John’s Ramblings

Sunshine is nice, no doubt about it. But I’m really glad to be home. The bed at our hotel had a slight slant to starboard, causing Terri to feel like she was being ejected half the night. It was great to get home to our own car, house, bed, and of course our 4 legged kids.

Brunch on Sunday was great, and the rest of the trip was fairly uneventful. Hollywood has come to a dead-stop with the start of the Writer’s Guild strike today. Not even Leno will dare to tell his own jokes for a few days until they settle this thing. I suppose that, if he were to in effect “scab-write” his own material, he’d end up with nothing but fart jokes when the writers actually returned.

Then there was this thing, which needs no comment from me. Behold:

Only in Hollywood. Back on the bike tomorrow.

I transplanted myself to the Pacific Northwest 34 years ago in order to attend a college there. As a way to convince myself that I didn’t miss 80 degree days in November, I have always told myself that:

• “having seasons is cool”
• “green is good, even if it is a layer of moss on your car”
• “palm trees are boring”
• “yes, it rains a lot, but it is not the sort of rain that gets you wet”

Hogwash. I’m contemplating the glint of sunshine off the hotel pool at the moment.  If only I could be this bored all the time. As I contemplate the day ahead here in the Greater Los Angeles area, the forecast is for sunshine and 85 degrees today. It is November4th. Boring, my ass. Sure, the hillsides catch fire every year, but we have fires in Washington too. I’m wishing I’d packed my Lemond, so I could take a ride out in the valley somewhere, or maybe head down to my old stomping grounds in Palos Verdes. Alas, that is not to be, so I’ll have to suffer through cabin-fever here by the pool. Someone bring me a drink with an umbrella, so I can drown my sorrows.

Today is “brunch day” for the Calnans. Mom and Dad go to brunch every Sunday at the Market City Caffe in Burbank. There’s good food, great service, and a string quartet. The windows will be open to the patio and street because it’s warm. Being Los Angeles, there will be plenty of interesting people-watching to be had as well.

Tomorrow will be that whole messy “back to the cold weather” thing. It’s awkward to step off a plane in shorts and sandals when everyone else in the airport is in long pants and coats. The shuttle bus to the car can get a bit chilly as well.

Like most folks, we don’t like the telephone ringing through the evening with calls from telemarketers, charity organizations, or the occasional survey. We’ve taken what steps we thought were prudent to stem the bombardment, including registering our number(s) with the national do not call registry.

We still get the occasional call, mostly from charitable organizations that don’t have to pay attention to such things since it is their primary source of funding. Once in a while we’ll get a call to participate in a market research survey. We got such a call a couple of weeks ago, and the call was a bit later in the evening than Terri thought appropriate. She let them know, politely, that even if we did want to participate in their survey about radio stations, we wouldn’t want to do so at this late hour. End of conversation.

Apparently not entirely. The research firm sent us this letter of apology, along with two dollars. I’m guessing we’re going to hear from them again in the near future, and the call will be earlier in the evening. Too bad, because I’m about 1.5 apologies away from buying a new spare inner tube for my bike with this new income stream.

We were having a quiet evening at home. Terri and I were chillin’ in the living room, sipping a glass of wine and talking about our pending work-weeks. Shortly after 8 p.m., there was a pretty loud crash sound from just outside the house, near the street. When I got to the front door, our small front lawn was completely filled with truck, as you see here:

Blog-boy called 9-1-1. The conversation was something along the lines of:

Me: “A truck has rolled down the hill and landed in my yard.”
Operator: “Is there anyone in the truck?”
Me: “No, it was parked up the hill, and rolled down the hill by itself.”
Operator: “Was anyone else injured?”
Me: “No, but I’ve got this truck upside-down in my yard.”
Operator: “Well, just get his license and give it to your insurance company.”
Me: “No, you don’t understand, it’s hanging upside down in my yard.”
Operator: “I don’t see any reason to dispatch an officer.”
Me: “It’s upside-down, in my yard, and there is gasoline leaking.”
Operator: “Oh, fine then. I guess I’ll send an officer.”
Me: “Gee, thanks.”

Within the next ten minutes, we’d have two Sheriff cars and two fire engines surrounding our house.

Because we are on a hillside and the yard drops off rather precipitously just after the lawn, the first move of the fire department was to secure the truck by tying a rope to the truck, then around a nearby tree to prevent the truck from slipping further down the hill. I hadn’t really considered the possibility, but I’m glad somebody did.

The Sheriff in charge of the scene called for a big-ass tow truck to lift the truck out of our yard. While we were waiting, we worked our way around the neighbor’s house for this perspective on the scene. Just behind the green railing is the front door, where I took the first picture:

We were starting to gather quite a crowd of neighbors by this time. Terri was pretty upset, and the neighbors brought out a bottle of wine and a bowl of pistachios so as to provide a little levity and normalcy to the chaotic scene. Nothing like a little Walla Walla Red to calm the nerves.
	Soon enough, the big-ass tow truck arrived. This guy was quite skilled with this crane device, and over the course of about 2 hours was able to pull the truck out of our yard, and place it in the street right-side up.
Here’s the carnage being dragged up the street. They would take it to the top of the hill, and load it onto another flatbed truck for final removal.
	This morning, with a little more light on the subject. This is the hill that the truck rolled down. I’d estimate it at 8 or 9 % grade. The truck was parked on the right side of the roadway, in front of the 4th house up (barely visible here). It clipped the bush in the yard of the first house you see on the right here, then turned right toward our next door neighbor’s house.
The truck deflected off this small pickup, which is parked in front of the next-door neighbor’s house. Without this deflection, the truck would have entered the neighbor’s house, either through the garage or the front door.
	Instead, the truck headed for our house. Because of this pine tree, however, the truck was deflected from it’s path. Rather than head into the side of our house, the truck dropped over the wall, coming to rest on our front lawn.
I firmly believe that this tree saved our house. I’m feeling a little more vunerable now that it is gone.

We are feeling very lucky today, and we are grateful that no one was injured. We’ve met the new neighbors, by the way. They seem very nice, and were definitely sorry and shocked at the events that transpired. Other than the truck, the damages should be fairly easily repaired. We finally got to bed about 11:30 or so.

Trust me, this entry is far more exciting than my bike ride on Sunday. I’ll fill you in on the Headwaters Century later.

In the last week of January there was a break in the sewer line that runs from the street in front of my house, along my property, and across the ravine behind my house. The sewer line is configured like a big sink-trap underneath the stream at the bottom of the ravine. A routine weekly check of the line showed that there was a break somewhere at the bottom of the ravine.

Environmental crisis and calamity was averted in a 3 day process wherein they intercepted the sewage before it went through this pipe by vacuuming it out of a manhole in front of my house. While the vacuuming went on 24 hours a day in the street, another crew dug around in the swampy ground below to “fix” the leak. This fix was apparently was a band-aid maneuver that had a tactical goal of getting this crew home before Super Bowl Sunday, rather than the strategic goal of a permanent fix.

Fast-forward to May 1. Pickup trucks start coming and going again in the street, highly unusual given we are at the bottom of a dead-end hill. The sewer guys are back, and they brought friends in the form of a sub-contractor that digs holes and lays pipe on behalf of said sewer guys. “Welcome back”, says the affable fellow living at the end of the street. The friendly sewer guys inform me that work is to start next Monday, pipe arriving, chaos ensuing, etc..

Enter the utility locators. These are the folks that come in little white station wagons to spray colored markings all over your street, sidewalk, and lawn to mark where underground utilities are hidden. They have marked the street on 5 occasions over the last 3 years or so, so I have gained a little insight into this operation (3 of these occasions were for a separate project, a County job to repair the storm drain system. This project never actually took place, despite taxpayer money marking the jobsite 3 times). If there was ever a business plan put together to take advantage of local municipalities, utility companies, and construction contractors, this is it. It seems that for every “locate” job, they send two different guys, on two different days. One guy marks the water, sewer, telephone, and cable. Another guy comes the next day, and marks electricity and natural gas. Why two guys, you may ask? I would assume that they are then able to charge for two site-visits, rather than just one.

	Green would appear to be the color for sewer. The pointy arrow shows which way this stuff flows, which is a hard-right turn to run down my northern property line.
Yellow marks natural gas. “EOM” I assume stands for “End of Main”, as this is as far as they put the gas line when we converted a few years back.
	Blue has to represent water, because it would be hard to fight a fire if it stood for natural gas.
The red lines are the underground electrical lines that run from these transformer boxes to the houses on the street. Orange are telephone lines, some of which would not have been marked had I not pointed them out to the dude with the spraypaint. The phone lines to my house get missed every time, and they were dug up back when the natural gas line was being installed.
	Apparently 100% accuracy is not a requirement, as this water meter that lies directly in the work area has no blue markings within 30 feet
Street marked, Monday the 7th rolls around and stuff starts happening… just before it stops. This load of 50 foot pipe arrives, is offloaded by this backhoe, and promptly declared to be the wrong diameter.

Fast forward again, to this week. Wednesday the 23rd the little white station wagons show up again, tracing over the same markings they made 3 weeks ago. Both guys. And yes, they did not re-mark my buried phone lines (because I didn’t stand there and point them out), and yes they missed the water running to that one meter. I assume they are just looking at a map of the last time they did the marking on this street incorrectly, and repeating the same incorrect markings. I think that as long as that’s all they are doing, the subcontractor could incorrectly interpret the location of all underground utilities themselves, and cut out the middleman.

Work actually began on Thursday, as they started to “fuse” these 50 foot sections of pipe together, and began to drag them down my property line. Next week they will begin the process of pulling the new line completely across the ravine. That should be entertaining, and hopefully they won’t have to call in the utility locators again, even if the job is stopped for a 3 day weekend.

He’s been kinda busy, on several fronts:

Cycling: I’ve had two rides, Tuesday the 2nd I did 25 miles with the Use It or Lose It gang. The weather was crappy before and after the ride, but it was warm and no rain fell on our little out-and-back trip to Sumner. I skipped Thursday as I was in the throes of a headcold, and did not want to exacerbate matters with a ride in 40 degree temps. Saturday I went out solo, and did 19 miles in the valley to shake out the cobwebs a bit.

Rim Failure: I’ve been riding my fair-weather bike, as my new wheels have not been finished by the boys at Ti-Cycles. I’m hopeful that I’ll be able to fetch them tomorrow before the night ride. It looks like it’s going to be a wet ride, so I’d much rather be riding my winter bike with the fenders.

Bent Car: My car ended up staying at the auto body place for the weekend, as they had not quite gotten it done on Friday. In the meantime, I drove around in a Ford Focus Hatchback, which was roomy enough to stash my bike in the back, but has seats that were designed by the Bishops during the Spanish Inquisition. I picked the car up this afternoon, and it looks perfect. All the repairs and the car rental were direct-billed to the insurance company of the person that backed into my car. Thank you, Kirmac Auto Body. Nice job!

Gauntlet: Today is Terri’s birthday, but we celebrated on Sunday with dinner at Salty’s. I’m halfway through The Gauntlet with the end in sight.

College Bike: Also on Sunday, I got in touch with my ex-mother-in-law. About 25 years ago, when I was not cycling but owned a bike I had bought in college and ridden up until about 1980. My ex’s younger brother wanted to borrow my bicycle for a while. Rumor has it he never even rode the thing, but it has been hanging in his mom’s garage ever since. I had no recollection about what brand it was or even the color, but Sunday morning we went by and picked it up. It’s a Centurion (predecessor to Diamondback), vintage approx. 1975, 10 speeds. It is pretty well preserved, and not too badly rusted. The tires are shot, as are the brake pads. I may replace those, give it a quick lube, and try it out on the trail. If it is anywhere close to fitting me, I may convert it to a fixed gear bike to do some training and playing on.

Spin Class: I did the spin thing tonight. Class was packed with all the new year’s resolution people, but I got a trainer and class was o.k. Music was so-so tonight, but I tuned it out and got a good workout. He actually played Celine Dion. In Spin class. What is the world coming to?

Advocacy: I had written to King County and the City of Auburn in an attempt to get some sort of fix put in for the Interurban Trail near my house. The trail floods with any moderate rainfall, forcing a detour through truck traffic. The King County Trail folks have inspected this section, and they believe that the flooding may be the result of a clogged culvert. Now the challenge is to see who has jurisdiction over the culvert, the City of Auburn or Union Pacific Railroad. The county folks have promised to track that down, however, so I’m hopeful we can get this problem fixed.

A whopping 44 miles, ytd.

Rewind to a week ago, Thursday last.

It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents–except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London Auburn that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.

–Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, Paul Clifford (1830)

The dire predictions of an impending windstorm were spot-on. Being somewhat flexible in my work hours by virtue of the munificence of my wonderful employer, I spent a couple of hours preparing on Thursday by purchasing a few last minute supplies to round out our “3 days, 3 ways” list. At 11 PM the lights flickered and went dark. We had decided to sleep in a downstairs bedroom so as to avoid the possibility of a falling tree climbing into bed with us. Our sleep was interrupted, but only by the noise of the storm and not by anything hitting the house or coming apart.

On Friday Terri headed off to work and I attempted to connect to my work email via laptop and modem. Getting my email would prove to be a 20 minute exercise just to connect and download any waiting messages. All our smart software must download phone directories, synchronize folders, check my calendar, ask me if I’m still out of my office, check for software updates, and perform a cavity search on my hard drive. By 9 AM my frustration peaked, and I packed up to find a functional wi-fi hotspot from which I could communicate to the outside world. Starbucks performed that function, and the coffee was hot.

We attended two holiday parties over the weekend. Saturday we went to the neighbor’s house where we sipped, noshed, and chatted by firelight and candlepower. They really did a wonderful job to even have the party after two days of no electricity. Sunday we went to Seattle for another get-together. We were concerned about our little dogs, however, and we left civilization after an hour or so. We huddled on the couch under blankets and read by flashlight. I used my bicycle helmet with the LED light on top to read Carl Hiassen’s latest, “Nature Girl”.

Monday I spend part of the day at the Library in order to connect to work. Getting there was a bit of a challenge as there was a 3 alarm fire a block away from the library and several streets were blocked off.

Late Monday we decided to abandon the house in favor of a local motel that would allow us to bring our dogs. The power company had no good estimate of when they would get us reconnected, and the house was down to about 42 degrees. The room was not glamorous, but it was warm, well lit, and close to a mexican restaurant for carry-out.

I spent Tuesday with the dogs at the hotel. I committed to a second night at check-out time. Estimates for power restoration ranged from Wednesday to Friday, and the house was now about 40 degrees inside. We went to the house in the afternoon to pick up some clothes, and the dogs would not even go inside. Sean jumped back into the car to wait, and Molly laid down on the driveway.

Tuesday night was bike ride night. I went by the house to get my ride to find that the lights were back on. We were comfy at the motel, so we opted to stay there overnight. This was a good decision as the power was only on for a few hours before going off again at 9PM. The bike ride was cold and damp, but it didn’t rain. We did 21 miles on the trails in the valley, marveling at all the trees that had fallen onto the trail. The parks departments of Kent and Tukwila had already been there with chainsaws, and our path had been cleared. I dropped my bike off at the house afterward, and the power was still on. I assumed we had been repaired, and I could head home first thing in the morning and get back to work.

Wednesday morning we packed up our belongings, and I took a load down to the car. Sometime during the night someone had backed into my car in the parking lot. A call to the front desk revealed that the woman had left her insurance and contact information, for which I was very grateful. I did not want to have to spend the morning filing a hit-and-run report while juggling work and two dogs. I took the information, loaded the car, kissed the wife goodbye, and headed up the hill to the house. Much to my dismay the house was dark and cold. I puttered around a bit, but mostly huddled with the doggies and waited for the power. I figured that since it had been on already, that it would return fairly soon. It took until about 4 PM, but it did come back on, and stay on.

4 houses in the middle of my block have not been so lucky, as the underground transformer that feeds them failed. So, while the other houses on the street are lit up and getting warm, these 4 remain dark. The underground crews arrived here at 5 AM this morning, so I assume everyone will have light shortly.

My losses were small compared to many. We lost a fridge and two freezers of food, and all the fauna in our 55 gallon aquarium. We’re also out $200 for hotel, and time lost from chasing down my auto insurance claim. I’ve also lost the notion that being prepared for 3 days is in any way adequate in a major disaster. We will be doing some major re-work on the family preparedness plan in the coming days.