Gema and I duck hunted on the Colorado river a few times this season. She performed beyond my expectaions, she has great genes. This was Gema's first duck, she lept off the ice shelf into the icy river like it was no big deal. I had already tested the ice shelf before I sent her out because I knew I had to grab her to get her out of the river. After that, I found some shelter along the canyon wall, dried her off with snow, and took this pic.

The terrain we hunted was in the tight South Canyon shared by I-70, the railroad, and the Colorado river. The hunt is a walk down the tracks in the narrow South Canyon - shooting towards the interstate - lol. It was pretty cold walking around in 2' of snow with trains roaring past me. The wind and rush of the river, plus the noise dampening of the snow really muffled the sound of the trains (especially the Amtracks), most engineers would sound thier horns a couple times to let me know they were on their way.

I started using steel shot and quickly figured out it doesn't work. I watch the bb mass go right through the duck and didn't phase it, weird. Can't use lead these days so I went into town and bought some heavishot- $23 for 10 shells. It's still some kind of steel so I had to stick with the modified choke. I now use Bismuth shot exclusively.

You see Gema up to her fenders here while writing her name in the snow.

Our house is at 6000' and it sits on the sunny side of the mountain. We seldom get huge dumps of snow, never enough to close the schools. This storm didn't close the schools.

We have had better moisture in the Colorado Rockies this year, in fact it's raining right now so I thought I would catch up on some pics.

I had a great time with Tim and Julianne last year, if I wasn't staying at the beach I was staying at their place in Los Gatos. Tim ribbed me for not choosing a harder design and I told him that pumkin carving was clearly cutting into our beer drinking time :)

My neighbor gave me a few frozen Teal and Mallards to train Gema. The exercise is this: I have her sit on my left, I throw out the duck (or dummy), I draw my trusty Colt Single Action Frontier Scout .22 and fire a blank, then I tell Gema to "Get It", and then she does her stuff.

I'll measure to make it official, but I think she can leap out there close to 15'. She really likes to take a running start and get maximum distance, it's an amazing thing to watch.

HK Shoulder Rig

Back to school to the little 6th graders.

Undeniably the BEST burger joint in the United States. Go by and say hi to Mr. Waylan next time you are in Miami Oklahoma.

Irrigation or is it Irritation.
Working here on installing the PRV, anti siphon, and the zone 1 valve. The pit meter is behind and to the left, already installed. The picture that got away will forever live in our memories. The story is now a week old the emotion has worn off. On Saturday, July 9, I set out on a project to remove the water meter from our mechanical room so I could relocate to a street-side pit, all in the name of irrigation. The removal went well although I couldn't sweat a copper joint to save my life. I tried twice to assemble the plumbing necessary to replace the void of the water meter, each time resulting in one or two pin hole leaks. I decided to stop the work that evening after running out of supplies. Sunday started out with a nice breakfast and a trip to Tim's Tools in Silt where I picked up 2 of everything. I arrived home and told Delle that I could do this in one shot, and I did do it in one shot - with a rain delay. As I was sweating one of the joints the compression fitting popped off the main line and we had a 100psi water feature inside the house. It turns out that our plumber failed to include a crucial part when he attached the brass compression fitting to the poly main line. The crucial part is called a stiffener and it is a short, thin stainless steel pipe that is inserted into the end of the poly to give the compression fitting a solid surface to compress upon. A responsible plumber is what we didn't have. Luckily there was a man working at the water plant located two miles away and we only had to battle the cold barrage for 30 minutes. Lesson learned: ask us who not to use for a plumber, always turn the water off before a major plumbing project.

10th of July on Colorado River at Silt.
Gema and Abby. These two have been buddies since they were wee pups. Gema played big sister and showed Abby how to swim.

10th of July on Colorado River at Silt.
Another fun day at the river, this time we have *borrowed* Abby to have fun with Gema and Sammy.

5th of July on Colorado River at Silt.
Gema's big day. Here's Sammy teaching Gema to swim. Gema caught on fairly quickly and really enjoys swimming.

5th of July on Colorado River at Silt.
Emma left, Gema right. Both dogs were identical down to the black spot on the tongue but surprisingly, Emma was 20lbs heavier.

5th of July on Colorado River at Silt.
Gema's big day. She got to meet one of her litter mate's, sister Emma on the left.

4th of July on Battlement Mesa.
I was glad I wore my boots on this mud bog day. It was a good workout and we were both sore the next couple days.

4th of July on Battlement Mesa.
We were both stuck in this mud puddle on the way up. Delle decided to jump on the gas and fly though, I was so happy I didn't have to wade in for a muddy rescue.

4th of July on Battlement Mesa.
Our 4th of July fun was to load up the quads, pen up the dogs (Gema is dog sitting Sammy), and then head for Battlement Mesa. This was Delle's backyard in a previous life. She forgot to mention that it was a double blackdiamond difficult trail. It was pretty much made for 4x4 and we have 2x4. Horsepower and determination got us to the top.

Geek by Day
The work at General Dynamics is fun and interesting. I'm a Technical Architect concentrating on the integration of new Microsoft technology and Risk Management to compliment the complex business plan of building the Navy's new Littoral Combat Ship (LCS).

On-Site at General Dynamics in Mountain View, CA
So ends my trip to sunny CA. I guess I could live here if I had to, I'd definitely find a place in Santa Cruz and make the drive over the hill every day. The three major issues to overcome are traffic, house prices, and taxes. The overall view of the entire area is grim. For instance, there are many beautiful buildings that remain unoccupied in the valley that it gave me the drive-by impression of the stench of death on a river during a Salmon run. The buildings are as vacant as an early Sunday morning. It's odd to see all the high dollar BMW's and Mercedes on the roads while the grass roots level reality is thick with desperation.

Disk Golf at De LaVeaga
The well travelled course is carpeted with Poison Oak and riddled with trees so you don't want to throw wild. My favorite was the signature 27th hole, *Top of the World*. To the basket 300 feet below and 580 feet away. It has a great view of the Pacific Ocean and the city of Santa Cruz. This is one of the most famous single holes in disc golf. We came across a family of Falcons crying out and flying from tree to tree.

Disc Golf at De LaVeaga
Tim and I got in a round at the De LaVeaga disc course in Santa Cruz. I haven't played in 5 years and I forgot how much fun it is. Tim says it's usually packed but we didn't see that many people on a Thursday evening. See more at http://www.delaveagadiscgolf.com

Santa Cruz Dog Wash??
I was thinking this would not be a good business adventure in New Castle.

Santa Cruz Light House.
All the surfers wear wetsuits and the folks playing in the beach break are definitely freezing. Plus the temp was only 70 at the time.

Santa Cruz coastline.
I called Delle about 11am after walking about 3 miles of boardwalk. The fog was rollingout and the air was warming. The smell of the sea is wonderful, wish we had our house on these bluffs, I gues we could for a cool $2,000,000 or so.

You can see the color of the car, ORANGE. I saw one other Mustang in Los Gatos that was the same color, other than that I pretty much stood out from the standard greens, blues, pewters, reds, and whites. This was the second time I've been over this bridge, the first time was by bus at night so I didn't see much. I didn't see much this time either for fear of a crash. I hope Delle and I can walk across this in October. Btw, it only took 1 hour to make it through SF on 101.

This trip off the property was slow or stop. One neat lane was through this grove of trees. There was a huge bird house on one of the trees, I was thinking it was for an Owl or Hawk. I'm almost to the gate, 2 miles in two hours.

Double Dry and Triple Dusty. As I hiked from the track to my orange Mustang rental, I couldn't remember if I had a lone bottle of water waiting for me. It was only 85 but the hike across the hills got me thinking about water almost everystep. This pic is snapped looking SSW towards the track. The veiw SSE was that of the Bay and downtown SF in the distance. I wondered about all the settlers that spied this view and what they were thinking, I bet their thoughts had to do something about water.

Just after the race, the teams loading up to head to Daytona for the Pepsi 400. Lots of color. That's the hairpin corner just before the finish line on the top of the picture.

I hope one day I can get a ride to the track in a chopper. The traffic was terrible getting out off the property.

Jeff Gordon wins the race, he was the local favortie to win. Almost everyone in the stands was cheering for him. His payout was $388,103.

My favorite driver Mark Martin ends the day with a 8th place finish. He's sitting on 15th in overall points at this time in the season. His payout was $89,315.

Sonoma 350, June 27, 2004.
Great race track hidden in the rolling hills of the Napa wine country. The green patches in the background are grape vine farms.

Strawberry Days in Glenwood Springs. Nice few days with temps not over 85. We watched a bit of the Saturday parade then viewed all the craft booths. Here, we have just finished lunch on the crafts side of the event. Vendors are restricted to displaying and selling only hand made items.

The rusting was easy, I washed the metal down with high concentrate HCL then sprayed on H202 and it rusted before our eyes. Mother nature will keep on rusting this piece for many years to come. I think we'll outline the head of the cow elk with gold paint for definition.

It's hard to make out the cow elk that's spaced 4" in front of the bull elk, the shadow gives it away.

This was the fun part, I love to weld. Thanks goes to Chuck Simonson for loaning us his welder.

I was a bit worried about the length of the extention cord with 275', could have burnt up a tool or blown a breaker. I'm cutting down the rebar pieces to provide a flat plane to weld on the Elks.

NO MORE HILLBILLY ADDRESS SIGNS!
After Mom and Chandelle built up a platform to support the Elk silhouettes, Delle and I attached the letters to check the level. We marked where we wanted to drill into the rock and then drove in rebar pieces.

Tired Hot Super Model.

She really hates to pose, what a diva.

Hot Super Model.

Gema had to get in on the excitement. I'm surprised that she doesn't step on any cactus. Every time she comes inside (she lives inside), we give her paws a good wipe and check for cactus needles. She did get a needle in her nose and finally worked itself out.

I'm glad I got off my arse and took some pics today, the barrel cactus are almost done blooming. We have 4 or 5 of them on the property.

The third tree we bought is a bing cherry on the left. We'll plant it as soon as the top soil is down. Our lovely hillbilly porch, notice the 2 yr old plywood is holding up rather well - gives something for Gema to chew on. The flower baskets are doing well if I remember to change the batteries in the timer that feeds the drip system.

Here's the start to the back yard. We planted two trees and we have another that we'll install after the top soil gets dumped and spread around. The fore tree is a pie cherry, the on in the sun is a plum (follow the hose).

Greetings. I finally got rid of the hillbilly spray painted address sign with this temporary driveway marker. I rolled this huge rock into a hole I dug and Delle helped me silicone on the numbers we found in Mexico. It will be july before I get the giant rock fished out of the ravine and the new marker installed.

Little Gema's first Birthday. She just got a bath and a new Blanky. She had a real fun day, she got to play with Dixie, Abby, Cody, Mac, Turner, and Gutter. She also got to go for a car ride and for a swim in the Colorado River plus a 2 mile walk and a run behind the jeep.

May 2004. The girls in the rock garden.