Laborious Day Weekend

my work space: didja like the way i fabricated my chainsawing "y"s?i rented one day's worth of a hydraulic log-splitter again. after we piled on 4 toyota tacoma's bed-worth of wood to our house and two bed's worth to grandpa's our tee pee source woodpile still looked pretty good. so, after yesterday's splitting we got the tee pee woodpile back to it's original height. i do believe we are ready for a record breaking winter and back-to-back days of firing up the stove if need be. also why we need butt-load of wood are on the early winter days when it's cold as all hell, or the malingering spring months, with little snow on the ground and we need to fire up the stove to get the cold edge off. we, grandpa and i, got up early and started splitting by 9am and stopped by 3pm. our first, major, uncut log pile from the previous owners, is pretty much gone. there are two more major uncut piles left. after that, i don't know what we'll do. guess we'll have to buy our firewood; but that's a long way away kids. monday we'll again distribute the firewood booty accordingly-aaahhhhrrrrrrr!
the girls are gone this weekend for a girl's only retreat-that leaves the menfolk remaining. they're getting back tomorrow. it was nice for them to quasi-skedaddle (in the most chill terms) for a while. we're pretty much homebodies (the menfolk that is). it's good that i get the alone time with mason because he fights for attention when his sister's are around and every now and again maura really likes to dig in him. ahhh, sibling rivalry...
the weather here's just slightly starting to change. the morning's are getting chillier. i actually have to put on a shirt nowadays when i let my doggies do their bodily excretions in our yard. where we live you can't see our neighbors. our neighbor who shares the common dirt driveway off the main street's in a little geographical depression below us-so we don't see them. hence i can get away with, early in the morning, standing around in just my boxers. truly there's nobody around at six or so in the morning 'cept me and my doggies.
sunday, after fixing waffles for the menfolk, i went for a ride out at pine valley ranch park.
it's a pretty cool place to mountain bike and it's pretty close to my house. it's been a hot summer up there and the gneiss, crushed rock makes it super loose and exceptionally sandy. at the beginning the north fork of the south platte river parallels the trail.there was a major fire in this area back in 1996 and the flora's kinda making a rebound. at the beginning there's a long-ish climb-buck gulch trail-and i snap a picture of this funky lookin' tree on the way up.i think it's a male tree. there's nobody else out there and i go so late it's always threatening rain. at the skipper trail it descends and here, you get to see another angle of the fire damage back in the day.at the junction of buffalo creek camp ground or back to homestead via miller's gulch, i snap away at the high point and at the rock formations at this particularly wide open area.
this is towards buffalo creekthis is where i came fromit's purty out here ain't it? as i'm snapping away another cyclist goes by me and after i put on my gear and several minutes pass i try to catch him (it must be that dreaded testosterone dealio). when i catch him (what seems like several miles later), i ask if i can pass and he lets me. i let 'er rip on the downhill but slow down or stop completely if the trail's skinny when i see hikers. he catches up to me. it's back to the car and my obvious lack of fitness is appalling. oh well. at least it was a glorious day. monday, i'ma clean the house so the rest of my family'll come home to something resembling order-or at least hair-free. the reason why i'm so snap happy is because i just purchased the nikon coolpix Ll8 because after 4 years of faithful service, my sony cybershot with 3.2 megapixels stepped towards the white light. i'm sure the d.a.t. tapedeck and the auto-reverse walkman'll be there to greet it...