Three Sierra trips make up my plans for each year: May, mid-summer, and mid-fall. But the2018 spring trip gave way to hosting our granddaughter’s rehearsal dinner and getting ready for family. Summer got eliminated by a 6,700 mile motorcycle ride, including an Iron Butt ride of 1,080 miles in 16 hours. As fall drew close, I desperately needed a mountain fix, so I planned a six-day trip, leaving Sunday morning and getting home Friday evening, for five fishing days. That avoids the crowded weekends and eliminates some traffic. But around the time I left, our son-in-law’s brother Bob passed. One of the good guys, we’d shared a lot of time at family gatherings. His service was set for Friday, so I still took…
Read MorePlan: for God and Obstacles
Our neighbor to the south put up a fence at our shared side property line—but for some reason, after 30 years, weather, nature, and decay won. So the new owner and I put up another of cedar, which would need paint to match our adjoining east fence, of painted cedar.
I planned on refreshing the south fence, so I pulled out my pressure nozzle to take off the dirt, but a surprisingly large amount of paint on the east fence sloughed off—requiring more scraping and priming and…
Read MoreIn Need of Repair?
Not long after we moved to Temecula in 1988, the neighbor above us installed a cedar fence at the top of our slope on the property line. A pretty nice job too! As it aged over the years, we did some minor repairs—putting in supports for some posts, laying new 2X4s above some broken rails, and replacing some pickets. But about a year ago I realized it needed more major repairs. Three of the seven posts had rotted out, more rails needed replacing, and 40 of the 120 pickets had to be replaced. A fairly normal job, until…
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