Roof Work

A couple of years ago we had our deck built with a roof by a local contractor. Overall he did a good job but this last winter I noticed that water was running down the walls where the roof met the back of the house AND the roof itself was leaking in several places.

With El Nino coming I wanted to find out what the problem was, so I borrowed a friends ladder and climbed up. I was really disappointed by what I saw. I told the guy I wanted rolled composite shingles but it appears that he only put, what I consider, an underlay but it looks like he did like 5 feet of composit. It was some fiberglass covering that obviously does not hold up well under the sun. It looks like he did put a layer under the top one and the wood was in good condition so I just decided to lay the composite shingle right on top without removing anything.

I wanted to do it last weekend but we got rain (of course) so I delayed it for this weekend and it was one of the hottest ones we have had (of course). I got the flashing and all three rolls down before I ran out of the wet patch sealant and decided it was time to call it quits. I started at about 8am and stopped at 11am and the temp was already 94F. I wrapped it up the next morning.

Really sore now. The rolls are 65+ lbs (30 kilo) and I had to take 3 of those up the ladder.

Not a super professional job but it was better than the "professional" who originally did the roof. Hopefully it won't leak!!!

Lunar Eclipse

Excited about the Super Moon Lunar Eclipse last night I got out my tripod to so that I could get some good pictures. You can see the results below, which are really dissapointing. I took a ton of photos but most of them came out blurry. I am not sure why other than it was dark and my camera is not a fancy SLR type. It is a compact that takes pretty good photos but not this time.

I never have tried to take photos of the night sky and there are other settings that maybe would have worked but I only tried to change the white balance when it was coming out of eclipse and it help some. Anyway here is what I got.

San Francisco Road Trip

 ♫ Headin' up to San Francisco
For the Labor Day weekend show♫
-Come Monday, Jimmy Buffett

So this Labor Day we drove to San Fran Friday and Saturday, then on Sunday drove to Pismo Beach and returned back home today.

We haven't taken a trip together since Christmas and wanted to get out of town for the long holiday. We went straight up I-5 and didn't run into much traffic so it took about 8 hours.

A friend who used to live in that area told us about Twin Peaks (not the TV show). She said that it is not that widely known and researching places to go we never heard of it. So before we even checked into the Hotel we drove up to the top. Gorgeous views of the city and bay. The weather for our trip could not have been any better. From there we drove down the "most crooked street" in the world, Lombard Street. Last stop before the hotel was the "Painted Ladies".

Crossing the Bay Bridge

View from Twin Peaks

Alcatraz from Twin Peaks

Panorama. Click to enlarge

Lombard Street

Lombard Street

Painted Ladies

Our Hotel

Unfortunately we couldn't get tickets to Alcatraz and we didn't want to drive across the Golden Gate because the BART bay rail tunnel was closed this weekend so the bridges were really busy.

We stayed at The Rex Hotel near Union Square. The Rex was built in 1907 just after the San Francisco earthquake of 1906. We paid more by staying right down town but we could walk anywhere and by did we walk. Friday night we just walked to Union Square then went to dinner. Saturday we must have walked 10 miles total. Did I mention that San Fran has some of the steepest hills I have ever traveled for a city? First we drove near Fort Point to take some photos of the Golden Gate, then the walk from Hell began.  First stop the Ferry Landing Farmers Market. From there we went to Chinatown where we got one of the cheapest lunches I can remember having. Since this place did not have any seating and there was none in the area at all we walked back to Union Square where we ate. I could not believe how many people there were in Chinatown. I have never been to China before but I think I have a good idea of what it is like. Don't think I will book a trip there anytime soon. It was very tiring dodging and moving through the crush of humanity. Incredibly we did not take a singe picture of Chinatown, probably because if we stopped we would have been ran over, it was like a river of people.

Union Square

Golden Gate

Transamerica Pyramid

Stumbled across this. Church of Scientology

Cable Car

Curved Escalators, never seen that before

We still had time before dinner so off we trekked to Japantown. Chinatown and Japantown could not have been any different. Where Chinatown was chaotic, dirty, and bustling; Japantown was quiet, clean and orderly. We walked down Post street to Japantown and part of that trip was through some sketchy neighborhood. We had to dodge vomit on the sidewalk and saw a black guy wearing a blond wig, wearing a midriff shirt and looking 9 months pregnant. Yes it was a guy!! So we decided to go back on Sutter street and what a world of difference one street can make.

Japantown

Our walk

 We thought that after such an exhausting day we would sleep soundly the 2nd night and we did until 2:40am when a bunch of drunk young adults decided to take an after party to the room next to us. We tried to go back to sleep but it didn't work so we got up early and headed to Pismo Beach, our 2nd stop. On the positive side the hotel took off $115 from our bill due to the noise.

On the way to Pismo I wanted to take "A" down the Pacific Coast Highway 1. Beautiful drive but also very demanding on the driver. By the time we reached the end,  we had enough of the twisting turning road.

Along Highway 1

We stayed at The Cliffs Resort and got a room upgrade to a full ocean view. Don't know what we did to deserve that but we were happy. So we went down to the "beach", funny thing about the central coast, their "beaches" are not really beaches. At least not to anyone from SoCal. Everything is rocky with a small part of smaller chunks of rock they must consider sand.

Our view at Pismo Beach Hotel

Giant room at Pismo Beach

The "beach" below our hotel

For dinner we went back to a wonderful Sushi restaurant.

On the way home we see "Herbie the Love Bug".

Herbie the love bug

Overall it was a really fun trip that I am glad we took.

L.A. Day Trip

Lately it has been go to work, come home, go to work, repeat.  So yesterday we decided to take a day trip to L.A., where every day is Halloween.  Of course "A" set us up with a few estate sales to check out, usually we just check out the houses but at times we will purchase something.  Most of the houses that we look at are really outdated inside and crappy. I guess when you deal with that much money and with the prime locations, they have no desire to make them nice. Sometimes people will buy a property for millions of dollars just to tear it down and build a new place. 

The first stop was a house in Malibu. The house was OK, but the location was amazing, it was right on the beach. It wasn't currently for sale, but it last sold in 2013 for $7,000,000.

The other noteworthy house was in Brentwood, and no it was not O.J.s house.  This place is listed at $8,195,000 and it is currently pending.

It was really amazing how much money is in that area. Every vehicle was one of the following, Lexus SUV, BMW SUV/Sedan, Range Rover, Mercedes SUV/Sedan, Maserati, Jaguar, Tesla. In San Diego I have seen maybe 1 or 2 Teslas, Yesterday we saw over 20 of them. Yes, we actually counted them because we just don't see them here and they were literally everywhere up there. 

I know my breaks work because I damn near T-Boned a Prius that decided to turn left in front of me.  Had to lock them up and the dumb b**ch just went about her business like everything was OK and she didn't narrowly miss a trip to the hospital.  We were outside of the really nice areas, otherwise I might have tagged her and gotten a new truck.

Got to see a LA hipster with his "man bag". You can only see the strap across his chest, the bag is hidden. Hard to take the picture, the light had just turned green and "A" was yelling at me not to take the picture. She doesn't like it when I do that.

Say hi to your neighbors

The cement pond

LA Hipster

Virginia Trip

Last week duty called and I had to go to Stafford Virginia for a conference. I am never enthusiastic about having to go on business trips. I figured I did enough of them for 20 years and that was my fill. But being the good drone that I am I did a right face and forward march.

I flew into Ronald Reagan Airport in D.C. and I was lucky enough to be on the left side of the aircraft so that I could capture all the landmarks. I got a good picture of the Watergate Hotel and then decided to turn on the video to record the landing and was able to capture the Lincoln Memorial, WWII Memorial, Washington Monument, Treasury, the Capital, and the Jefferson Memorial. So if you ever fly into Ronald Reagan Airport in D.C. try to sit on the left side of the plane.

I didn't get a chance to tour DC but I did get a few hours free to tour the National Museum of the Marine Corps. It is one of the few Museums that doesn't bore me to tears. There is so much that a few hours just isn't enough. I did snap a few pictures of what I think is really cool, especially the two Medal of Honors awarded to Dan Daley. To see the actual medals that he wore is magnificent.

Flying back into San Diego I snapped a few pictures from our very low reservoirs.

Leaving San Diego

Watergate Hotel

Dan Daley's Medals of Honor

 

The US Capital Building

Low Reservoir in San Diego

Another Low Reservoir in San Diego