Author Archives: Britton

Poudre River Flood

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They have some roads closed off on the north side of town.  The Poudre River is over its banks in areas due to the melting snow in the mountains and recent rain.   The trail is only a few miles away so Cassie and I figured we would jump on our bikes and see if we could get into trouble. 


East meets west, but the road is Closed.

We actually didn’t encounter too much resistance to jump the signs and get a closer look.  This is a small ditch, and it took out the trail completely.


Like I said, it used to be a small ditch.


You can see where its widening out

There are all kinds of news reports going on talking about the flooding.  Its only a few miles from our house too!  But all is dry here, so all in all a nice night to lay in the grass and watch the chickens and pets in the lawn.


Writing this post for LifeTransPlanet in the yard!

 

Poudre River Trail in Greeley

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Since the weather has been nicer and nicer and the sun has been coming up earlier and earlier I’ve been enjoying the mornings a lot more.  The bad thing is that usually I wake up, shower and have to go into work.  I decided that today I’d wake up and go for a bike ride while Cassie slept.


Over the handlebars

They’ve been building this trail for a few years.  It goes from Island Grove Park (In Greeley) all the way thru Windsor Colorado.  I didn’t quite take it to Windsor as that is quite a ways away (20 miles).  Round trip I did about 10 miles.  I took a little video too.

 

Colorado, Corvette, Taffy And Toffee (Estes Park)

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We have had a pretty good day.  We took a vacation day of sorts even though we stayed within 50 miles of the house.  I have a sprinkler project that I started the day out with.  It went well and that must have been an indication of how the rest of the day would be.  Pretty much perfect weather (70*/no wind) which has been hard to come by when we have time off from work.

I just recently got an alignment done on my Corvette.  The car is a 1975 4 speed coupe.  Its something I’ve had for a while and it gets worked on every so often.  Not to long ago (about 2 years) I rebuilt the front suspension and I just got around to getting the alignment done on it a few weeks ago.  I talked Cassie into going up to Estes Park.  It is a really nice drive to get there.  The canyon is a two lane road that twists around and ends up in a quaint little town the locals just call ‘Estes’, but that tourists scramble to every summer (so do we!).


Parked at the top (notice Cassie’s head)

We took a short trek on a trail too.  It is nice to be able to just pull over and hike, no worries about private property.  Of course there is private property, but we also have a lot of national forest.


Cassie on the trail


Random Pic

We stopped off in Estes and had lunch at a little pizza place and went for a short walk to get some taffy and toffee.


The Bounty

Overall a very nice day.  I wanted to be sure and post some of our Colorado adventures up too!  We both have lived here our whole lives so we take a lot of this for granted, but its our favorite time of year (not winter).


Cool Roads, Framed Devil’s BackBone Photo and an Olde time Candy Shoppe

You Can’t Do Everything Yourself

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I’ve been running into some trouble here and there.  Nothing major, just normal things that tend to break every now and again.  I am of the mindset that I can do anything and I have proven this to myself thru the years.  I can install sprinklers, I can finish basements (framing, plumbing, electrical), I can work on cars.

Lately I’ve come to realize that I just don’t have the time.

 

In order to fix something you have to have the tools, the knowledge and the time to do it.  The clutch went out on my Honda before we left for vacation. I’ve never done a clutch before so I figured I’d give it a shot.  Saturday morning (one of the only days I get off) I woke up early and got started.  I was taking parts off and making pretty good progress.  Then I came to a point where I couldn’t reach a bolt.  It was a bolt that held the engine onto the transmission.

I tried several different approaches to get to it.  I even took the whole other side of the engine bay out, the tire, the hub and the axle.  Still just couldn’t get a good angle on it.  There just wasn’t enough room. What I needed was an impact wrench.  Well I decided that spending Saturday morning on my back under my car wrestling with a stupid bolt that I needed to spend at least $100 for the right tool to get it out with…just wasn’t worth it.  I put it back together and drove it to the shop.  Went to Puerto Rico and when I came back it was done.  Well…that was easy.

We got a call from one of our renters and the toilet is leaking a bit around the base.  ugh…WeIl I put the toilet on and because the tile had moved the toilet up about 1/2″ it has always been in the back of my mind.  I put a new wax seal on and it appeared to be working fine.

Well here comes one of those decisions.  Should I do it myself and save money?  Again I would find myself spending Saturday morning struggling with bolts, trying to figure out how to cut cast iron and run a new collar to fit with the toilet.  Since I wasn’t entirely sure how this would work out I called to get a quote.  $300 to put all new piping under the floor and seal up the toilet to the floor.  Hmmmm.   Sounds like a deal to me.

I guess I pick and choose my battles depending on what the task is.  I have a lot of work ahead of me this spring.  I need to finish up the landscaping in the back yard at another place.  I need to finish my framing job at another.  I just have too much on my plate without adding to it.  The landscaping I am 100% about the work that needs to be done.  The framing is the same, I know exactly what I need to do.  The plumbing at this older house I would spend a lot of time just researching and trying to find out what needs to be done.  Let alone finding the 1 bolt I need a special tool for.

I would rather put in some extra time at my job doing something I am good at, then under a house frustrated.  Plus we have to clean our house, go shopping, tend to our other small business, run misc errands all on my day off.  Sometimes you just can’t do everything yourself.