Ed Soehnel

We are finally getting nice warm spring weather. Wore shorts to the office and hope to get out for a walk at lunch. Started reading the Kauai travel book last night to get ready for our upcoming trip with the whole family.

With warm weather approaching, here’s recent outdoor projects we’ve been working on.

Seeding

We seeded half of the back yard (fenced it off to keep the dogs off of it) and once growth is established, we will seed the other half. We also seeded the front off of the south side of the house. It is part of the driveway, but we are eliminating its use as a driveway and will seed it instead so that it looks nicer in front. We used a blend of high mountain grasses that grow naturally in our area. We should start seeing growth in a few weeks. Images below.

From 2010_05_House_Projects

From 2010_05_House_Projects

Dumpster Work

We brought in another 30 foot dumpster and loaded it with junk from the recent remodel of the guest bedroom (pile below). We also tore down the old dog house that was on the east side of the backyard by using the reciprocating saw and the tractor to knock it down. The chicken coup is also finally cleaned out from all the wood that was piled in it.

From 2010_05_House_Projects

From 2010_05_House_Projects

From 2010_05_House_Projects

From 2010_05_House_Projects

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.

I spent 3 days at the Sheraton Wild Horse Resort in Chandler, AZ for our semi-annual Vitamin and Adult Nutrition trade show.  Nice resort, but did not get the chance to enjoy it much, as meetings go all day and then there is evening dinner, entertainment with work associates and more work.  Temperature was over 110 degrees, so it was nice being inside, although I enjoy hot weather.  First night there we encountered a lightening storm at 11 pm and it knocked out power to the entire hotel.  I was getting to sleep anyway.  It came back on at some point in the night.  Images below of the hotel and our suite where we had retailer meetings.

I had a quick 2 day trip to Vegas for the GNC Franchise Convention at the Wynn Hotel and stayed at the new Encore wing. Swanky hotel, but expensive. Images below.

I returned Tuesday night and left Wednesday morning for a very quick trip to California for mom’s retirement party. My sister, Lisa, and I surprised both my parents with our arrival, as they were not expecting us. Images below that I took, although I will add more in the near future when I receive more pictures from the retirement party. I returned Thursday morning.

Weekend projects around the house included moving into the recently remodeled A-frame section of the house, lots of cleaning (dust, dirt, etc) and digging a 30 foot trench for an additional gas line we plan to run for gas fireplaces that will be installed. That trench took me more than 3 hours, with a few breaks, and was much harder than I thought. Picture below.

From 2009_06_04_Perry_Park_Fixup

Weekend excitement also included a few cows from the 1000 acre ranch to the north and east of us who managed to bust through an area along the north fence. They did some roaming around our property before ending up on the south meadow. Ron from the ranch came in with his horse and herding dogs, an Australian Shepherd and a Border Collie, to get them back across. I could not catch much video at all of the herding. Instead of coming back into our property, the cattle were herded east from the property south of us and back onto the ranch.

2009_06_21_Home_Loose_Cows_Herding_Dogs from Ed Soehnel on Vimeo.

A few final pictures below from the weekend.

From 2009_Spring_Summer_Views_at_Home

From 2009_Spring_Summer_Views_at_Home

From 2009_Spring_Summer_Views_at_Home

Rather than work on the house or around the property, which is all I have been doing lately with my spare time outside of work, I took the evening off and did some easy target practice and biking in between shooting sets. Best of all, I did it on a range that is on the east side of our property. Setup up by the previous owners, the range is in a little ravine and there are large timbers for a backstop. Below is my target results.

From 2009_Misc

This was standing only, no prone (lieing down) shooting position. I need to do a little work to setup a nice pad from which to shoot both standing and prone. For biking, I just rode around the paths on the property.

Videos below from around the house, including the almost completed fence, Sue driving tractor when we were cleaning up trash around the property, a frog we came across and a few deer.

2009_06_13_Home_Fence from Ed Soehnel on Vimeo.

2009_06_13_Sue_Tractor from Ed Soehnel on Vimeo.

2009_06_13_Home_Frog from Ed Soehnel on Vimeo.

2009_06_08_Home_Deer from Ed Soehnel on Vimeo.

Included below are pictures of the latest progress with the house. We should be pretty much done this week. We had hoped to start moving in this weekend, but Sue was tied up all weekend with dog training and I was working on the outside fence. Since we have a new puppy arriving very soon, we need an outdoor area that is fenced in and secure for the dogs to run around.

Also below are a collection of pictures we have taken of all the flowers in bloom around the property.

We shot a bunch of video for those who have not seen our new home and property.  The video also shows the current state of construction and cleanup.

Outside Tour

2009_05_25_Home_Tour_Outside from Ed Soehnel on Vimeo.

Inside Tour

2009_05_25_Home_Tour_Inside from Ed Soehnel on Vimeo.

Lightening Strike

The A-frame chimney (photo below) was struck by lightening over the weekend. We were both in the house when it happened. Fortunately, only minor damage. It knocked out a few electrical switches and fried the phone, modem and answering machine. We had planned to install a lightening rod, but this happened before we could get it in place.

From 2009_02_Perry_Park_Property