Tuesday, May 11, 2010

Mud pit now dirt pit

It is time for an update on the progress of the Volleyball court.  The update is that there has been no progress.  The only change in the disposition of the volleyball court is that the mud has begun to dry out and is now firm enough to walk on.  The mud pit is now a dirt pit.

In the last post, I had decided to excavate the rink on the following day.  Unfortunately, I got gun-shy, lazy, or just had a better idea do do nothing on my last day in town for a bit over a week.  As it turns out, I got a notification from Crew Control that my departure would be delayed about 14 hours due to maintenance being performed on the plane I would be flying.  My relatively early departure turned into a nasty late night sign-on.  Jennifer had decided that she wanted to drive me down to work since the Bronco is once again acting up, and she is not very excited to have it as her only car while I'm gone.  So to make a long story short, I had much more time than I had thought I would to do the excavation, and I feel that the opportunity was passed up for no reason.  Now I will consider doing it when I get home prior to the time we all leave to come back to Hong Kong for a visit.

I was out here to complete an all-too-frequent simulator check ride.  That is all done, successfully I might add, and now I have tomorrow off since a trip to Shanghai that I was supposed to fly has disappeared from my roster.  The next day I fly an all night trip to Singapore and Penang, Malaysia.  The following day I return home and then have the rest of the month off.

Summer is coming up quickly.  Andrew finishes school on friday (in fact today was his last real day of learning.)  After returning from Hong Kong we will be busily preparing for a big family visit in June.  I expect that things will go quickly once I touch Alaska soil again.

Stay tuned for the next update, which hopefully, will outline the excavation of the volleyball court.

Wednesday, May 5, 2010

Happy Cinco de Mayo

It's Cinco de Mayo today, and that means Mexican food for dinner tonight.  We will be going into Wasilla to one of our favorite Mexican restaurants - Chepo's.  It's a bit of a drive with a couple of good restaurants closer to home, but this will also give me the opportunity to scout Loaders for the job of excavating the rink/court.  I have done a bit of research, and it looks as if there may be some better priced options out in Wasilla.

I have picked tomorrow to be the day I excavate, since: 1) I go back to Hong Kong for eight days on Friday morning, and 2)  We are going to Hong Kong as a family for a week when I get back.  So if I want to get the job soon, tomorrow it will have to be.  My biggest concern is that it looks as if we might get some rain tomorrow, which is too bad because the weather so far this week has been absolutely perfect.  Therefore, if it is pouring rain tomorrow, the job will have to be postponed until the end of May.  Not ideal.  As it is, the gravel and sand deliveries will occur at that late date, giving my lawn less time to recover this summer.

Today was a lazy day.  I overdid it a little bit yesterday with the raking, and therefore got a bit run down.  After bringing Andrew to school, I came back to bed and slept in until almost 11:00!  I spent the early part of the day studying and preparing for my trip to Hong Kong on friday.  It will be a very busy week when I get there.  After one day off when I get in, I will be doing my annual emergency training, two days of simulator check rides, and two separate "regional" trips out of Hong Kong.  The first will be a middle-of-the-night cargo run to Shanghai and back, and the second will be a daylong excursion from Hong Kong to Singapore and then a short hop the Penang, Malaysia.  After that I will hitch a ride on the same plane back to Hong Kong.  The next day, I return home to Anchorage.  Way busy, but that's all for this month.

Tuesday, May 4, 2010

Still mulling things

Not much new today on the Volleyball court front.  A few things have had us hesitant to proceed.  The cost of the operation will be high, but manageable, so we are past that.  The first real puzzler is the excavation with the Bobcat.  It will be difficult to dig three feet of soil out throughout the whole rink and then get the bobcat out of the hole.  The only solution that I can come up with so far is dig everything out except for a ramp to drive the Bobcat out on, then remove the rest by hand.  Yay!  More work!  The other option would be to rent an excavator to dig out the ramp, but:  a) it would double the cost of equipment, and b) I'm not that lazy.  So for the time being, that is the way we will do that.  I still need to call around to see if I can get a better rental rate than $300.00.  

The next hang-up is a bit more serious.  The sand and gravel will be arriving 10 cubic yards at a time on dump trucks.  We will be getting 3 loads of gravel, and almost 5 loads of sand.  The problem is with the yard.  You can see on the picture to the right that there is little room for a dump truck to go between our driveway and the electrical utility box.  My concern is that the blacktop driveway and sidewalk will get cracked and broken by the weight of the truck.  The lawn actually narrows even more as it goes beside the house toward the back.  My neighbor has a small retaining wall dividing our lawns, so the truck cannot possibly go further over than that.  I worry that if it gets too close to the house it could potentially disturb the foundation of the house.  The narrowest point as you can see is the corner of the porch and the retaining wall.  Also, I just did a whole bunch of work on the lawn, and don't want it all messed up by a truck.  I suppose that if I am going to have it squashed by trucks, the earlier the better.  Maybe I can get them to put some kind of steamroller wheels on the truck to flatten the lawn out really well so that we can have an excellent Croquet lawn.  Probably not though.

If we cannot get the trucks over the lawn, the only other option would be to have them dump their loads in the driveway, and then we make unending trips back to the rink by wheelbarrow.  This would DEFINITELY NOT be ideal!

The rest of the day was spent raking more deadfall out of the lawn.  I got the whole northern side of the house completed.  It was also time to get rid of the corpse of the Christmas Tree that has been laying out there since the first of the year.  I lopped all the branches off, sawed the trunk into chunks, and burned it. It wade a really nice fire.  It also helped to burn some of the deadfall rather than just dumping it in a pile back in the woods.  Between yesterday with the lights and today with the tree, i can say that the Christmas season is finally over!

My progress with the raking so far...

Ice rink still a mud pit

Today, Jenn started calling around to find prices on sand and gravel - by far the largest investment we will have to make in this endeavor.  I guess I didn't realize how much of an investment it would be.  After calling 3 different places in our area, we were able to arrive at the ultra-low price of $1,200.00 for both sand and gravel delivered.  We are lucky in that we live in an area that is heavily populated with sand and gravel mines thanks to our being in a huge glacial river basin.  This price, although not unexpected, IS - a bit high.  We quickly began to think of alternative things to do with our mud pit.  1) Let it become overrun with weeds.  No.  2) Make a patio using pavers.  Not bad, but pavers will be expensive and take a lot of work as well; besides, what the heck would we do with a 20'x40' patio enclosed by 4x4s?  i don't know either.  Our deck is plenty big enough for a family dining table and for the BBQ grill.  The only advantage to a patio would be later evening sun, but then again we would be eating in full view of the entire neighborhood.  So I'm thinking "no" on that one too.  

Today we went to lunch at the Valley Hotel in Palmer.  About a year ago we had gone there on a Monday, and I had ordered Chicken soup with my meal.  Jenn had remembered that they serve Chicken soup on Mondays all this time, and has been looking forward to the day that she too could have some of that Chicken soup for herself.  Well today was supposed to be the day.  We sat at our booth and when the waitress came, Jenn calmly asked what the soup of the day was.  Cream of Broccoli.  The waitress told us that they switched Chicken soup to Sundays a few months ago, so bummer.  It was a nice day to be there anyways, and Jenn said she liked the Broccoli soup OK.  

After lunch, we stopped by an equipment rental place to check out Bobcat rental prices.  I will need a Bobcat to dig out about 2 1/2 feet of dirt from the rink to get the proper depth of sand and gravel for drainage.  The four-wheeled Bobcat will cost $190 for the day, and the slightly larger tracked Bobcat will cost $225 for the day.  This is just for the machine, not delivered.  Since we don't have a trailer, we would have to rent that, too, for a price of $75 for the day.  I think the best option would be to go with the bigger, tracked Bobcat.  This will help me dig and get done quicker, as well as offer the advantage of saving the lawn by distributing the weight of the tractor more evenly.  So, unless I can find a trailer, or perhaps a competitor has significantly lower prices, we are now in for $1,500.00.

On a side note, it was another big day here at the house.  The Christmas lights finally came down!  No I'm sure that most would scoff at the notion that somebody would be lazy enough to keep their light up all the way into May.  Well scoff not, because it would be dangerous to be walking around on the roof with snow on it, or trying to place the ladder in an icy driveway or lawn.  Besides, these lights were put up TWO Christmases ago!

While I was up there taking down the lights, I noticed that the gutters were nearly completely full of stuff and growing moss.  When I investigated further, I found that they were filled solidly with dirt!  In order to wrap your brain around how a gutter could fill solidly with dirt, one must remember the winter storms that frequent the valley.  After a windstorm, it is not uncommon to see the whole yard turn completely brown with windblown river silt, mountain debris, and volcanic ash.  All you have to do is picture the whole roof covered with this stuff, and then melting eventually into the gutters.  Presto! - solid dirt gutters.  Needless to say the taking down of the Christmas lights turned into a long drawn out gutter-cleaning session.  Good times!  I got all the way around the house and am happy to say that I now have the cleanest gutters in the neighborhood!

Tomorrow, we will mull further the Volleyball court and how much dough we will be willing to put out to make this thing happen.  

Time to transform the Rink







Hockey season is completely behind us. Palmer Ice Arena has turned off their compressors. All the lakes are melting, and our backyard rink is now just a giant mud pit with the vaguest suggestion of the red and blue lines still running across it. Now that the weather has warmed up and all the snow is melted out of the back yard, it is time to transition into summer mode. Raking all the winter deadfall and debris out of the lawn will take me a bit of time to finish. The task at hand right now however, is removing the most prominent reminder of winter - the hockey rink.