The start of 2014 found us in New Zealand where we had been traveling since November 7, 2013. We where there until the 3rd of February when we went to Australia to travel around until the 9th of May when we returned to California and home in Canby.
We spent the summer and fall working on the property and construction projects on the house, the biggest being the creation of the loft guard rail using wood we milled from a tree on our property and the installation of a new wood cook stove.
It has been a great year filled with amazing adventures and people in three countries! Check out some of the other galleries and post in this blog for our travel logs and I will add more pictures this winter to fill in the Australian trip.
Happiest of New Years to you and may 2015 bring you all the best in all your adventures!
Cheers, Debbie and Roger
New Years Day 2014 and we were on the south end of the South Island of New Zealand headed to the small town of Bluff. Not a bad way to start the year!New Years Day and our home away from home in New Zealand a van we named The Two Lambs Inn. Please see the other entries in the blog about this great van and our adventures in it.Here we are having fun in Australia in early March. We were in Australia until the 9th of May when we flew home. More Australia pictures will be posted to the blog soon.Our home away from home in Australia. We named this one Kiddo (short for Echidna which is a cool Australian animal). It was very comfortable and we traveled many enjoyable miles in it.Roger flies at Stanwell Park about a week before we left Australia.Back home to Canby in May 2014. The big pond was still not full but gave us an enjoyable place to hang out.Hang gliding of course took place over the summer. Roger and Phil setting up on launch at the new flying site, the south side of Schaffer mountain near our house in Canby. Roger flew and landed in the new bailout LZ so the site is baptized!There were a lot of wildfires this summer. This smoke plume is from the Day wildfire which was about 30 miles from us. It was one of three big wildfires burning at the same time in August. It made for a worrying summer.The forest fires caused a lot of smoke and very eerie sunsets. The smoke plume from the Day fire can be seen to the left just above the mountains.We met Rich and Rachel in New Zealand at a flying meet and they came over in August for visit. Here Roger and Rich set up on Sugar Hill. Unfortunately for Rich the smoke from the fires moved in and he never got to launch. It was great to have them visit!We ordered a new wood cook stove and the stove was delivered to the bottom of our road so the trusty backhoe was used to bring it up to the house. It weighed 950 lbs all crated so it wasn’t easy. Thanks to Eric Beckman for his help, he is riding shotgun in this picture!We needed a new metal heat shield for behind the new cook stove so as usual we invented one. Here is a close up of the heat shield we made from an old VW van floor (welded into a metal frame and painted black) and some copper sheeting.The next project was a guard rail for the loft. This is the dead Jeffery Pine that we cut down and milled into lumber for our building projects. It is about 60 feet tall. We also milled some downed junipers that we had.A friend Garret came and helped us with cutting down the dead Jeffery Pine so it could be milled into lumber. He has done a lot of tree cutting and he did a great job.This is Howard who came to our place with his portable band saw mill. He did an awesome job and we had a wonderful time milling the wood.A full view of the mill. We made a bunch of boards and a lot of saw dust!This is all the wood we milled and stacked. There are a lot of projects in those stacks of pine and juniper!For those asking about the process, here is the transition of the milled wood from ruff cut to planned, edges routered, sanded and then notched.Here is the lumber for the guard rails all planed, notched, sanded and varnished.This is the new guard rail next to the stairs taken from the loft.The new main guard rail shown from the loft. I used the pine for everything but the top cap which is juniper.Here is a detail of part of the juniper rail cap. The juniper has lots of interesting designs going on in the grain.What the shop and loft looked like before we started working on new stove and guardrail.What the shop looks like now with the new wood stove and loft guard rail. A few more bits of trim, glass above the doors and some artistic touches and we will be done with this part.It wasn’t all construction this summer at fall. Roger and I demonstrated hang gliding at the Sportsmans Expo in Alturas. There was quite a lot of interest and people enjoyed the simulator.Mike, Karin, Aidan and Mello came up from the Bay Area for a visit and we had some great adventures!The aspen leaves this fall were very beautiful!Our friend Chewy from Canada took this picture of us in Canby while he was visiting in January 2015. A Happy New Year to you all.
