed her by about 20 feet. If I were going faster, definitely would have hit her.

Burn-day

Its a nice day for a brush pile burn. Videos to follow.

Soil gas sampling

This is me, in early november collecting a soli gas sample from a site in Brewer, Me.

Pumpkin land

Yep we went to pumpkin land. It was pretty fun. My favorite part was the piglet races.

StoryLand

So yes, on September 3, 2011 we had the StoryLand experience. Below is some vid I shot on my droid.

I barely remember going here when I was about 6, and on this day it was time to bring my boy. It was a good time. We cant wait until next year. Note to self: bring hand sanitizer.

Bike Hack

It was a Saturday afternoon and I had taken my bike and trailer down into town to the grocery store to pick up some foodstuff and log a few miles.  I live in central Maine so this actually becomes a fairly good ride. 
On my way out I noticed a couple of very average mountain bikes in the rack next to me.  My guess is that the owners were inside picking up some butts and Allen's coffee brandy. 
But anyway, as I was loading the trailer I looked back and the bikes and noticed that the seat clamp on one was replaced with a pair of full sized, made in the USA, vise-grips.  I'd call it Yankee ingenuity, but this is just too much of a hack solution to garner that prestigious label.

Happy 4th

Today is the 4th of July, 2011. It is the 9th anniversary of marriage to my wife. Melinda. Happy anniversary Woman.

Today she gave me a gift. A gift of alone time.  I worked on a patio I am building for her today. Today was the 4th session of excavation.  During the 1st session I removed the existing gravel and flat stone.  I used that material and made this:




Then there were two more session of additional soil removal.  Today was the fourth and final. I have move a total of approximately 17 yards of gravel, rocks, and till and now have a perfect hole to backfill with stone, sand and and the concrete patio blocks.  The following pic is the end of the 4th excavation session/. 7 hours today. 22 hours total. 10 tractor hours.

 This hole is level to 24 inches depth (+_3inches) from the pavement on the left, all the way to the right.  The bottom is hand tamped (compacted).  It is about 200 sqft. 2 feet deep.    There was a lot of hand shovel digging.  Hard, but I got my man hands back.
This fucking shit will not frost heave when I am done.  Effort in equals favorable results out.

Excuse my derivation from good formatting, I am too damn tired to care. It is beer O'clock


Oh yeah right. i haven't posted in a while...I got a tractor. Its frigging aWEsoMMMMe.

Damn. That was steep.

I got my self out for a bike ride today. It was so beautiful out, my F. Moser (Falcor) was asking me  for a good challenge. So, I decided that the crux of todays ride would be the climb out of Hallowell.  As I approached the area I decided that a smaller side road would be interesting and different.  I was right. 

I took a left on to Central Street and immediately started up the first lift at 8,9,10%  grade for a few hundred feet of road. It flattened out to 7-8% for the next few hundred road  feet.  The second lift 10-11...skip over 12 to 13%, again for a few hundred more feet. Another flat section (7%) then an increase to 9% with a final kick that was fucking crazy. it looked like a wall. 16-18, 20% percent grade for about 300 feet.  The total climb length is about 1 mile.

I pedaled slow and hard. I've never grunted during a climb before, but I did today.  Pushing down hard with every stroke while pulling on the handlebars with my arms. I REFUSED TO WALK.

The following 20 miles was comparatively easy.  I am looking forward to bringing some unwitting soul up this hill someday soon.

*note* i wrote this back in June 2010 and forgot about it. So im posting what i had written at that time.

@ the pond.

seems like the best way to post is to do it via mobile, too get the basic post up. Then come back and edit, format and add info. So, here we are today walking the dog at our usual place.