I Had a Wier Feeling...

Last February Kim decided to go on a road trip with our friend from Somes Bar, Teresa. I decided that I didn't want to hang around all by myself, so I packed up the car to enjoy a four day weekend with my brother and daughters in San Luis Obispo. It was a great weekend, beautiful weather, and great company.

I met the girls at John and Jeanne's beautiful home in Pismo Beach. It's about 10 minutes from their apartment in SLO, and wonderful Jeanne was such a great hostess to all of us!

The view from Brother John's upstairs balcony. Wow! 

It was great to see my lovely daughters. Much better
than hanging around alone with the dogs all weekend!

Saturday morning I drove to the girls apartment and we went out to breakfast. We walked downtown to the Big Sky Cafe, and had a short wait that was well worth it. Such a delicious meal, and of course great company!

I had some kind of outrageous scramble, yum!

We had a great time together that morning.

Look at those big beautiful eyes!

Sunday was a special day with my Bro and Sis. We took off for a drive and stopped by the Black Horse for a coffee, and to see Lucy. It was beautiful weather, and the joint was jumpin'. Lucy has really worked hard at the place, and it showed in how well she handled the crowd of orders. Sitting in the sun sipping my latte, I got a call from Kim in Utah. She had lost her wallet, with all credit cards and ID on her trip! That left me with my American Express card and what cash I had on me to get home. Not really a problem. Poor Kim, she kept insisting that she thought the wallet might be in their camp tent, but it never was properly checked until Teresa got home. We got it in the mail about a week after receiving a new driver's license and credit cards!

After coffee we drove out to Cal Poly to look around. Back in 1976 I completed my Senior Project (kind of an undergrad thesis) by analyzing a watershed (Indonesian Reservoir) behind the campus, and constructing 3 stream gauging structures called weirs. Basically they are a small dam with a notch that allows water to flow through. The height of the water against the dam is then correlated to the volume and rate of water flow. It was a pretty involved project, and I had never been back to see if they were still being maintained, or had been abandoned.

John, with Indonesian Reservoir in the background. You
can't see them, but this is also a large horse pasture. 

Jeanne wasn't up for the hike, so we left her in the car parked in front of the ornamental horticulture building. John and I wove our way through the equestrian stables and arenas and up to the reservoir that I always knew as "Indonesian". It was a little low, but still held quite a bit of water.

As we walked up the little dirt road that leads into the watershed, we passed about a half dozen  horses. I remembered that we had named one of the weirs "Horse Weir", after the ever present and curious horses in the area. Things looked a lot different. The vegetation was much more mature and overgrown after nearly 40 years. I remembered that one of the weirs was on the right, and very close to the road. We called this one "Rhus Weir". Rhus is the genus name for poison oak (Rhus diversiloba) and this spot was packed with the noxious stuff. This is because a small spring flowed there year long. My project partner, Jerry, volunteered to clear it out since he "wasn't sensitive to poison oak." He spent about four days in the hospital after he found out that he was in fact VERY sensitive to it! As we approached, I could see a brush pile just off the road. They had just cleared out the vegetation in preparation for digging out the silt that had accumulated behind the weir. There was still water flowing through the notch!

Rhus Weir was all silted in, but water was still flowing
through the notch. You can see some of the brush (poison oak)
they had recently cleared.

A lot of memories came flooding back. We had to build a diversion trough for the spring flow so we could

Here I try my hand at rock masonry. That's my partner Jerry
Randall in the red hat. Beards were popular. Notice the
diversion flume?

build the forms and pour the concrete. We made it out of some old boards lined with floor vinyl. This was our first of three weirs, and we decided to use big river rocks to face the front of it. We both thought this would save us money for concrete. It turned out to be a real pain in the butt, and not worth it so we abandoned this method for a straight concrete wall for the last two. It does look kind of pretty though. 

The water is still flowing through
the notch. 1976 was the record dry
year in California until you guessed it,
this year!

I really did enjoy the project, putting together lots of stuff about steel reinforced concrete I'd learned from my Dad. He actually came up several weekends to supervise, teach us how to tie rebar, and give us suggestions. "Learn by Doing" is the motto at Cal Poly. Well, I guess we did!

Here I am tamping the concrete into the forms
 as it comes down our home made chute. Nice
shoes huh?

Doing some concrete finish work here. I think I got the hat
at a military surplus store ... classy!

Almost finished. Just need to seal the back side, and bolt
on our iron v-notch blade.

John and I hung out there at the weir for a bit and then we figured we ought to get back to the little Italian waiting in the car. We headed down the little dirt road. Memories were flooding my mind. Such a long time ago, things were so different, the world, me, my life....wow. As we approached the last few trees hanging across the road before we were back in the open grassland around the reservoir, something on the left caught my eye. A rusty steel pipe corral fence. As I looked closer, I could see that it had been constructed to protect our largest and lowest weir (Horse Weir) from those ever curious equine intruders. "Let's take a look at this", I said to John. We made our way off the road, and there it was. Subsequent projects have added a concrete stilling basin behind our original cutoff wall, and someone installed a gauging pipe to measure the height  (head) of the water. Otherwise, the weir looked like the day we completed it, right down to the iron v-notch blade painted rust resistant green.

Horse Weir immediately after completion. We used visquine plastic
 weighted down with rocks in the stilling basin. You can see the
 black asphalt emulsion sealer, and the green v-notch blade.

Someone added a floor and two wing walls to our original
cutoff wall. Also, that big rusty looking vertical tube is for
measuring the height of water behind the wall.

I examined the v-notch blade, and it looks like the original bolts are still in place. It was pretty cool standing there. Not only in remembering the project, along with all the setbacks and successes, but realizing that it hadn't been a waste of time. Seeing that others had improved the work, and it had been maintained and used to educate young people on the intricacies of watershed management for decades gave me a great feeling.

John and I headed on down to the car and reunited with little Jeannie. We left Cal Poly, and took the scenic route home: the back roads through the vineyards of the Edna Valley. We capped the end of a perfect day with a visit to a local winery for a little wine tasting.

The end of a great day!

Great wine, great company, and great memories!

That's All!

Exhuming Ol' Jack

Sure hated saying goodbye to my faithful '54 F-150. I put a
Buick 322 CID V-8 in it. It was a screamer.

In 1972, I was preparing to leave home and attend Colorado State University in Fort Collins. I decided that my old Ford pick-up needed to go, and that what I needed was a van that I could live in for a while if necessary. I started looking, and found a 1959 VW micro bus (Transporter) in the paper. The owner had converted it into a camper (perfect). The bus was only 13 years old, and was in reasonable shape. I purchased a book about maintaining it called "How to keep your Volkswagen alive, with step by step instructions for the complete idiot!" The book has since turned into a classic. I still have it, and use it to work on the little '66 beetle. Well I bought the bus for $750, changed the oil, adjusted the brakes, loaded it up and headed east.

Here I am shortly after purchasing Ol' Jack. Nice hat huh?

Fast it was not, and in fact, I started thinking that I should have heeded a neighbor's sage advice after he saw my new purchase. "looks like you have good wear left in two of those tires" he said. "You should buy two new dirt tires, and put them on the right side to help maintain control, while you're driving on the shoulder to let traffic pass!" Needless to say, the 40 hp engine went at it's own speed, with the "pedal to the metal" at all times other than a good long down hill run.

Heading up the western slope of the Rocky Mountains, the effect of altitude started to take it's toll as well. As the air got thinner, the bus went slower. Eventually I was unable to hold fourth gear at all, then third, and as I neared the continental divide, I was in low gear at about 15 miles an hour. Low gear in the old bus is not "synchronized" like all modern manual transmissions are. It is a "straight cut" gear, and it howls quite noisily. Honestly, I wasn't sure I was going to make it as I frantically kept waving traffic by on my left. "Come on Jack, come on Ol' Jack, you can do this!" I found myself muttering, as the semi trucks shot by at 65 miles an hour, shaking my little bus in their wakes. Well, all I can say is that "we" made it, and after that my bus was known as "Ol' Jack". I figured that must be his name, as he responded so well and didn't quit before we made it over the summit.

It got down to 20 below zero in Fort Collins. Jack always
started right up. Wish he'd had a better heater though!

This was on our way home to get married in 1973. Had to do
some field maintenance, change oil and adjust valves. You
probably can't tell it, but that is my "idiot's Manual" there
on the ground by my left foot.

In 1976 we had him painted in San Luis Obispo.
 I did all the sanding and prep work, then we took him to
"Otis's Body shop". Oh yea, I also overhauled the little engine.

Ol' Jack is still in the family. I quit driving him much in 1983 when we left Pollock Pines with little Baby Viola for Oregon State up in Corvallis. When we settled in Yreka after graduating, I ferried Ol' Jack up and parked him in the back yard. Then when we moved to Some's Bar, I ferried him down river, and we used him to haul our garbage to the dump. That is where a bear decided to pry off a window to see if there was anything good to eat inside. Finally, in 1996 we moved here to the Sierra Valley. Once again, I changed his oil, adjusted the brakes, and headed out with my ferry permit in hand. I used Jack as a ranch truck for the first several years here. Then, when I finished overhauling the little '66 Beetle, I needed a small part for the throttle linkage. I "borrowed" it from my friend Ol' Jack, and he hasn't run since.

Jacks wheels roll for the first time in 13 years.

I covered Jack with a tarp, and told myself that someday I would restore him to something resembling his past glory.

Yesterday, with a beautiful spring sun high in the sky, I decided to exhume Ol' Jack. One tire had gone flat, and the other three had sunk up to the rims in the Sierra Valley silt. It was a long and laborious process, but I got out some blocks of wood, a hydraulic jack, and extended the hose on my air compressor to reach Jack's resting place.

As I jacked up the left front and got it aired up and blocked up out of its hole, Jack seemed to be climbing out of the grave. I got the right front tire above ground and it looked like he was reared back and getting ready to jump up and out of what had been his parking place for the last 13 years. Finally, I had him completely back on his feet (I had to use the spare for the one tire that had given up the ghost completely).

A little more body damage than I expected (remembered).

I wanted to roll him across the yard over next to my tool shed so I could begin my long promised project at last. I chained his front bumper to the tractor, and very slowly pulled him across the yard. I pushed him the last several feet to the shed, and set the parking brake.

Now the fun truly begins. There is more body work to do than I remembered, but he has been neglected for a long time. I don't have a project schedule, maybe I should. We'll see how busy this fire season is. Perhaps I can at least get him running again before the cold season hits. Then he will get an honored parking place in the barn (he will still need a tarp to protect from bird poop!)

The front seat was a real rat's nest (literally). The old original
Bilstein screw jack was put to good use!

It will be great to get behind this wheel again! 

Spare tire removed, Ol' Jack sits by the shed awaiting
his makeover! Notice the license plates?

So, we shall update you as the project progresses!

That's All!