Stay in San Francisco Bay Area

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That meant that I would be staying the night there (sleeping in my car, of course), but spent the evening visiting with them. Here is a picture of their trailer. It has electric heat but they mostly heat it with a wood stove. It had the warm and cozy feeling of a real home. I had bought a frozen dinner when I was in town, so heated it in real oven. What a treat! Works even better than dashboards or exhaust manifolds. If you didn't know better, you would think ovens were designed for that sort of stuff.
Both of the kids were suffering from sniffles. Here is a picture of Peter giving his son, Braedon, their super hot tonic. Tiffany makes it up herself using red pepper, garlic, onion, horseradish, cayan, ... and lets it steep in vinegar for a long ti me. It is like liquid fire, but their kids have developed a taste for it and it does seem to help clear up colds (certainly the sinuses for sure).
Here is a picture of their daughter, Makiah. Both the kids are real cute, though Makiah seems to like having her picture taken and has a wonderful smile for the camera.
Both of their children are home schooled. I always thought that home schooling was pretty strange (you know, the normal reaction to the unfamiliar), but in this case it seems to be working fine. The schools in southern Oregon don't have a very good reputation and Tiffany worries about her kids spending an hour each way on a school base over the mountains (especially in the winter when the passes can get pretty treacherous).
So, they are doing home schooling. Above is Braedon playing with paper while Tiffany helps Makiah with her lesson (shown here).
Just after getting into California, there was a scenic view of Shasta mountain (shown here).
This is a picture of the bridge where I5 crossed what I believe was the Shasta River (though I may be wrong about that and the mountain above).
The terrain had gotten a good deal dryer, with dry grass and shrubs. It had its own kind of beauty.
When I got back to Hayward, I was able to work at the site in Vallejo. On Friday I went out with another guy, Albero, who had been going out the first four days of the week. He did very good work, but they weren't very happy as he was pretty slow (a surprise to me as that is the complaint I ussually hear about my work). We had fun working together though as he was working on his English and I was working on my Spanish. It was a struggle to communicate, but we each learned a lot.
Anyway, for Monday they only asked that I come back and I was out there for the last two weeks in the Bay area. I was able to see them making progress on some of the houses. Above there is a Gradall (or sort of tractor/fork lift) lifting preassemble d rafters to the top of the frame of a new house. I took a few videos, but they were real slow and careful and my videos really didn't show anything. Here you can see the next step in applying stucco and applying a fine colored cement mixture to the spr ayed in concrete.
I also made a video of the stucco finishing above, but didn't focus closely enough and nothing came out. Oh well, what to do? After finishing the stucco, they then spray and brush on the paint. They put about twenty gallons of paint into a 'converted' trash can (shown here) and then spray the paint on. I believe that this is high pressure paint gear that does not use compressed air and so can get finer particles which dry faster (and there is less of a problem of the wind carrying the paint and causing 'overspray').
Here is a picture of the painter spraying on the paint. I also made up a short video of the paint application. It took two guys about a day to paint the exterior of that house.

This page was last updated on October 26, 2009