Bob's Eyes

Tuesday June 17, 2025 Guerneville CA.

Keys

I realized I’d lost all my gate keys just before I left today and couldn’t locate them. I went over to Tom’s and borrowed his key.

Road Work

I rode up through the park and got through the gate and got started on widening out the hair pin turn. The material was needed a couple hundred feet down the road which was exceptionally bumpy and things were real dusty today. With all the dust and riding over the real bumpy road, I was warn out by 3, so headed to a neighbor’s place that I hoped had an air compressor to blow some of the dust off. He had one, but it was real slow, better than nothing. After a good blow, I used the water hose to wash off a bit and felt much better.

It’s going to take another day to finish up that turn.

Park guys

From there, I headed to the state park to chat with a couple guys but there weren’t there, so I shot the bull with the people that were there for a bit, then went on home for a nap.

Keys

I looked all over for those darn lost gate keys and didn’t find them. A bit later while sitting in my chair thinking about those keys, I had a thought. Maybe I took them out of my pocket when I returned some other keys to their place on my bench. I looked and sure enough, they were there. That was fortunate.

Nice day.

Monday June 16, 2025 Guerneville CA.

Forest work

I rode on up into the forest today to meet neighbor Jim and his dog. Jim was going to help me do some stuff today while his dog supervised.

Old tree cut

Jim is good with a chainsaw so I had him climb up the side of the hill and cut this old dead tree off that was overhanging the road.

Rocking a water ditch

Then we took the Skidder down the old dirt road I’ve been working on and I had Jim load up the bucket with rocks we picked up along the road.

I wanted the rocks to put into this drainage ditch to prevent any more erosion by building these little check dams.

After that we worked our way back to his road to remove some old culverts, but first we had to cut some trees out of the way, which we did.

Then we pulled two old culverts out of a ditch that goes along the road. When I get busy, I sometimes forget to get pictures, which I did.

Anyway, we were setting things up for me to take out the old ditch along the road on a hair pin turn to improve the turn for fire trucks to get around the turn.

We got that done then I took Jim back to his place and I headed towards my place.

Little pond

I stopped by the pond for a drink of water, noting that the little pond’s water level had dropped quite a bit,because the springs were starting to slow down for the year. I got my drink of water and headed for home.

Nice day.

Sunday June 15, 2025 Guerneville CA.

Ride

I thought I’d take a ride up to another hill  top where I played a lot with this guy that lived here when I was a kid. We rode our little scooters all over the hills in this area, a time when there weren’t  many gates.

I made it up here and had a nice visit with his son although I  had to wake him up from his nap and his four dogs barked by didn’t bike me.

Then I rode on over to this place which was vacant when I was a kid. It had an old orange tree that we stole oranges from when they were ripe.

Dave the guy there is building this new house as he lost his during the last forest fire in 2020 which was unfortunate.

After that visit, I rode on out the road there that went on up the ridge.

Along this road.

I continued on up the road exploring.

A view down from there. I live out there somewhere in a valley.

I went to the end of the road as I wanted to see it was it open to the state park. It had some trees across it and a lot of wild sweet peas.

On the way back I looked down into this valley where the city of Healdsburg is.

I wanted to see the old orchard of my old friend so I went down this paved road and was surprised to run into these guys working on Sunday. They were cutting back trees and brush on the road side for fire protection.

His old orchard wasn’t being taken care of but this one tree had lots of apricots on it which were almost ripe. I think my neighbor would like them to  make some jam. The birds will get them if she doesn’t. I’ll have to check on that.

I headed on home from there going by this old shut down quick silver mine.

I went on home then I went back up into the hills to talk with the goat lady that I’m going to do some work for rerouting this spring area.

And fixing up this turn in her driveway so a fire truck can get down to her house.

This little goat adopted me.

Nice day.

Saturday June 14, 2025 Guerneville CA.

Machine maintenance

My skidder needs to be greased, so I got the new battery powered grease gun I bought recently and took it up into the hills where Skiddy was parked and got to greasing it up.

That battery grease gun works real good and makes greasing stuff very easy.

Once that was done, I went over to a neighbors to look at a road I said I’d fix. That road has a hair-pin turn that is hard to get around so I  had a look at it to improve it so a fire truck could get around it. I’ll need to cut some trees down to make the turn better.

Pond

Then I rode over to our pond for a drink of water.

Water hole

From there I drove on down to this little water hole I’m expanding to make it a bit larger.

It was good to see the new part was full of water.

From there I rode on over to another neighbor’s to check on this narrow road to see where it went. I’ll need to get some trees cut before I can open it

I followed the road to see where it was going. It’s a bit over grown.

I went down to this neighbor’s house but no one was home.

Drink

I needed a drink of water so I headed over to our main spring.

I got a drink of water here that hit the spot.

Tom’s garden

From there I headed for home stopping here to see how Tom’s garden was doing and found Tom working on it.

Chickens out of control

My chickens have been jumping the fences an heading out on the highway and over to neighbor’s too, so I looked up clipping wing feathers and I and a neighbor just went out and clipped one wing’s feathers to see if that will slow them down. Clipping feather wings is suppose to make it so they can’t steer in flight. We’ll see if that helps any.

Nice day.

Friday June 13, 2025 Guerneville CA.

Forest road work

I needed to go back down the old dirt road today to clean up the water ditch dirt that I dug out yesterday and piled along the road.

That meant I needed to change the blade back to the bucket which I did.

Working

Here I am smoothing out the dirt that I’d piled along the road from the water crossing work yesterday. It’s good because I was able to use the dirt to build up the outside of the road to make it better for when cars have to pass each other on the road.

Drink

I got thirsty and got a drink out of this  little spring on the road. I got a little drink before I messed it up cleaning it out some more.

Spring

There wasn’t that much to do today on the road, so after I went for a ride at our place and stopped at this spring for a good drink of water.

I made it this overlook where I sat for a break.

Pool

Then I rode on down to this area where I’m trying to make this little water hole a bit larger so it will support mosquito fish as the little water hole that is there won’t support them.

I’d carved out this little hole a week or so ago and now it needs some water in it to see if it will hold water. I diverted the water from the little hole in the back there to see if it will fell with water or not.

This is the little water hole that I diverted to the larger hole. It’s fed by a  spring about a thousand feet up the hill that is piped down to this spot.

Pond

On the way home, I stopped by the pond to enjoy it a bit. It’s large enough to support the mosquito fish and is full of them.

Cell phone problem

Back home I called my cell phone provider to see about getting a new sim card for it to try and get WIFI calling to work. I was lucky in getting a supervisor on the phone right away, that was good.  I asked for a new sim card. She said she’d send me one, but she said they didn’t support WIFI calling. Darn. I heard from them that it did and some said it wasn’t supported. I’ll try the new sim card but think I’m going to have to get another provider to get the WIFI calling thing to work, so the phone is useful to me.

John Deere

I also emailed John Deere about my six way blade not working right which they didn’t fix for me last time as it’s an intermittent problem that they couldn’t find.

I’ve not been happy with that as it’s a new blade and should work right. They said they’d try it again but wanted me to ship the machine and blade to them at my cost.  Bull, that’s very costly. They seem to think the problem might be in the machine instead of the blade which I doubt. I’m thinking of installing a volt meter on the blades switching system to check it out myself to prove to them it’s not the machine. I figure I can do that with a car lighter USB plug in that has a volt meter on it that I can hard wire to the switching system so I ordered one up on Amazon.

Nice day.