6/07/2009

Rain barrels from the county, Wink256 found and Quemazon trail riding

Cheaper rain barrels from los alamos county ($60 per each with spigot hardware and netting top) made their way home in a manner befitting a kinetic sculpture race, I was tempted to detour into Ashley Pond, but was worried that the front end lacked buoyancy.

Dual barrel action

They are garlicy barrels, unlike the olivey ones we got before. Yes, riding was possible and fun:

And riding too

One is set up as south west corner downspot collector and the other is currently acting as an overflow catch for the 200 gallon tank on the north side. I think .25" of rain gets us a full 200 gallons on the north side, maybe more, so additional collectors are needed. We got almost 2 inches in the last week of may and it would have been nice to bank a bit more of that for the rest of the summer.

In other news Wink left the house at around 6:30 pm and did not return until after 10pm. It is very unlike him to leave for more than half an hour. We thought for sure he had made a nice meal for a coyote, but he eventually returned and he smells pretty bad. I think he probably got into a fight with some other creature and was hiding somewhere until he calmed down. He seems no worse for the wear. Last time he got in a big fight he was stinky and freaked out for days (seen below).

Crazed wink256

Finally, I went up the whole of the Quemazon trail on the single speed this evening just as Wink256 had gone missing. I had not been up it the whole way since the aspen puncture incident of ought seven. I have run and biked the nature trail up quemazon down loop a bunch of times, but not up all the way. The top part is even more fun than I remember. I remained unpunctured, but got the queazies when I passed the incident point. But it was all good, and the whole eight mile loop is able to be done in something like 1:15 of riding time while taking it slow. The trail head to pipeline intersection was 44 minutes of riding. My record on the single speed is 34:56 during the hill climb time trial back in '05 when I was all skinny and stuff. But that was a brain cell killing hard effort. This was for fun.

Quemazon trail, looking back toward town and the Sangre de Cristos behind.

6 comments:

fxdwhl said...

that's a finely loaded dummy there; maybe an endomorph front tire for buoyancy. a single 50 gallon drum keeps our yard and garden green. 0.5" running off the garage roof will fill it though our climates are significantly different and stockpiling isn't usually necessary.

gpickle said...

Glad to hear Winky is okay. I used to get freaked out when the kitties would not come back and I would fret and worry and then in they would walk, swat me in the head and look up so as to say, yo, where's the food!

So now I don't let them get to me, but just between you and me Tarik, I still worry about them.

We need rain barrels, and cheap ones at that. I wonder if riding a big dummy with 2 aboard from NM to IA would get me in the guiness book of bad ideas?

Marrock said...

Saw that first pic and thought, for a moment, that you had built yourself some kind of pod-racer or jet powered Big Dummy.

Tarik Saleh said...

Fxdwhl,
Good thought, endomorphs on the front and perhaps around my waist. We are at 20" of precipitation a year and half is snow, so lots of rain barrels here.

Gpickle,
I don't worry at all about two of the cats, but Wink is one I really worry about, he is never gone fore more than a half hour. And when he is gone for that time, it usually means he is hiding in the tall grass in the back yard, not AWOL, he has never been gone gone before that I remember. Riding to Iowa on a big dummy loaded with rain barrels is only dumb if yousteal my dummy and rain barrels to do it. Otherwise it sounds fun.

Marrock,
I need to figure out how to use the area under the wide loadrs as the upward thrust for the hoverdummy. Then I will be pod racing away.

Marrock said...

Get that baby up to 88 miles per hour and you're gonna see some serious s#!t.

Michael Lemberger said...

I tell you now, 1 inch of rain on a 1000 sf roof will yield 624 gallons of water. Good luck catching it all.