Bob's Eyes

Sunday October 20, 2024 Guerneville CA.

Skiddy work

I got the diesel fuel out and transfer pump and fueled up Skiddy.

And then I got the grease gun out and greased Skiddy’s grease fittings all up.

Changing blades

After that and a break, I changed Skiddy’s bucket to a six way blade. It’s pretty easy to do, just unhook the hoses and hit the unlock button and change to the blade and hit the lock button and hook up the hoses and it’s ready to go.

Old road videos

I’m going to be working on this old road to improve it to make it drain water better when it rains. Right now, the road pretty much turns into a creek when it rains and tends to wash it out.

I’ taking out the ditches and changing the road to out-sloped so the water runs off it, instead of down it.

Right now the road is in-sloped to the ditch instead of out-sloped so the water just runs off it when it rans. I will take the road material on the left and fill in the ditch which will make the left side lower than the right side and make it an out-sloped road.

Ditches are high maintenance and plug up causing water to run down the road and wash it out during big rain storms.

I drove down the road taking videos of what not to do to make a good road. These ditches also  have high sides which don’t let the water run off the road and into the ditch. A ditch should have a sloped side to the road so water can run into the ditch instead of down the road. Better yet is to out-slope the road so there is no ditch and water just runs off the road.

Here’s one more example of a bad designed road. In-sloped, so all the water runs down the road and slowly erodes the road. I will move the dirt on the right side, to the left side , so the water will run into the drainage ditch on the right, which is out of sight.

I took the videos to make a before and after video of what I do to make this a real good road that doesn’t wash out during rain storms.

Overlook

After that, I rode on up to this overlook for a good break.

I headed for home from there but had to stop  here to cut this fallen tree off the road.

I also drove by my little pond. It’s a bit muddy, likely because birds such as wild pigeons have been bathing in it, or some other animal has been in it. I thought I saw some signs of wild pig in the area earlier. There are lots of acorns falling to the ground right now, so there’s lots of food to eat.

Nice day.

Saturday October 19, 2024 Guerneville CA.

Putting Skiddy to work

I planned to go up into the hills today and remove some ditches from my cousin’s roads as ditches collect water and cause a lot of erosion problems, beside being high maintenance when storms hit. People put ditches in roads that are sometimes unnecessary. Most of the time there are better methods to deal with water control on roads than using ditches, such as just out-sloping the road so water just runs off it, instead of down it.

Headed up the hill to work

Anyway, I hopped into Skiddy’ and warmed it up a a bit then took off for the hills. About half way up, I realized I forgot my camera and my watch. No pics, but I could tell the time by how beat I was and where the sun was, oh, and how dusty I got while working. The dust piles up on you the longer you work in it. Not  my favorite thing while running equipment.

Filling up ditches

I worked on filling up the ditches with rock and dirt I carved off the hill, just above the spot in the ditch I was filling.

Goat Lady

I was working away, when the Goat Lady drove up in her truck. I’d said I’d load her truck up with dirt that she needed, so I stopped what I was doing and loaded up her truck. She took off for home, down the other side of the hill to shovel the dirt out of her truck.

I went back to work filling in that ditch and got that one done then started filling the other ditch on another road.

Humpity bump

After that, I put a hump in the road covering up their water supply pipe that crosses the road from their spring. I tried to  make an easy going hump, not short and steep and bumpy, but a long smooth, rolling hump that was easy to drive over.

Headed for home

By then I was nice and dusty, so it must be time to get on home, so I headed down the hill, stopping to pick up a scoop of rock to put in my creek bulkhead at home.

Once home, I dumped the load of rock in the bulkhead, getting most of the rock where I wanted it. Looks like it will take a few more loads of rock for that project.

De-dusting

I used the air compressor to remove most of the dush on me and then closed up the chickens for the night.

Nice day.