They call it stormy monday, but here in Salt Lake tuesday was much worse.
Actually monday wasn't a bad day at all. Tuesday was, however, a different
story. I get to work, and the coffee machine is broken. I should have just
gone home and crawled back under the covers, it got worse from there. Of
course, had I gone home, there is a good chance the Cherokee would have been
parked in the drive. And with the 80+ mph wind gusts that roared into the
valley that afternoon, parking under a tree could have had dire consequences.
If you have web access, see http://www.team.net/mjb/tree.jpg for a photo of
where the Jeep would have been parked. In truth, that snapshot was taken after
I had already trimmed off quite a bit, another sudden deluge drove me inside,
so I took a quick photo from the shelter of the roof over the back door. That
odd line down the center is a piece of what had been working wires to the
garage, those white blobs to the right are the inner fenders on what is left
of the Rust Rocket.
At the moment, I'm wishing the Jeep HAD been parked there. It could have been
damaged to the point where the insurance company would have totaled the damn
thing. Then I wouldn't be sitting here covered with dirt and dried catalpa
blossoms after crawling around underneath it trying to extricate the starter.
And there's this nice, bright blue WRX wagon at the Subaru dealer....
I have access to the shop, that nice garage behind the house, and a number of
dry, somewhat clean and inside storage locations. I own a quantity of tools
I am afraid to inventory because I'll never admit I spent that much on them,
and here I am working on a dead vehicle sitting on the street in front of the
house, nothing in hand but what comes in the molded plastic box of a Sears 48
piece tool kit. Thought I gave up working under conditions like that when
Nixon was still in office. Sigh.
I come home tuesday evening to find a large portion of the tree that was in our
back yard in our back yard. Park the Jeep out front on the street, and start
to deal with the tree. After 27 days of no rain at all, we don't get a gentle
summer shower, we get a MAJOR storm ripping through the valley. How festive.
In truth, I bet most of you didn't even notice the 4 or 5 hours the team.net
server was off the air. The actual damage from the falling tree was not that
bad, it ripped out the wires to the garage and scared the hell out of our
tomato and jalapeno plants. Most of the garden seems to be recovering already,
and I finally got power back to the garage this evening. Karen likes it when
she can just push a button to open the door and drive her Honda inside. The
Jeep, however, is still sitting where it stopped days ago.
Okay, enough venting. I'll drive the Mark 1 to the shop tomorrow and get
the tools I need to fix the Jeep. Some more trimming to clear the drive and
ease Karen's path, then the remains of tree can wait until we get back from
Alabama in a few days. It would have been nice to have spent tuesday night
finishing up the IVR newsletter and mailing that out in time for the event on
June 23rd, so it goes. Maybe I'll just work on the backlog of email, like
Joe C.'s requests for quotes on race wheels and the 2,092 unread team.net
error messages currently waiting for my attention. Gee, you turn your back
for a day or two....
mjb.
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