When homegrown terrorists gave militia-types a bad name a few years ago, we almost disbanded the neighborhood militia out here at Clear Creek Ranch. But with all this Osama drama, we may reactivate -- the discussion process anyway. Decisions are never easy or unanimous with our group. We are always tightly wound-up, but never tightly banded together.
How could we be? These are the same guys that make up our road association. You remember that story (or have lived your own version): the pavers versus the non-pavers, and the payers versus the non-payers, and splinter groups demanding speed bumps, curbs, and armed crossing guards. The neighborhood divided itself into separate seething camps of hostility.
Anyway, a few of us who get along and can read have been studying internet sites that predict natural disasters for California during the next few years: earthquakes, tsunamis, mudslides, volcanic activity, pandemic bad hair days, not to mention all this Osama/anthrax/global warming stuff. Any cataclysmic event will send waves of ravenous refugees fleeing to the hills. Our hills, not theirs.
As if we weren't recent urban transplants ourselves. And hardly superior. No discernible superfluous IQ points clutter up our meetings. Take the simple matter of naming our militia unit. The rag-tag dress of our motley crew ranged from a jogging outfit tie-dyed in camouflage earth tones, to a lure-bristling fly-fisherman, to some sort of 21st Century electronic virtual reality-viking warlord.
Given this uniform lack of uniformity, I suggested "Clear Creek Irregulars." Which, I admit, sounds like we are in dire need of oat bran infusions. It certainly sparked a number of tasteless (but very funny) jokes about troop movements.
Everyone present had other, "better" names in mind, and the debate dragged on for hours. Nothing takes just a minute for these minutemen. It was a hopeless twelve-way deadlock tie, each name got one vote. So we moved onto the next order of business: maneuvers.
Most of our maneuvering consists of parallel parking all our SUVs along one side of my neighbor's driveway for a demonstration of his homemade cannon. It lobs bowling balls about 50 yards with reasonable accuracy, accompanied by a great deal of noise. Other than recoiling ten feet with each shot, the cannon is not highly mobile, being a tube mounted on a truck axle with two flat tires.
So unless we can persuade Osama to hide in the crater the bowling balls have formed, we may have to fall back on our armored division -- an ancient backhoe -- or our air force -- a small squadron (squab-dron?) of homing pigeon/bombers.
Our first line of defense calls for chainsawing down trees to disable easy access to our private road. The member living out nearest the country road is the logical choice to head up that project, but he only has a dinky electric chainsaw and his extension cord wouldn't quite reach. We fell to bickering about whether or not to appropriate the funds to buy him a longer cord. He was lobbying for a portable generator too, in case "they" cut our power.
Of course that "they" is PG&E, and right now they have their own band of slow-motion tree trimmers prowling around in those generic-looking "Utility Tree Service" trucks.
Is another conspiracy afoot? Can the black heliocopters be far behind? Our militia will be scouring the Web for clues.
Sunday, May 10, 2009
Thursday, May 7, 2009
The Hitch
When we first moved out to the country I bought a chainsaw to take advantage of the "free" firewood growing on our property.
Well actually, I bought a chainsaw, an extra chain, a scabbard to protect the chain on the saw, an electric saw sharpener, heavy gloves, orange hardhat, safety goggles, ear plugs, fuel and a fuel can, two kinds of oil, and this heavy apron/chaps thing to protect my legs. My squire helped me up onto my sawhorse and I was ready to joust with the trees in my quest for the lost cord.
As a novice lumberperson, I only picked on fallen trees. I figured it was pretty hard to get squashed by something that is already laying on the ground. Soon I was surrounded by stack after stack of neatly sawn 16-inch logs.
At the end of the day, when my saw and I were both out of gas, one of my neighbors came over to see what all the noise was about. When he saw my woodpile, he smirked.
"That's no way to stack wood," he laughed, and gave the nearest pile a nudge with his boot. It was a domino effect. Logs toppled, hitting the second pile, which toppled into the third. Logs were rolling everywhere. I suddenly realized that I own very little level land.
"You need criss-cross cribbing on the ends for stability," he said. "Take a look at one of my piles next time you drive by."
As I rounded up my stray logs I thought about kicking his pile over, but quickly reconsidered. Who knew where a rural log-kicking feud might lead these days. So I inspected his arrow-straight rows of precisely stacked oak. When I nudged the pile, it felt like it was nailed together.
Criss-cross cribbing is hard to stack without splitting the logs, they keep rolling away. So I bought a maul, which is like an axe, but it has a heavy wedge-shaped head that makes log splitting easier. A vicious circle swirled in my brain: I wanted dry firewood. I had green, wet logs. Split wood dries faster than whole logs. But green wood is harder to split than bone-dry wood, which if I had, I wouldn't need to split.
My wrists and lower back gave out about the time the blisters on my palms broke, which was right after I split my last cribbing log. Three days later, when I regained some use of my back and hands, I dialed up my neighborhood expert to keep him current on the firewood situation.
"Get yourself a hydraulic splitter, sport," he drawled. "I'd lend you mine, but you know how it is with lending tools to neighbors."
I had ten times more wood left to split and no energetic teenaged son to send out there to do it. So I went shopping for a log splitter.
I found that for the cost of a dozen cords of seasoned oak, delivered, split, and stacked at my door step, I could purchase a light-weight log splitter. It came with a lifetime guarantee, which gave me or the splitter at least a ten year life span just to break even at the rate we burn firewood.
He wanted me to consider a small tractor to haul the splitter to job sites on my property, and a trailer to haul the finished product back to the house. I would need to pay extra for warranties, insurance on everything, and maintenance agreements since I'm not mechanically inclined. Oh, and I'd need a new $50 trailer hitch assembly for my truck to haul all my new toys home, where I knew I'd need a new storage shed to house all this labor-saving stuff. Suddenly firewood preparation was going to cost me more than an Ivy League education. Dazed and babbling, I begged the salesman for moment alone with my checkbook.
Well, following much soul-searching and gnashing of teeth, I finally did it. I wrote him a check . . . for a whopping $50.
Then I swung by the local rental yard, and towed home a rented log splitter on my brand new trailer hitch.
Well actually, I bought a chainsaw, an extra chain, a scabbard to protect the chain on the saw, an electric saw sharpener, heavy gloves, orange hardhat, safety goggles, ear plugs, fuel and a fuel can, two kinds of oil, and this heavy apron/chaps thing to protect my legs. My squire helped me up onto my sawhorse and I was ready to joust with the trees in my quest for the lost cord.
As a novice lumberperson, I only picked on fallen trees. I figured it was pretty hard to get squashed by something that is already laying on the ground. Soon I was surrounded by stack after stack of neatly sawn 16-inch logs.
At the end of the day, when my saw and I were both out of gas, one of my neighbors came over to see what all the noise was about. When he saw my woodpile, he smirked.
"That's no way to stack wood," he laughed, and gave the nearest pile a nudge with his boot. It was a domino effect. Logs toppled, hitting the second pile, which toppled into the third. Logs were rolling everywhere. I suddenly realized that I own very little level land.
"You need criss-cross cribbing on the ends for stability," he said. "Take a look at one of my piles next time you drive by."
As I rounded up my stray logs I thought about kicking his pile over, but quickly reconsidered. Who knew where a rural log-kicking feud might lead these days. So I inspected his arrow-straight rows of precisely stacked oak. When I nudged the pile, it felt like it was nailed together.
Criss-cross cribbing is hard to stack without splitting the logs, they keep rolling away. So I bought a maul, which is like an axe, but it has a heavy wedge-shaped head that makes log splitting easier. A vicious circle swirled in my brain: I wanted dry firewood. I had green, wet logs. Split wood dries faster than whole logs. But green wood is harder to split than bone-dry wood, which if I had, I wouldn't need to split.
My wrists and lower back gave out about the time the blisters on my palms broke, which was right after I split my last cribbing log. Three days later, when I regained some use of my back and hands, I dialed up my neighborhood expert to keep him current on the firewood situation.
"Get yourself a hydraulic splitter, sport," he drawled. "I'd lend you mine, but you know how it is with lending tools to neighbors."
I had ten times more wood left to split and no energetic teenaged son to send out there to do it. So I went shopping for a log splitter.
I found that for the cost of a dozen cords of seasoned oak, delivered, split, and stacked at my door step, I could purchase a light-weight log splitter. It came with a lifetime guarantee, which gave me or the splitter at least a ten year life span just to break even at the rate we burn firewood.
He wanted me to consider a small tractor to haul the splitter to job sites on my property, and a trailer to haul the finished product back to the house. I would need to pay extra for warranties, insurance on everything, and maintenance agreements since I'm not mechanically inclined. Oh, and I'd need a new $50 trailer hitch assembly for my truck to haul all my new toys home, where I knew I'd need a new storage shed to house all this labor-saving stuff. Suddenly firewood preparation was going to cost me more than an Ivy League education. Dazed and babbling, I begged the salesman for moment alone with my checkbook.
Well, following much soul-searching and gnashing of teeth, I finally did it. I wrote him a check . . . for a whopping $50.
Then I swung by the local rental yard, and towed home a rented log splitter on my brand new trailer hitch.
Coping at the Country Club
On his best day Tiger Woods could not break par here at the Rancho Clear Creeko Golf Course and Country Club. This is a moot point since our membership committee won't allow Tiger on the course. We have a strict colored policy.
No matter how coordinated the clothing colors are, anything bearing promotional sports equipment logos is forbidden. Segregated colors, such as all-denim or all-kevlar are okay. And both provide better protection against chaparral than those eye-blinding double knits ever will.
Matched sets of clubs aren't outlawed, but they are impractical. A sparkling set of niblicks, mashies, spoons, cleeks, flanges, spanners, and wedges wouldn't stay that way for long with all the boulders and debris on the fairways here. Mashies soon look exactly like their name sounds.
Instead of the usual 14 regulation clubs, most players opt for a cheap thrift store 7 or 9 iron and a putter. The rest of the space in the golf bag is needed for a compass, flares, insect repellant, snake bite kit, safety glasses, small chain saw. And extra balls -- lots of 'em!
Losing one's balls is a fact of life on this course. The hilly, heavily wooded terrain rarely permits a player to see where his shot lands. And we're talking about the fairways! Balls occasionally disappear from the relatively flat, totally grassless putting surfaces we laughingly call greens. Don't ask us about the rough. Call 911.
The Rancho Clear Creeko course is laid out on an L-shaped parcel of land. In golf terms, it is an extreme dogleg to either the left or right, depending on your disorientation at the moment. More than one contestant has been heard to mutter, as he thrashed about in a field of mountain misery, "Where in the L am I?"
Mercifully, the course is only three holes long. In theory one could play six rounds to get in the traditional 18 holes. But one round usually packs in as many strokes of the non-cardiac kind as any "regulation" course. Par on each hole is 24 strokes, for a total of 72. The terms "birdie," "bogey," and "eagle" are meaningless. On this course, "ace" always refers to the bandage.
Here at Rancho Clear Creeko GC & CC we have unisex teeing areas. One sighs fits all. Half way through the first hole sex will be the farthest thing from your mind, as survival instincts and unwritten will codicils begin to dominate your thoughts.
The first hole is 2,725 yards long, a sharp dogleg to the left beginning about 1,400 yards out. Tee and green are at the same elevation, but along the fairway several altitude swings of ± 200 feet are encountered.
Cutting corners through the dogleg shortens the length of the hole to 1,950 yards, in theory. It's hard to reach the green in one shot with a bent 7 iron. This bold move usually brings into play formidable barbed wire fences, rock outcroppings loaded with rattlesnake dens, ant hills, hornet nests, and a passel of the neighbor's guard dogs.
The second hole is only 75 yards long, but every one of those yards is vertical. Straight up a granite cliff face. The hole itself is an Amerind artifact -- a depression in the granite slab left by Indians who ground acorns into paste centuries ago. By the time I hole-out here, my own body is doing a close approximation of an extinct relic.
The third hole is really a repeat, in reverse, of the first hole. A 2,725 dogleg, to the right this time. Most players who opted for the short cut on hole #1 take the long route this time. Barking and rattling can still be heard in the wooded hollows below. As well as the screams from the next foursome back. Then there is that pesky residual bleeding and all the unexplained swelling.
We don't use scorecards here at Rancho Clear Creeko GC & CC. Each shot is harrowing enough to be permanently burned into the players memory. As they recuperate on the third and final green one of our local New Age seance guides conducts the tattered linksters on a sort of "Past Hour's Regression" in search of their "inner hacker," while the resident paramedic charts the volatility of their blood pressure reading. Anyone who makes it through an entire round without spiking completely off the chart has had a respectable round.
So swing on by when you are in the neighborhood for a spot of tee. If you are game, that is.
And if you have the balls.
No matter how coordinated the clothing colors are, anything bearing promotional sports equipment logos is forbidden. Segregated colors, such as all-denim or all-kevlar are okay. And both provide better protection against chaparral than those eye-blinding double knits ever will.
Matched sets of clubs aren't outlawed, but they are impractical. A sparkling set of niblicks, mashies, spoons, cleeks, flanges, spanners, and wedges wouldn't stay that way for long with all the boulders and debris on the fairways here. Mashies soon look exactly like their name sounds.
Instead of the usual 14 regulation clubs, most players opt for a cheap thrift store 7 or 9 iron and a putter. The rest of the space in the golf bag is needed for a compass, flares, insect repellant, snake bite kit, safety glasses, small chain saw. And extra balls -- lots of 'em!
Losing one's balls is a fact of life on this course. The hilly, heavily wooded terrain rarely permits a player to see where his shot lands. And we're talking about the fairways! Balls occasionally disappear from the relatively flat, totally grassless putting surfaces we laughingly call greens. Don't ask us about the rough. Call 911.
The Rancho Clear Creeko course is laid out on an L-shaped parcel of land. In golf terms, it is an extreme dogleg to either the left or right, depending on your disorientation at the moment. More than one contestant has been heard to mutter, as he thrashed about in a field of mountain misery, "Where in the L am I?"
Mercifully, the course is only three holes long. In theory one could play six rounds to get in the traditional 18 holes. But one round usually packs in as many strokes of the non-cardiac kind as any "regulation" course. Par on each hole is 24 strokes, for a total of 72. The terms "birdie," "bogey," and "eagle" are meaningless. On this course, "ace" always refers to the bandage.
Here at Rancho Clear Creeko GC & CC we have unisex teeing areas. One sighs fits all. Half way through the first hole sex will be the farthest thing from your mind, as survival instincts and unwritten will codicils begin to dominate your thoughts.
The first hole is 2,725 yards long, a sharp dogleg to the left beginning about 1,400 yards out. Tee and green are at the same elevation, but along the fairway several altitude swings of ± 200 feet are encountered.
Cutting corners through the dogleg shortens the length of the hole to 1,950 yards, in theory. It's hard to reach the green in one shot with a bent 7 iron. This bold move usually brings into play formidable barbed wire fences, rock outcroppings loaded with rattlesnake dens, ant hills, hornet nests, and a passel of the neighbor's guard dogs.
The second hole is only 75 yards long, but every one of those yards is vertical. Straight up a granite cliff face. The hole itself is an Amerind artifact -- a depression in the granite slab left by Indians who ground acorns into paste centuries ago. By the time I hole-out here, my own body is doing a close approximation of an extinct relic.
The third hole is really a repeat, in reverse, of the first hole. A 2,725 dogleg, to the right this time. Most players who opted for the short cut on hole #1 take the long route this time. Barking and rattling can still be heard in the wooded hollows below. As well as the screams from the next foursome back. Then there is that pesky residual bleeding and all the unexplained swelling.
We don't use scorecards here at Rancho Clear Creeko GC & CC. Each shot is harrowing enough to be permanently burned into the players memory. As they recuperate on the third and final green one of our local New Age seance guides conducts the tattered linksters on a sort of "Past Hour's Regression" in search of their "inner hacker," while the resident paramedic charts the volatility of their blood pressure reading. Anyone who makes it through an entire round without spiking completely off the chart has had a respectable round.
So swing on by when you are in the neighborhood for a spot of tee. If you are game, that is.
And if you have the balls.
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