Thursday, December 6, 2007
Tuesday, December 4, 2007
Speeking of guns...
Mom's jaunt to Mormon Rocks
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
Zion, again
Monday, November 5, 2007
Monday, October 22, 2007
More Wind and Fire
Hen I posted, Wal-Mart on the south side of 215 fwy and the Starbucks strip mall where both closed. The fire had jump the 215 and both north and south bound traffic had been stopped. The 15 fwy through Cajon pass is also shut down. According the Forest Service IC they may get an air unit into Arrowhead before sundown. The Incident commander said if they can get a helicopter, they might have a chance at stopping the Grass Fire. It's still windy and expected to remain so through the night.
It's Fire Season!
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
Mojave Road
We tackled the old Mojave Road this weekend. We picked up the trail outside of Needles and finished at Afton Canyon. All in all, a great time and incident free, almost. Somewhere during the last 10 miles, J.W. hydro locked his Dodge Ram in a water crossing. He stalled out in 3 1/2 feet of water with a locked up motor. After towing him out, we put the truck on an incline and drained 5 gallons of water from the exhaust. When we tried the motor, nothing. It was still locked up. When we pulled the the throttle body off, we saw that the intake manifold had about a gallon of water in it! We used a combination of siphoning and a Coleman mattress pump to suck out the water. Next, we pulled all the plugs, breaking one, and prayed. The motor cranked over and shot water out each spark plug port. After some drying and a jump start, we got the truck running albeit badly. We finished the trail and nursed J.W.s truck back to Barstow on 7 cylinders. Quite an adventure indeed. It helped that we were well prepared and had enough technical know how to get out of the jam. We are theorizing that when J.W. started crossing, he went too fast and flooded the intake. To make matters worse, when he backed of the throttle, back pressure sucked water in tho the exhaust and past the catalytic converter. Could have been worse though. More pics when Blogger gets their act together.
Monday, October 8, 2007
The Winds Are Back
It's that time again folks. Santa Ana season. For those of us in the "Berdo", we have a 2 months of -50% humidity (where H2O is sucked out of you and redistributed to those less fortunate or unwilling to produce their own) and a constant 30 mph wind with gusts up to 187.6 mph in the canyons and passes. You people down in the "Cucs" and "Up There Land" don't know nothin' bout wind. Whens the last time you played "Find the Trash Cans" a block away?
And don't forget the annual mend the fence get together. This is when the neighbors stop by and say, "You may remember me from last year. Yeah, well the fence is buckling again so I'll be doing some mending on your side of the yard." That's when I say, "No sweat, needs some help?" And they say, "Oh no, I do this every year, so It's no problem."
Another lovely perk about wind season is the haunting banshee like shrill of a stiff breeze finding it's way into any available crevasse afforded to by a much neglected bedroom window seal. May be I'll finally replace those two sliders upstairs.
Well, enjoy the nice breeze in your part of the valley. I'll be up here collecting my roof tiles from the 215 fwy and watching the STOP signs bend in half.
Kardinal
Sunday, October 7, 2007
Wednesday, October 3, 2007
If Don were here...
We would need to make one of these. It's powered by chainsaw motors. I've got one to start with. Link below. http://www.dolmar.com/755.php
Baldy 10.02.07
I Tackled Baldy with Matt and the boys. We started at Maker Flats and took the fire road to The Notch, then via Devil's Backbone to the summit. The boys did well we had minimal stops until the final summit push. We made the summit by
We ended up going 4 miles out of our way and finishing at the visitor's center, 5 miles down the hill. MAN, that decent is steep. From the ridge near