Ed Soehnel

Clean-up in the mid-valley

Clean-up in the front yard (west side of house)

Yanking out planter boxes

Video below of plans for the main barn and some work done to date.

2010_01_10_Barn_Work from Ed Soehnel on Vimeo.

Our road trip over Christmas included a 1 day 17 hour drive to California to the parents house - 4 days there - and a 3 day return trip through the Grand Canyon, Monument Valley and Arches National Park. Photos and a Google KML map below.

Colorado to California

California

Grand Canyon

Monument Valley

Arches National Park

Click to download a Google Earth KML file of our route.

Video of me plowing the driveway.

2009_10_29_October_Snowstorm from Ed Soehnel on Vimeo.

Video of the dogs playing.

2009_10_29_October_Snowstorm_Dogs_Playing from Ed Soehnel on Vimeo.

Pictures below.

There are 2 pieces to this video. The first one was taken in August before I had started working on the driveway. The second piece was taken this weekend following completion of phase 1 work on the driveway, which was to channel water off of it to stop erosion.

2009_10_24_Driveway_Work from Ed Soehnel on Vimeo.

Pictures below of driveway work as it was getting completed.

Pictures from recent snow storm. We received about 6 inches.

Pictures from the NACS show in Las Vegas October 21 2009. I flew in day before to setup booth and worked the first day and flew home in the evening.

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This past summer was not quite all about working on the new house and property.  I did take some time in outdoor activities.

Biathlon

Since the property did come with a little shooting range on it complete with timbers as a backstop, no doubt I take advantage of that little gem.  I try to get out once per week and usually take my .22 biathlon rifle and do some running and shooting.  Some targets below I scanned for safe-keeping.

From 2009_Misc

From 2009_Misc

From 2009_Misc

Rock Climbing

From 2009_Misc

I’ve owned a pair of rock climbing shows for 20 years. They have never gotten much use. I don’t own other safety equipment, so my rock climbing has always been staying very close to the ground and going horizontal versus vertical (called Bouldering). I really enjoy it and I now do it at least once per week on our big rock chimney. Maybe after I get our main barn repaired, I can build a climbing wall on it.

From 2009_Misc

Local Area

We have not checked out our local area too much for hiking and biking activities. I am slowly building a map of stuff I find via online research. In the future, we’ll start to do more of these activities.



View Local_Points_to_Checkout in a larger map

Weather

I am a weather nut and love Wunderground for all the weather data and maps it puts at our fingertips. We’ve had a very active summer thunderstorm and monsoon season, so its been pretty wild watching storms come rolling through. The house was hit by lightening twice (minor damage the first strike, but after that, we installed lightening rods), we were hit with 1 inch hail in one storm and I saw a tornado funnel cloud. It did not touch down, but was my first tornado experience. I took two images of local area thunderstorm activity from Wunderground. The little black squares represent lightening strikes. The second image shows a storm that was bearing down on our house and the purple triangle represented a tornado signature. The storm veered north and ended up missing us and also weakened.

From 2009_Misc

From 2009_Misc

Here’s a summary of house projects over the past month.

Contractors Done

Below are images of the the interior of the A-frame section of the house following completion of work by the contractors. We are mostly moved in and unpacked. Work was completed in early July

July 4th Holiday Weekend Project

The main project over the July 4th weekend was digging up all the plastic that was embedded underneath lose rock. The plastic was used to help channel water runoff from the roof away from the house. Since we replaced the roof and added gutters, there was no need for this plastic. Below is some video of the work.

2009_07_04_Yard_Work from Ed Soehnel on Vimeo.

Retaining Wall

Another project this month included removing more plastic and building a small retaining wall. Video below.

2009_06_18_Home_Retainer_Wall from Ed Soehnel on Vimeo.

There are lots of other small projects and work we did, including painting and work on the driveway to control water runoff. Video and pictures on all that to come, as we are not finished.