Viper Country

Here you will be able to view the four seasons in and around the Weaverville area of Trinity County, California. Plus some of various shots of anything and everything, as I'm a camera 'nut', eh!! ;-))

My Photo
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Location: Weaverville, California, United States

Since my 'forced' retirement on June 23rd, 2005, I'm trying to build an 'at home' business via the Internet and learning more about using my digital camera, eh!! The picture is of ME & Kathy, my wife who's one bad ass Quilter!! We will be adding some of her handiwork too. I'd love to hear from computer & graphics people so I can learn more and we'd both love to hear from Quilters too!!

Sunday, September 28, 2008

Last Winter Snow Damage & NEW Wood Shed Slideshow


Hi Everyone, ... View Slide Show ...

For those that don't already know, we had a really bad last winter with a total snowfall of 78+ inches, when we have only been getting about 2' to 3' each winter for about the past 12-15 years, eh!! This was only the 2nd time since moving up here to Weaverville, CA, in 1976, that we've had a snowfall of this amount AND that was so wet and heavy!!

Anyway, we have a rental (Dad's) on the same property and both places had woodsheds that my dad built in 1976, using trees that we cut on our property to use for the upright poles, the 3 main cross poles and the rafter poles. We dug holes about 2' deep, added one big rock to set the poles on and then backfilled the holes with smaller rocks/gravel, then dirt and tamped it down. We added scrap 1"x12" boards to lay/nail the metal roofing on. These 2 wood sheds lasted 32 years and would have lasted a bit longer, if I'd been able to physically get to them to have kept the snow shoveled off. But it was all I could do daily, just to keep our deck/steps cleared. I tried to keep our steep driveway cleared, but it kept snowing faster than I could shovel, eh!!

Then one day I noticed that our wood shed was leaning towards our yard about 6" at the top, then more and more as the days went by, so I made a trip down to our garages with snow still up to above my crouch, got my cable winch and a couple tow chains, then wrapped one end of a tow chain around the top rafter/upright poles, attached the 2nd tow chain and then stretched out the cable end and wrapped it around the bottom of our power pole at the opposite end about 27' away. By keeping the wench tightened every couple of days, I was able to keep the wood shed from collapsing outward.

After the snows melted and the ground dried out I started taking the off the bottom half of the roofing and just as I got to the last two panels to the backside, I heard some 'creaking' and ran away to the yard, just as the rest of the wood shed collapsed away from the house. So about July 21st, I started the demo process, putting all of the stuff from inside the old wood shed, out into the yard area and started building the NEW Wood Shed, eh!! I finished September 27 about dusk!! My total hours recorded was 50 hours of labor working 1 to 2 hours at a time, as that's all my body would handle. I put in more hours that I forgot to record, but I can't go back or try to remember them. The NEW Wood Shed has about 250% MORE Volume as you'll see in the pictures, as compared to the old wood shed. And on the later inside shots you'll see that I'm making use of all this extra space already, eh!! '-))

As to the slide show, it has 191 pictures, some with 'captions' telling about my progress. So if you want to see all the pictures and are using a 56k modem hookup, get the slide show to downloading and then go do something more important instead of waiting, ok!! For all those on 'Hi-Speed' or Cable shouldn't have more than 3-4 minutes to wait. If you want to read the pictures with captions, I'd suggest NOT using the slide show feature, but look at each individual picture by clicking the forward arrow and then enlarging the pictures with captions till you can read the words good. To those of you that do watch this slide show of my progress, I hope you enjoy it, eh!! '-))

Later, 'Viper'

P.S. ~ Allen, I don't expect you to wait for this to download, but I wanted you to know about my slide show of 'Progress' pictures, eh!!

Monday, September 15, 2008

Grasshoppers, Clouds, Lucy, Flowers, Bikes, Moon and MY UFO Shots


Hi Everyone,

I've been really busy, but I was still taking pictures all the time. So today I put them all together in a slide show for you to view and enjoy, eh!! A lot of the pictures have wording, so don't let those pass by, as I'm not going to say much here, excepting that there is a lot of variety. Go and enjoy!! '-))

Later, 'Viper'