Camping in the Manistee National Forest

I went last weekend with my brother in law John who's walked the trail before. There were lots of other hikers, canoers and views of the river from high up.

Friday
we arrived at the trail at 6pm, hiked 5 miles then camped around 8pm

Saturday
we had all day to hike 15 miles, stopping for lunch and to fish in the river.around 2am it started pouring with rain and there was tons of thunder and lightning
it's hard to tell here but it rained so hard that my pack got a little wet, but was fine in the morning.
Sunday
woke up a bit sore but walked 5 more miles back to the car .

Typical part of the trail along one of the hills




Panorama views (click to enlarge)

Drain Pipe #2

A few months ago i routed my roof downspout to drain underground. It was a little difficult digging the trench but it turned out ok. It was fairly easy, just a lot of digging and trenching under the concrete walk.

Right after i finished that i started working on the other roof drain in my back yard. That was a long time ago.

This time i had to chop and saw my way through vines and tree roots, dig along side a fence, hammer and chisel and eventually move concrete slabs.
The problem was that my concrete patio was in the way. So i thought i'd just take a chisel and a big hammer and make a hole in the concrete and run the pipe under it. But first i had to move a big slab of concrete out of the way. I used 2x4's and rocks and levered it over a few feet.
Then i discovered that under the concrete slab is another slab of concrete. So instead of making a hole i just knocked out the corner. This all took a long time over many days and many smashed knuckles, to bash away enough concrete to fit the drain pipe.
Once again the clay soil doesn't drain well in the backyard either. But i was eventually able to place the PVC pipe on sand in the trench.

I still have to pour concrete to fill in around the pipe. It's a lot of work for something most people will walk by and never notice.

Car accidents suck

About a month ago i was driving to the airport for work and in a construction area on I-75 i got rear-ended by another car. I called 911 but since i was in Detroit, the Detroit Police said they didn't need to come out. The damage doesn't look real bad but i slowed down to about 30mph and he had to be going around 60mph. Neither of us was hurt.
Long story short i ended up going to 3 police stations, including the state police, but finally got a police report and had my car fixed. They originally estimated the repairs at $3200 but it ended up costing $4900 and took 2 weeks to fix.

Inception

This movie basically has everything, great story, great acting and great visual effects. It's one of those movies that sticks in your head even a few days after you see it. It's reminded me a lot of the Matrix. It was a little confusing at first, then got more confusing, then got really confusing but you should still definitely see it if you like sci-fi movies at all.

9 out of 10