Bob's Eyes

Tuesday March 11, 2025 Guerneville CA.

Woodchips

I heard the woodchip truck outside this morning. The guy left me with a new pile of woodchips. I’ll need to bring Skiddy down to spread them out in the yard soon.

Making video clips

I had a fully charged battery in my video camera today, so i rode the quad runner up to  the old dirt road and continued making videos of each section of the old road so I could compare the old road with the new improved road. I hope to put a video together for YouTube of what I did to improve this road, eventually.

I started making clips where I left off and continued on down the road to the end.

Compacting the old road

While I was making video clips, I was thinking of bringing my car up here to help pack in the road bed as it’s supposed to start raining pretty good sometime tonight.

I put all the full diesel containers in the back of  my car for added weight and took off up through the state park where the larger redwood trees are.

I let myself through the gate and started driving up and down driving all over the road to pack in the loose rock and dirt.

Difficulties

That process turned out to be a lot harder than I thought it would be.

Parking brake activates

The first thing that went wrong was I backed up near a big bump in the road and the car just stopped on  it’s own, locking up the parking brake. I finally saw the red light on the parking break button, but I’d turn off the brake and it’d put it back on. I was thinking I needed to turn off the collision control, but how do I do that. I was able to get the car far enough away from that bump and get the car moving, but not being able to disable the stuff on the car that keeps it from running into stuff, that problem continued to plaque me.

Car won’t go

I was going up  in the steepest spot and the car just wouldn’t go up it. It didn’t’ spin out or anything, just wouldn’t move up the hill, starting from a dead start. I started pushing buttons to maybe get it  in a lower gear or some kind of traction control without any success. You see, I don’t really know how to drive these newer cars. Older cars, you just put it in a lower gear but these newer ones you  have to know stuff like which button to push  and what do the buttons do.

So, here I was stuck on the steepest part of the hill when two cars pulled up behind me.

I had to explain the fact that I was stuck and would need to back down so I did that and was able to get going. I finally found a button that would put the car in some kind of lower gear. I’ll have to look up these buttons when I have time.

I was going up the road when I  ran into another car so I tried to turn around in a narrow spot in the road. When my car got near a hill or bump, it put the darn parking brake on again, so I had a  hard time getting the car turned around as the car continuously turned the parking brake on, going forward or backward . I need to find that anti collision button.

I packed things in pretty good, eventually, and stopped here to cut a small ditch to improve water drainage in this spot to  help keep water from running down the road.

I’ll likely have to come back up and repair this ditch after it rains a bit.

This is the steeper part of the road that I wanted to compact which I did get done, so let it rain tonight.

I drove on home for the day.

Nice day.

Monday March 10, 2025 Guerneville CA.

I didn’t want to work on the old dirt road today as there’s some rains coming in tomorrow night and the work I would do wouldn’t get any time to get packed in by the users of the road.

Video clips

I decided to ride my quad runner up to the old dirt road and make some video clips of what I’ve done to the road, so far. I made video clips of the road before I started and was thinking of making a video of the clips showing before and after of each section of the road.

Firewood

I stopped on the way up to the old road here to see how Barry was doing cutting firewood. Looks like he’s doing pretty good. He’s cutting madrone trees for firewood which is a very good wood to burn.

Video clips

I made it to the top of the old dirt road and started making video clips every hundred feet or so going down the road explaining what I did and what the wet winter did to cause problems and how I fixed them.

I just keep working my way down the road, stopping and talking about each section.

I was doing well making those video clips,………..until.

Dead battery

I made it about three quarters of the way down when the camera said the battery was about out, so I was forced to stop doing the video clips. There was enough juice left to take stills, but not enough to do the video clips.

Road work

I turned around and started back up the hill stopping here to improve this water crossing and stopping it form going down the road. All I had was this stick I picked up to do the work. I’ll be watching these ditches during the rains that are coming.

Hair pin turn

I stopped here to study this area to figure out how I can improve this hair pin turn some more especially the ditch that comes around the turn.

I stopped here to study this ditch crossing when Barry came down the hill with his truck loaded with wood.

We chatted for a bit, then Barry took off down the hill and headed on home with his wood.

Since I was done taking videos, I went for a ride and ended up at our break area at the top of the hill.

From there, I headed towards home going by the spot where Barry was cutting wood. Looks like he has another load of wood to take home.

Drink

I needed a drink of water, so I stopped at the pond and got a drink from the hose that feeds water to the pond that comes from a spring.

And I stopped here to throw the larger rocks off the road. Being a hillside, when it rains, rocks fall down the hill and onto the road.

Hens

I made it home. The chickens were ready to get into the front yard to do some grazing.

Nice day.