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To the Delaware and Beyond!

On Thursday I and my homies made it from an undisclosed place in Sussex Co. to the Delaware on the quads. The proof is below. The Delaware Water Gap is in the background and the bridge we are on is a rail bridge that is part of the Lackawanna Bypass.

Beatnik - in the news ...

Arial images of Beatnik during the Around Long Island Race this summer.

 

http://www.pmbphoto.com/gallery/search.php?gid_search=72&search=51712&mat

 

Beatnik came in second out of something like 25 in her class.  I was not aboard which explains the second place finish.

 

Here is another image of Beatnik being boarded by the Coast Guard under the Verrazano Narrows Bridge.

 

http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/2008/08/15/2008-08-15_terror_drill_finds_culprit_with_dirty_bo-1.html

 

ok… that last pick was not Beatnik but a boat that has the same hull color.  By the way… I feel so much safer knowing that the coast guard can find a dirty bomb when they already know when and where it is going to be in advance.  Its also great to know that all the potential terrorists now know that we have this very specific type of equipment. 

 

The Epic Ride

With out getting into the exact details of it, (for obvious reasons), on Saturday we ...

-- rode 54 miles in a loop, (no backtracking, no crossing any trail we had already used)
-- through 3 counties, (Sussex, Morris and Passaic)
-- over 8 hours
-- through 1 vicious lightning storm
-- burned 4+ gallons
-- plugged 2 flats
-- had 3 arguments, (i won all of them)
-- had one altercation with a sapling, (the sapling won)
-- did not get lost once


Charles and Rich and I. Green Pond is over Rich's shoulder.


Beer helps.


Oak Ridge Reservoir


A big cliff in the woods

L.B.I. continued

The rest of our stay in L.B.I. was great. Lots of sitting on the beach and watching the waves go by with the help of a cold beer and great friends. We saw Dogvoices on Sunday at JoePops and then The Nerds on Wednesday i think. The Nerds were great as usual. Dogvoices could be skipped.


This was the house we rented. It was really ideal. Just to the left of the flag you can see there is a set of stairs that appear to lead you to the top of the roof. There is another deck up there! You can see the Atlantic and Barnegat Bay from the same spot.


... in fact above and below are those two views.




She's committed.


Our peeps.

We're so cool.

Juli and Pete made a cameo. They brought the bad weather but then brought it back home with them.

L.B.I

Tater and I haven a good time at the beach. So far weve only had one day of crappy weather. Rich and kim r down with us for the next few days. Tonight ... "The Nerds" .. .

Lions and Tigers and

This kind of has a "Zabruderesq" thing going on because i was skulking along behind this bear in my front yard as i was trying to get the camera on the right setting. I had a great picture all lined up and it turns out it was on "portrait" and would not take it because there was not enough light or something. So instead i have the but end of a bear as he disappears into the scrub. I'm pretty sure i've seen this particular bear before. i would guess somewhere in the neighborhood of 500 lbs or so. It was heavier last year but had the same attitude.

What kind of shocked me is that we had the outdoor speakers on and were talking at conversational level when he just walked out of the woods not more than 50 feet from us. Tracy had her back to him/her so did not see it. I just said, "don't scream but theirs a bear right behind you." or something equally as silly.

I'm a bad person ... but we knew that.

So today we laid the ashes of Shelly, my mom's cat to rest. This after the customary 1 year period of reflection.

Before you watch this first video, you must commit to watch the second as well. Don't watch the first unless your willing to watch the second.






Too soon?

Shed again....

painted the shed. do you see it? I hope not.

Showboating

This post is purely out of vanity. Whenever I get the opportunity to showboat on the lift line i take it. If there is a camera somewhere, the urge is to much for me to bear.




Its a shame that I'm so bad with the camera because Pete, (above), had completed a tripple lindy a fraction of a second before this was taken. Unfortunately, i was only able to capture the precision dismount. damn shutter lag. Next time pete. I promiss.

ok not so many points for difficulty but with style like that how can you come close to juli?


Hats off to Juli who took the picture directly above and below! nice job!

We went up to Vermont for a long weekend. The conditions were actually fantastic. I was pleasantly surprised. I expected to be disappointed with ice and typical northeast conditions. There was lots of base and 9 inches of new snow.

our travel buddies juli and pete on the left. insert funny comment here.

There is always something in your way.





Does the water above look cold? It was.
I took an unscheduled swim in mid January; 45 days before this picture was taken. The ice was slightly thicker but when its that cold I'm not sure how much worse it can get. cold is cold.


Beer helps.

What did you do with your weekend?

So i bought this shed. I got a good deal so i really couldnt pass it up. The only problem. its 10x20 feet. it weighs a ton. Well, actually it weighs almost two tons. The guy I that was paid to drop it “on the spot” didn’t, (as you can see from the picture above). It rested 100 feet from where it needed to be. Which by the way is way back in the woods on a level spot I created. It was dropped off about 2 weeks ago. I couldn’t sleep the first night it was there. I have neighbors you know. I felt like Homer Simpson. Im the guy bringing down the property values. You know its bad when all your neigbors are like… “can I help you with that” Which was fine and all except one guy was holding a gasoline can when he asked me. (whats that about?)

The first thing we did was use a block and tackle with 2 pullies on each side. We hooked up a 1,500 lbs winch. By my math that increases the work by 4X so theoretically we could pull 6,000 lbs. Our problem, too much strech in the line. We would pull in 25 feet of winch cable and only move the shead 4 inches. Then you would have to release and reset. When we hooked it up to the truck instead it just snapped stuff. We moved it 2 feet over 4 hours.

I knew that we needed beefier equipment. A static rope or a chain. So we borrowed a big ass pully. I mean 18 inches in diamiter and 7 inches wide big. It claimed to be rated for 8000 lbs safe working load. We also got a big rope, supposedly good for 25,000 lbs. I was like, “perfect.” I figured we could hang the thing from a tree 10 feet off the ground if we wanted to with this stuff.
The progress pictures follow.



you can see that it moved in relation to the basketball hoop and the green patch where it rested.



You cant get good help. Rich and my father playing in the snow.

There was lots of digging, jacking, adjusting of PVCs, you can see how much fun it was.


you can see the yellow rope in the foreground, it goes left up to a pully that is slung around a tree and then back down to the shed.



That’s charles, (my neighbor), and his rhino. He had a 3000 lbs winch on the front of his machine that we used to steer the back end of the shed around trees and so forth. Our biggest struggle was that the shed was 10 feet wide and we had 12 feet total between obstacles. We could not have gotten this done without charles.

In the immediate foreground is the leveled QP pad that rich and I constructed. I taught myself how to run a backhoe. Its not intuitive.


my father jacking things up and contemplating PVC.



7 hours after we began, the shed is in the background in its final resting spot. Rich and my brother discuss what excuses they will use next time I call and ask them for a hand.