No Walk for You!

On the positive side of getting less hours of work is it allows more hours for walking. I began a regimen of taking a long walk early each morning when I am not scheduled on the job. I look forward to those jaunts. Today should have been one.

But some tropical depression moved up here in the night and it is raining. We are supposed to get drenched today, perhaps up to six inches. (On the bright side, it could be winter and that would translate to six feet of the white stuff.)

It was raining when I awoke and the sky remained more night than day well past the so-called sunrise. Mr. Sun is obviously sleeping in today. By eight o'clock it appeared to slacken off. I went outside to fetch the paper and it was a warm mist. Perhaps there was hope.

I had to make some bank deposits and I had to pick up some cat food so why not run those errands and see if the sky would clear long enough for a brisk saunter, especially if I went to a path with a lot of protective leaf cover.

I did what I had to and when I left the supermarket with cat food, birdseed and cola there was not a drop of moisture to be felt. I decided to drive over to a park and see if the downpour held off. Alas it did not. By the time I had driven a mile I had to turn my windshield wipers up a notch.

I pulled into the park and the lot was empty except for a lone county police car. I drove around and parked up near the entry walk. I opened my door and stuck out my hand and there was a light drizzle. I closed the door and ate a Big Cup peanut butter candy I had bought at the market, breakfast, while I pondered what to do.

The sky had turned ominously black. The park was also very dark and forboding. I didn't think any thunder boomers had been predicted, but knew I didn't want to be caught up the hill in the trees if lightening began zapping the sky. I also didn't want to be caught out on the trails if the skies opened up and rain poured down in buckets.  There was also a tornado watch in effect and that wouldn't be good either. Decisions, decisions, I paused a while longer really wanting to take a hike, but also feeling it wasn't the best idea. I sat so long I began to feel like I was a suspicious character what with that lone police car sitting almost opposite me on the lower tier of the lot. What was the officer wondering about what I was up to?

Finally I backed up and drove away, carefully maintaining the ten mile an hour limit for the driveway. I kept looking in my mirror to see if the cop would follow. He or she didn't.

The rain did pick up on my journey home, but again went to a fine drizzle by the time I was unloading the car.  I hate it when Mother Nature can't make up her mind. I doubt if an opportunity will arise today, they say the rain is to get progressively heavy. Looking out the window right now I can't tell if it is doing anything. I could possibly go traipse up the street, but I know how that works. Any rain will hold off until I get a mile or two from home and then it will open up with all its fury, rain-lashing and wind-whipping me to a soggy mess on the trot back to shelter.

I guess I'll have to consider this day a washout. :(

I'll Never Trust AccuWeather Again

Let me say I will never trust AccuWeather again. As I have noted, probably more often than anyone cares to hear, I like to take a long walk on my off days. Today was an off day, the only one, not counting the weekend, I get this week. I expect I may not get any next week, so I definitely wanted to get my walk, but rain has been predicted for these four days.

It was raining when I fed the birds, took out the trash and brought in the paper. But my little weather predictor on the computer was showing just clouds, so I went to AccuWeather to see what was up. What it said was "mostly cloudy with a few showers in the area." Fine, I then checked the hourly forecast and this showed only cloudy until 1:00 PM, when it indicated rain. Further examination of the report found, "Some showers, mostly in the afternoon."

I went outside around 8:00 and no rain. The sky was lightening and in the East even some blue shown. I decided to go for it. I drove out to my favorite park and there was only a fine mist. I parked and started up the hill and it was clear. I followed the twisting paths until I was deep into the woods and the rain came. This was no drizzle, this was a steady downpour. The trees afforded some protection, but it was heavy enough to get through the leaf cover.

What the hey, I was wet now and it was a hike back to the car so I would only get wetter, so I decided to follow the path through the four state parks. The rain continued my whole walk, although by the time I actually returned to my car an hour later it began to ease.

Oh well, in my last post I said I liked to walk undisturbed and in solitude. I got that today. I only met one other person stupid enou...I mean, dedicated enough to be on the trails. This was a young woman walking a rather bedraggled dog, which looked none to thrilled to be in this weather.  I came home, stripped off everything and tossed my clothes in the drier. But I got my walk.

End of a Perfect...Ha!

Just a quick follow up on this gloomy day. It was a day off, a time I get to take a good walk, which you know if you read my last post, did not happen.

As if to taunt, the wild winds, which lashed the trees and almost blew a sneaky squirrel out of the bird feeder it had invaded, by mid-morning blew out our power.

We remained in the dark-ages until late afternoon. Oh, how dependent we moderns have come on electricity. Everything in my life today resides in a computer and our entertainment in a wide box.

Habit also rules. Each time I entered another room of this rainy day dreary house I would flip the wall switch; how futile, how foolish.

Then in late afternoon a mysterious voice came out of the air. It wasn't God, it was something through the system modem. But at once I knew it was back. I now tried a wall switch and voila, light.

This was followed by the modern ritual known as resetting all the digital clocks in the house.

But all was not right. The TV came on with sound, but no picture. That's not good. I could display the channel guide. I checked the cables. No change. I could put a DVD in the player and it would play perfectly, sound, picture, the works, but trying to watch TV, no picture.

I called my provider and got a message there was a problem with service in my area, they were working on it. Still now late into this evening the same message, the same condition. Hopefully all will be right with the world in the morning.

Still and all, I feel certain the problem lies with the cable provider, not with my TV. I am in no position financially to have to replace that TV.

And then as I am all snuggled down for a long night's sleep, just drifted off to that far from troubles land, I am jarred awake by the Little Woman. It is pouring outside, I can hear the drain pipes rattle. It is not quite midnight. Will this day never end? My son's driver side window has dropped into the door and he can't get it up. Water is streaming into his front seat. Do I have anything to plug the dam.

I struggle back into my clothes and get a large plastic drop cloth from the basement. This we drape over his car door and shut it. This will keep the rain out, but he will have to get his window fixed and tomorrow I will have to run him to his job and back.

I return to bed with these incomplete problems dancing like rotting sugarplums in my head. I am soaked. I towel off and lay down and sing the Tomorrow song from Annie.

Yes, the perfect end to a something or other.

On the Flip Side

I suppose I need a follow up to my problems during the great storm of last Thursday. Granted mine pale in comparison to how some suffered, certainly my tiny inconveniences are insignificant next to those people whose only access to the greater world was a bridge and that bridge washed away. Now several dozen families can only escape from their environs by climbing a steep and slippery hill. The state has said it may take months to replace the bridge.

Sometimes it pays to live on a hill with more than one entry-exit, even if you occasionally slide sideways in winter snows.

I worked on Friday and had no issues. Some were late because their streets were flooded. Several of the rivers and creeks crested on Friday. We got nine inches of rain where I live.

I got my morning walk in again on Saturday morning. I don't want to miss many of my hikes. I have dropped two belt sizes since I started these jaunts a few weeks ago. I was rather intrigued coming across a battered black bumbershoot laying along the path deep in Bringhurst Woods. I can't believe someone would have believed an umbrella would protect them from rain with the high winds that blew through these lands all day. There's not a brolly in existence that would have survived. Certainly this one didn't.

The coattails of Hurricane Nicole were too much for many trees, a fragile bit of wire and cloth had little chance, There were freshly fallen branches and logs all through the forest and the paths were strewn with all sorts of leaves and debris.

One poor tree had been blasted apart, half of it a prone corpse across the path. The top was blown to who knows where.

The innards of the standing stump was hollowed out and in was fried.

The hollowed part and the peeled off bark upon the ground were covered in black soot. This was most likely the victim of a lightning strike.

I made a few miscalculations on my Saturday outing. My first was the decision to go to Bellevue direct.

A number of state parks charge a fee in season. Saturday began chill, the second of October, early morning. The park is listed as open from 8:00 AM and I stopped at a store and got gas on my way, arriving at 20 after.

Here I discovered the season runs until November 1 and thus I paid $3.00 for the privilege to walk the woodlands inside. Too late to escape, I paid my fee and drove down the twisting road leading far back to the first parking lot.

As I reached this lot I was stunned to see it nearly filled. In the many times I have been to this park with the Little Woman and the children when they were children I have never experienced this lot this full. I had to park in the very last section down near the entry road and as I trudged up the hill noted others also trudging.

What is going on? And if the park only opened 20 minutes ago, how did all these cars get here so quickly?

Frankly, I like my walks to be fairly unencumbered by others. I like the quiet and solitude of these forest paths in the early day. All these cars promised something less desolate.

I do not know what the rallying force behind it was, but this park was full of vigor, vocal youth this day.  Out in the great green they had swarmed like buzzing bees on a mission.

Down another path, edged at cross paths with little orange pylons dashed teenage girls in some mini-marathon, people cheering them on by name and waving arms.

I soon discovered the further parking lot, one even larger than where I parked was also full of cars by now and out along the entry road I stood to one side watching people in safety jackets directing vehicles up into a field, which was also becoming covered by cars where before only clover bloomed.

It was rather obvious I should flee off of the main track and down the side trails to the more peaceful desolation of Bringhurst Woods.

And so I did and once again found some semblance of tranquility.

But having to forego my morning walk on Thursday was the least of the problems I left you with, wasn't it. I had finally crawled off to bed with my son's car missing its side window and the TV missing its picture. What happened there?

What a difference a day makes, right?

I drove my son to his work place just before leaving for my own job. His car sat sadly in our drive with the front driver's door encased with a hugh plastic drop cloth. It had done the job of plugging the dam, but he could hardly drive with it flapping about.  It occurred to me there might be a simple solution in the meantime, until he feels he is willing to take it to a shop and have this window situation more permanently resolved. What happens is his driver side window will slip down in the door and not come up. The wind drove it down Thursday night. He can pull it up with a coat hanger, but it just isn't staying.

I went to Home Depot when I went that evening to pick him up and bought a box of shims. I told him to tap a shim between his window and frame and see if that wouldn't keep it up. He did, it worked. Now it will be a nuisance if he has to go anywhere with a tollbooth, but for now it solves his runaway window problem at a cost of $1.35 for twelve shims.

The TV was frustrating and scary.

When the electric returned after being off all Thursday day, everything worked, except our main TV had no picture. The scary part was the possibility the electrical outage had damaged the set. I am in no position right now to replace that TV.

But it made no sense to think it was the TV. When I turned on the cable I not only got sound, I could bring up the program guide. I also put a DVD in our player and the movie played perfectly on the TV.

I deduced it was a provider problem.

I called my provider and got a recorded message there was a service problem in my area, technicians were working on the problem and sorry. This was a relief. It was a provider problem. Now it became how long a problem.

I called again late Thursday evening and got the same message. Perhaps by morning it will be resolved, I thought, but when I turned on the TV the next AM there was still no picture. I called the provider and got the same message.

I went to work and when I came home, still no picture, still the same message, but this time I chose to talk to someone. I didn't have to wait long until a rep answered, a nice friendly guy living in Newark who had worse problems than me. His place had flooded, he was up bailing out till midnight and had a carpet like a wet sponge now. He ran whatever tests they run and found I was getting a signal. There was a big service problem two streets over, which is probably why I kept getting that message.

He asked me to try unplugging the cabal box for five-seconds. I know, they always ask that. Well, I did and dabnabit if when I re-plugged that picture came back like it had never been gone. TV problem resolved, car window problem resolved and I am back on my walks and the sun has been shining.

Of course now we are supposed to have four days of rain.