Sunday, June 26, 2011

Last Plunker Standing

Day 3 (6/22/11)

Last Plunker Standing
As the old saying goes, “A bad day…” is certainly true of the bike trail. We had planned on going out on the trail earlier in the morning but just as we were about to get the bikes out it started raining. We waited for the rain to stop then headed out. As you can imagine it was kind of wet for building but great for riding. Every trip down the trail is a new adventure. This time it came in the form of some Sand Hill Cranes. As we were riding along, a sedge of cranes started making a tumultuous uproar on the other side of the railroad tracks. When we first stopped two flew right over the top of us. One circle around and landed again. In an attempt to get a picture of them I decided to wade across the ditch which turned out to be almost knee deep. By the time I got across the water and up the tracks they had wondered off and I caught just a glimpse of the baby.






Cranes


Stormy

Another Rebuild

Monday, June 20, 2011

Keeping it Fresh

Day 2 (6/20/11)

New build
I went out early this morning. It was threatening rain so again I almost had the trail to myself. My big plan was to rebuild what I refer to as the “Totem build” but when I got there it was the one time that had a hiker (we will no longer refer to them as walkers since walker has become an obscenity in our vocabulary). When I first hit the trail I saw some material lying on the side of the trail so I took some time to make a small build. I haven’t had a lot of luck with builds that close to town surviving very long but I thought since it was small I would give it a try. I worked my way up the trail until I got to “K build”. It still had one tie standing so I took some time and reconstructed it. I also started working on “Giacometti build”. Finally on the way home I stopped and finished the “dangler”.


K Build
Giacometti Build
Dangler

Sunday, June 19, 2011

On the Road Again

Day 1 (6/19/11)

I was Framed
I can’t believe it has been four years since I started being the scourge of the bike trail with my despicable building Aar Aar Aar. I also can’t believe that it is the middle of June and our first trip on the bike trail. Well, it’s been that kind of year. The trick this year is going to be keeping it fresh. The first year was easy, everything was new and the Christians were an endless source of writing material. The second year I concentrated more on the plants and animals. Year three was just lame and fortunately I was saved by our Baltic cruise. That probably explains why it is the middle of June and I am just getting started. It rained hard all morning so we weren’t sure if we would make it out or not. As it turned out we pretty much had the trail to ourselves. Most areas were still too wet to build but when we got to where the old tripod build stood I decided to go for it and rebuild it. Eileen documented the build from start to finish and took some really fun pictures of it. The only build that I saw that was still standing from last year was dangler but the dangler had fallen off. I will have to take a look at that when it dries out a little.