Fun With Power Tools

On Friday I took a mountain bike ride up to West Peak to address some graffiti I could not tend to last week.

My wire brush wasn't working well on it, so I covered it with grey spray paint. I looks better than the photo implies.

On Sunday, I set out on my weekly activities in Hubbard Park to avoid the warm, humid weather, and to be home in time to watch the final stage of the 2018 Tour de France.

I had my chainsaw with me today to remove a couple trees which had fallen across various trails.

I quickly picked up enough litter that I decided to leave the bag at the water treatment plant.

Moseying up the trails, I came my Find of the Week.

This LED is smaller than your pinky finger, and it powered by a watch battery. I assume the metal tab is for a lanyard. I had no idea how to turn it off.

Further up the Yellow Trail I ran into my first objective.

Sadly, this fallen tree has a trail marker on it.

I moved on the Castle Craig and did something rare for me; I climbed the Castle, and took in the view of Hartford. Hartford can be seen in the left of the photo.

While cleaning up the Castle Craig parking lot, parks worker Rob Zebora stopped by, to raise the flag to full mast; it had been displayed at half mast because of the recent death of an enlisted Air Force sergeant.

Rob offered to take my trash bag from me, which was a no-brainer for me. Thanks, Rob!

As I left the Castle Craig parking lot, I spied a fallen branch on the roadside which was an eyesore, so I gave it some attention.

Shortly, I reached the trail where I had more tree clearing work.

I was surprised to find another fallen branch, which wasn't there a week ago.

Slightly further along this trail, I passed over power tools and took to a shovel to remove a berm created by mountain bikers. The berm is designed to enable mountain bikes to catch air.

The picture doesn't capture the profile of this berm, but the After photo shows.

I reached the end of the trail and walked the road around Merimere Reservoir back to the parking lot.

Enroute, I found somebody's discarded Suboxone packet.

Back at the parking lot, I dropped off my last bag of litter and dashed home to watch the Tour de France.

Proof of Concept

The parking lot at Castle Craig was teeming with visitors on Sunday, despite the cloudy, muggy weather.

Visit #1149, Sunday 22 July 18, 2:00-4:00PM.
Temps in the 80's, cloudy and very humid.

In last week's post I reported finding a large pile of trash at a trailhead adjacent to the road near West Peak. I had asked the Parks Department back in 2014 to place something at this trailhead to prevent people from driving down the trail in their cars seeking privacy. They positioned shortened telephone poles there but as I expected they eventually would be rolled away. Today I was going to test a concept I had to remedy this situation.

Since I was on-call, I drove up to the trailhead in question and found, as I did last week, a pile of trash at the exact same spot. Note the bag of trash hanging from the tree branch.

Here are the telephone poles, scattered about.

Here's how they were originally situated in 2014.

Here is my Proof of Concept solution.

I bought four pieces of 1/2" by 2ft. long rebar, and a blacksmith's hammer. I had sharpened one end of the rebar to a point, but still had to find locations free of rocks to drive the rebar deep enough into the dirt. After positioning the log, it took roughly 30 minutes to complete.

Here you see the first telephone pole in place. If it lasts 4 weeks, I'll do the same with another pole. I will space them such that a trespassing ATV will still be able to get by, but regular vehicles will be prohibited. If I try to exclude ATVs, they'll merely run over more vegetation. It's better to funnel them down a trodden path.

When I was done, I picked up the trash, then cleaned up the West Peak parking lot and surrounding area. I then drove to Castle Craig and did the same there. Since I had my company van with me, I took the trash bags home for disposal. I collected quite a lot of litter considering I covered so little ground-a productive day I'd say.

The temperatures as well as the humidity were surprisingly lower up at the peaks versus the lower elevations. Not a bad day to be lazing on the rocks of West Peak.

Stubborn

Thursday yielded perfect weather to spend some quiet time at West Peak.

Visit #1147, Thursday 12 July 18, 6:30-7:15PM.
Temps in the 80's, sunny and dry.

Visit #1148, Saturday 14 July 18, 6:30-11:30AM.
Temps in the high 70's, sunny and humid.

I took a mountain bike ride up to Hubbard Park on Thursday to spray paint over some of our stubborn, persistent Bible quoting vandal's work which I found last week.

After:

On my return leg on the Yellow Trail, I came across a fallen tree. I'll remove it in two weeks along with another tree that's fallen across another trail, which I found on Saturday.

As I stopped by the south end of Merimere Reservoir, I noticed the No Trespassing signs I reported vandalized in June had been replaced with new signs.

While I was there, I rode to West Peak to check out the rocks as there is a continual problem with graffiti there as well. Unfortunately, I wasn't disappointed.

The brown paint you see was from my previous attempts to cover graffiti.

"This World Is Ours" was a repeat of graffiti found in September 2016. Same artist? Who cares; it's got to go.

Problem was, my car was at the shop being serviced so I had no transportation this weekend. What to do?

Well; I combined my two hobbies and on early Saturday morning, packed my backpack, pumped up my tires, and rode my mountain bike to Hubbard Park to paint over the graffiti and pick up trash. I figured I'd be done in time to watch the end of Saturday's stage of the Tour de France.

I left the house at 6AM, arrived at Hubbard Park at 6:30, and rode up to West Peak. I donned my coveralls, cracked open the paint can, and went to work.

After painting over everything, and some little spots, I removed the coveralls, ditched my bike in the woods, and walked a trail down from West Peak to the bottom of the road climb. Starting the trail, I came upon a real mess of trash. Since I'd be returning to that trailhead on the way back to my bike, I left it to be picked up on the return leg.

I took the trail down to the bottom,  then walked back up the road, collecting litter along the way.

 

I stopped by the fork to East/West Peak and dropped off my first bag of litter.

My Find of the Week was this pack of electrode patches from perhaps, someone's Holter Monitor. I'd love to hear the story behind them.

Back at the start, I cleaned up the trailhead. Those logs, which were meant to keep vehicles from driving down the trail, out of sight, have been rolled out of the way. I'm working on a plan to reinstall them at their original location with more permanence.

I returned to the West Peak parking lot, and as I was cleaning up the parking lot, I met a mountain biker riding early to avoid the heat.

As we were chatting, Glen said he was told of a particular trail, which he was looking for. For the sake of park ambassadorship, I decided to curtail my litter pickup duties for the day and show him the trail. I left two trash bags at West Peak for later collection by the Meriden Parks Department.

My job as tour guide for Glen was going just fine, UNTIL we neared the end of the trail by Merimere Reservoir.

Ooops; I flatted. That's not a big deal because I carry spare tubes and a patch kit. EXCEPT I forgot to pack them with the paint, coveralls, trash bags, etc. and they were in my other, bike specific bag !

Turns out Glen didn't carry any spares either. But he offered his cellphone to call his wife to pick us up.

Time for Pete's Sermon: A cellphone is no substitute for carrying spares while riding. Can I get an Amen, brother?!

If I used his cellphone to bail myself out, there would be no lesson learned; I needed to suffer through this problem. So I stubbornly refused his offer.

As I began to ride across the north end of Merimere Reservoir, I saw they were setting up a water stop for whatever charity run/walk was being held. Because of my pride/shame, I couldn't bear the thought of riding past dozens of people looking at this knucklehead riding a flat tire by them at 5mph, so I decided to leave Hubbard Park via the north end of Merimere Reservoir.

What would be the odds of meeting another cyclist who might be able to dig me out of my hole with say, a patch kit for my tube?

Today was my incredibly lucky day because, as my Lotto winning luck would have it, as soon as I pushed my bike through the gate, here came another cyclist!

I'd previously met Dan Roman hiking with his wife in Hubbard Park. Dan is a Meriden resident and former state champion wrestler when he attended Maloney High School. Now he uses hiking and bike riding for exercise.

Dan was my winning Lotto ticket, as he had a patch kit I could use to repair my tube.

My experience has been these self-adhesive patches work nowhere near as good as the real thing, but I was in no position to be choosy. So I accepted his generosity and stuck two patches on my tire, pumped it up, and with no more shame and pride to worry about, rode south past Merimere Reservoir with Dan.

The tube didn't appear to be holding air despite the patches, and Dan offered to give me a ride home.

But remember; I said I was stubborn. So like a dope, I declined someone's help for a second time thinking I needed to learn a lesson.

As soon as Dan and I parted at the south end of the reservoir, the tire went flat again, and I was resigned to riding all across Meriden on my flat tire.

As I turned onto Charles Street, I came upon Eversource performing road work, and two police officers directing traffic; one Meriden officer and one from Southington PD.

In my shame as I rode by, I tried to make light of the situation and jokingly asked the cops, "Hey, do you have any spare tubes?!" To which the Meriden cop caught me red-handed and rightly shamed me joshing, "You've got a full backpack and no tubes in there?!" 

Can you blame him?

Believe it or not, the Southington cop offered to give me a ride home, but I explained I MUST learn through my pain, and once again stubbornly refused help. 

Needless to say, I arrived home too late to watch the end of the Tour de France, and in need of a new tire and tube.

'Til next week, maintain.

Passing On

After my weekly duties in Hubbard Park, I attended a memorial service at the Hubbard Park bandshell for Dwight Needles. At the service, I learned he was quite the Renaissance man, as well as being liked by all.

Among Dwight's many accomplishments, he created that trail maps of the various parks in Meriden, Including Hubbard Park. I managed to get my hands on a good quantity of them, which I keep in my backpack and handout whenever I see that puzzled, lost look on people, which just so happened on Saturday while policing the trails. They are invaluable for creating goodwill and a positive image for the city. I like to think I'm spreading a piece of Dwight around with every map I hand out. Meriden needs more people like Dwight.

Another thing that passed on, albeit much less important, was my pedometer. This is the 3rd or 4th pedometer which wound up in the washing machine, and came out not only dizzy but not working.
I may be through with pedometers as it's getting expensive every time I brain fart and leave it in my pants.

Visit #1145, Wednesday 4 July 18, 6:40-7:50AM.
Temps in the 70's; very humid and in the midst of a heatwave.

Speaking of farts, on Independence Day I decided to hit the trail early at the behest of my "boss for the week", who doesn't like the heat. Last week I reported on my less than satisfactory attempt to remove some graffiti from a brick building on the road toward Merimere Reservoir. To give my boss a change of pace where we walk, I brought him along to supervise as I took another shot at removing the graffiti.

As you can see, I didn't remove it well enough the first go 'round.

I armed myself with Goof Off, a spray bottle of water, and some persuasion.

This is what it looked like just prior to a proper rinse.

The boss kept an eye on me to ensure I didn't slack off.

Visit #1146, Saturday 7 July 18, 8:00-9:30AM.
Temps in the 70's, sunny and dry.

The heatwave wimpered out on Friday with nary a thunderstorm to usher in the nicer weather which Paul Bernier and I enjoyed on Saturday.

As promised, I hauled my chainsaw along to remove a couple problems which cropped up recently.

Here I put the gloves on prior to brawling with the woods. Watch out!

This branch, which had been getting progressively lower and lower, had to go.

As Paul and I moved on toward our next fight, we discovered our Bible-thumping graffiti artist is at it again. Last time I encountered them was 3 June 18. I'll tend to this in a week or two.

We reached the next tree, which had fallen into the trail.

Last, this tree wasn't going to straighten up so I removed it.

Crossing the walkbridge over I -691, I checked on the progress of the weed killer I sprayed on the vines covering the fence. It may not look pretty but it was necessary.

One of the flags on the I-691 walkbridge is torn unserviceable. I removed it.

Paul and I returned to the parking lot to deposit our trash, we parted ways, and I then attended Dwight's memorial service.

I leave you this week with a photo from last week during the heat wave, where the humidity hung over Merimere Reservoir. Enjoy the more reasonable weather this week.