Decided to tackle moving some of those granite rocks last night after work. Turned out pretty good. Looks quiet a bit better then what I had there before. Still have a giant pile to get rid of, thinking the rest will find its way into the backyard somewhere….
Headed up to Whipsaw this weekend, its a gravel/off road trail that starts just a little before Princeton, BC. Its a well known trail to off-road folks which I finally got my butt up there. We had a good group of people, with all of us riding some kind of off-road vehicle.
Route to the Trail
Its about 3 hours if your heading from Vancouver, and is a pretty easy find from the number 3 hwy. There is an entry sign a bit before Princeton on the left if you are heading East from Vancouver. There are a few different trails to throw you off, but its a pretty straight trail that takes you out to Tulameen area if you drive the whole thing—-(so you don’t have to drive the same way out.) We road for about 3 hours and made it to just before Wells Lake before we decided to turn around. We did a that trail a lot quicker then in a truck, so we just turned around after about 3 hours of solid riding. I am told it takes 6-7 hours in a truck without doing some stopping to play in the mud.
After a pretty wicked night of drinking we got up early Saturday morning and headed out for our main ride of the weekend. About 20 minutes in I decided to jump into every mud/ water I saw and got totally wet right off the bat.
20 minutes into the ride
Stuck...
After riding for awhile we stopped and did some skeet shooting with a shotgun that one of the guys had. We had a manual thrower with clay discs. It was fun, first time shooting a shotgun and even hit a few. Ear Plugs would have been nice.
Sheet Shooting
Saturday was a pretty good day with the weather staying mostly sunny. We took full advantage of Saturday because we knew Sunday was going to be a bit different. When we got up Sunday we where all pretty tired but wanted to get one more little ride out before we headed home.
Snow at the mine Sunday
Our Sunday ride was still pretty fun despite the crazy weather. I had to park my quad because I was so cold, and jumped into the two seater rhino. Our Sunday objective was to find a mine that a few of them had found in the past, and shoot the rest of the clay discs. Both tasks got completed…
Shooting early Sunday afternoon at the mine site
Here is a shot of the mine. Pretty cool little site. Glad we found it. Pretty fun weekend, I’ll be heading up to the same spot this coming weekend but more of a lake trip with less redneck games.
Long Tunnel
This week has had many things going on from get art ready, planning the show to more home improvement projects. I’ll leave the art stuff for when we are closer to July so I’ll give some updates on whats been happening around the fort.
Shed is still getting a few hours here and there, but waiting on my door for it so I can’t get the siding on until that freakin door is in. Roof is done at least..so I chucked my shit in there. I’ll do a final post on that bitch once the siding is all done.
If you look to the right, the shed has a roof and trim...just needs siding and a door.
Second ongoing project was getting rid of the retaining wall of old concrete after the winter shifted it around. Retaining walls with old concrete can end up being a great way build a little retaining wall if your pieces are constant and are in roughly 10×4 inch pieces. I tried using what I had from the back patio and worked for the most part but ended up getting to free load of granite which will end up looking much better.
Some tips if you plan on reusing your old broken up concrete,
If your knocking out an old patio, driveway, or sidewalk try and break the pieces in a rectangle. This is tough to do with a sledge hammer but if your using an electric breaker or air hammer this is a do able task.
Second tip is to use your biggest pieces and work you way up, with the second layer staggered from the bottom. Treat it like jagga. (sp?)
Using old concrete is a great way to save cost. Its a good way to use, used materials around your job site or home. Save hauling away the broken pieces as well as saving you the cost of building or buying more materials.
Used concrete retaining wall
If I didn’t get the loads of granite rock I would have stuck it out with the concrete retaining wall . I would have needed to level it out again after the crazy winter we had, which you might have to do every few years just to keep it up to snuff.
The piles of granite
What it looks like after the blocks are removed
This weekend was another softball tournament weekend. Had a team entered in the Aldergrove Days tournament in Aldergrove BC. Was a fun little weekend but we didn’t do terribly well. Single knock out on Sunday, with three round robin games on Saturday to see which tier you end up with. There was a little beer garden at the middle school with games going on all over the city. All and all was a pretty good little weekend with some good weather mixed in.
Final Jersey Design for the tournament
Since I’ve been so busy lately getting things ready for this upcoming art show, and working -I don’t have much to say or show but to let you know what I’ve been reading to keep me on the sane side of things…
I found this really interesting article in the local rag out here, I love creative projects that actually get completed instead of just being talked about. New York has some of the best creative people working on everything from cloths to city projects. This amazing project just opened on the 8th of June and is costing the city a few bucks, but the buzz this park is creating is second to none.
The project was created from an old rail line (the High Line) from the 1930′s that transported meat, and dairy down the line from the warehouse district of the west side of Manhattan. The line was closed in the 1980′s and was slatted to get demoed shortly after by old Rudy. But as the story goes, someone or some two, notice some flowers growing 20 feet above the street on the railway line. The great idea was to turn this old line into an Urban park.
It connects three different Manhattan neighborhoods at a length of about 2.4 kms at a cost of over 152 million of state, federal and private money. Only the first stage of the park opened on the 8th but the rest is to be opened in 2010. One more thing that makes me want to head back down to NY!
The parks site and blog can be found here
Been another good week for adding artists at the Project. We just finished up adding Helen Bond to the mix. She has a very distinct style that we enjoy and hope to see on some gallery walls in the near future.
She was trained in England and later emigrated to Canada where she works full time as an Artist from her Studio in Saint John, New Brunswick. Hope your enjoy here work and look around the site while your there.
With all this heat hitting the Valley, it was about time to cut the hair off. Went over toShoppers Drug Mart and picked up a new set of clippers and hacked the greesy doo off. Nice little pile of hair once I was finished. Feel A lot better.
ew
This week was a really hot one, which means a lot of working outside. Since I have been doing a lot of outside construction jobs this last week has brought no creativity to my head. The drive home is usually make for some creative ideas, and thoughts and one great ideas was to make a site that shows all the weird and mess up shit people write in those ever popular mobile shitters. Well, I totally missed the boat on that one. Graffitiproject.com has already been sharing this popular art form for a while. Its just not writing in the honey bucket but bathrooms in general. Check it out, there is some funny shit.
pretty good one from graffitiproject.com
This week has been another busy week, we have added another artist over at the artprojectonline.com. Pretty pumped about his work. Charles Marburg brings us his talents from New York, New York, and gives us one more reason why one of our next shows should be in that great city.
My Favorite piece from Charles.
Keeping with the art side of things, I did some looking around yahoo a few months back and finally checked out deletedimages.com. I’ve had many chats with other photographers about the amount of photos they take and how hard it is to delete or throw out the shitty ones. Here is a perfect example of how those crappy, blurry, or just shitty pictures can be worth throwing up on a wall somewhere. I’ve wasted a few hours checking out all the images. Nice and simple site with a great concept, submit some photos while your over there.
One of my favorites from deletedimages.com
Here is the official post for the upcoming Art show put on by theartprojectonline.com. We are less then two months away from the big event. It will be hosted at Art Life in Calgary Alberta, address: 1312 1st SW. Our music will be handled by none other then flexisonic . Show starts at 7pm.
This is going to be one of our most anticipated shows yet, with the pilot project of Projections being launched. We hope to have this a regular part of our future shows, and have visions of this being a big part of the growth of the art project. You will have to come check it out to see what its all about.
I will be getting three origial pieces together just for this show. One of the three piece with reprinted in a smaller print to be given out for those who give more then 20 dollars as a donation at the door. Entry is by donation, with a silent auction with all proceeds going to the women in need society. (wins)
Projections!!!
Nate Veldhoen
