We are set to go ruin a nice walk in the sun-dappled rolling hills tomorrow – if it’s indeed sunny.
It looks like rain and I’m not so sure about my knee or wrists, not to mention ankles.
Or where to stash the flask.
Fluorescent colored balls help to find themselves, but it’s no green laser…
For my buddy Pete and his wife Daphna.
We made quite a bit more progress with the rocks, including some stream-bed realignment on the “back-forty” where there’s an erosion issue, and I’ve been handling some of the bigger stones.
In England, a stone is an archaic/Medieval term of measurement. Thanks to Wilkipedia we know that, By the late Middle Ages, international trade, such as England’s exports of raw wool to Florence, required a fixed standard and, in 1389, a royal statute of Edward III fixed the stone of wool at 14 pounds.[11] So what I’ve been playing with are stones that weigh a few stone each – like seven or eight. Not quite boulder-size but big enough to blow a disk or cause a hernia if I’m not careful, so the really big ones get rolled into the stinky little green wagon (from Tractor Supply, some total assembly required, still smells like bunker-fuel or creosote – whatever the Chinese use to make 600lb. industrial plastic is really gnarly) and hauled-up to a likely new location and tipped out.
As seen after three days, the brand-new Wells Lamont leather gloves (Costco three-pack!) have developed a well-worn patina of sweat and some texture. Rock is basically pretty unforgiving, and I have already worn-out two fingers (long/middle), with a third on the way and stitching has come un-done in the palm. In other news the recent internal application of Glucosamine-Chondroitin seems to help the early morning joint-pain – but not as much as Ibuprofen.
In many ways the BMW Motorrad engineering solutions are automotive-inspired, take the front suspension: the forks don’t contain much besides some friction inducing oil – there’s no suspension within, they are just there as a Motorrad-effekt, and primarily just hold the wheel in place on the axle and align where the front brakes go…
The suspension chores are handled by an automotive-type shock-absorber on a (pretty damn big, bridge-abutment sized) yoke, that is not re-build-able (without throwing a whole BUNCH of money at it), or have many adjustments for compression or rebound damping as a traditional motorcycle fork might. A dirtbike this is NOT.
3:00PM and it’s chillin’ time.
UPDATE: Taking a break from the rock-hauling to get other chores done, including finding a motorcycle shop closer than Roseville to get weeping the fork-seal fixed: Folsom Cycle.
As Old NFO said in comments, I’ve got a work-out goin’ on. We fought the rocks and the rocks won. 86° Fahrenheit yesterday and the hottest day of the year so-far – 16-degrees above average.
Oww-oww-oww-Ibuprofen!
We started moving the rocks off the tree roots in preparation for laying down tan-bark – something more gentle on the shrubbery. And the pseudo-curbside had rock-chip in place but the smooth river-rock (known to dirtbike riders as “baby-heads”) only wrapped around a portion of the frontage, stopping at the walkway, so we started filling-in. My little plastic wagon was taxed mightily and has not yet broken despite our efforts, the “dump” feature coming in very handy. We stopped yesterday at about 16-feet of frontage. There’s more roundy-river-rock in places we don’t need or want, but the work is heavy-lifting and we’re takin’ a break.
UPDATE: Back at it – this is morning work, by the time the sun gets way-up there’s no shade.
UPDATE-UPDATE: We’re almost to the sign-post, and other more river-rock is being removed from the driveway edging and elsewhere, the edging replaced by blocky granite hunks…
Update-Update-Update: A beautiful old Stearman in vintage Army Air Corps paint just fluttered-in to land…
…my Juniper is gone away. Well, a bunch more anyhow – off to our friend’s burn-pile.
Yes here in rural California, outside the smuggy Prius-drenched confines and cloistered closed-minds of the Tesla BayArayans, we have a vastly different lifestyle and mindset that includes the Liberal allowance for such things as burn-piles.
We don’t have one ourseves, mores the pity, but neighbors down the hill and by the golf-course do, and does our friend on the other side of the lake. And today (Monday) we attacked it further, revealing much more of the hidden flora beneath the boughs.
UPDATE: And then we went to work on the rocks…
