Good morning!!!!

[newbury]

<snip>

It'll be a while before things settle down around here, but I'm a lot better off than most. Time to get a fire goin' in the stove to take the chill off, but 65F inside is still pretty mild, another thing to be thankful for.

Reads like careful preparation paid off!
Thanks for the wrap up.

 

[300UGUY]

RNG, great that you are able to go back home. Your precautions really paid off! Are the local folks going to let everybody rebuild, or are there going to be more restrictions of matieral type and location of structures?

 

[Kyle_in_Tex]

View attachment 581406
Made it home at about 12:15PM after waiting only a few minutes at the check point. Only a couple dozen cars in front, about the same in back. One look at my driver's license and I was good to go. The road was 2 lanes up to the check, and predictably only one lane beyond. Very fitting for the total cluster F*** this experience has been. People were cutting in and out, jockeying for position, but a nice guy in a Dodge pickup let me merge. The speed limit beyond the check was 65, and all the idiots were only doing 55. I showed 'em how it's done.

I left the gate open when I left, but stopped to look things over. Wires from the battery were burnt off, so the gate will be on manual for a bit. A fair number of good sized oaks were down along the way in along the driveway, lots to keep me warm in the coming weeks. The 10 cord pile of manzanita was gone, not even an ash pile. That stuff burns really clean; wish I'd been around to see it. My split wood pile was covered with a tarp, and it survived fine. All the shrubs at the outer edge of the 30' fire safe zone were burnt to a crisp, nothing inside the ring was harmed at all. Not even the vinyl on a pair of motorcycle seats close to the edge. The parts van got a little warm up on the rear bumper that hung over into a patch of rosemary and sage, but that's about the extent of the damage.

Inside the house there was a faint smoky smell, but I wasn't as thorough as I thought with the frig and there were a couple streams of dried water at the bottom and a musty/rotten smell in the kitchen. Air freshener will have to do tonight; tomorrow everything gets a hot water and bleach wash. The jet pump on the well was acting up; the D-Square pressure switch needed flipped a couple of times to get it going again. I'd like to find a better, more reliable brand of switch, as this is the third one that's gone bad. Someone turned off the propane tank, so I had to relight the water heater, and a couple of smart devices are too dumb to reconnect to the network. That's about the extent of the damages. Christmas came early this year; I'll be happy even if all I find in my stocking is a lump of coal.:laughing:

The Vanagon fired right up, so I headed over to Marie & Scott's to deliver the can of coffee beans she'd asked for. On the way I noticed my body shop neighbor picking through the ashes of his place and stopped to commiserate. His house is gone, along with quite a few antiques and parts for his big collection of fifties era cars, all of which are in some stage of rebuild, and most of which were untouched by the flames. His single wide trailer is still there, and is renter was very happy. So his his big barn; that would have been a big tragedy to lose. I helped him tarp a couple of his cars, then headed on over to the Hunter's When I found Marie, she was leading a new mother goat and her kid back to the barn. She said she'd lost twenty babies that were born dead, but the last ten were fine. Sounds like goat moms to be don't like being scared by fire.

It'll be a while before things settle down around here, but I'm a lot better off than most. Time to get a fire goin' in the stove to take the chill off, but 65F inside is still pretty mild, another thing to be thankful for.

It really is "greening" up already. Looks and sounds like your diligence has faired you in much better shape than some neighbors. You'll be busy for a while. Did you leave the vanagon outdoors??? You do know all of us here are "vested" in that thing.

Maybe you can have some time soon to help others around you. While I freely admit my neighbors house (still for sale) has no breath taking view like that, chances of catastrophic occurrences are much lower in the arenas of earthquakes, dams bursting, forest fires, mudslides, political dogmas, etc. Maybe here you might hear the rare loud cursing of a neighbor if he smashes his thumb bad enough.

I wish you well my friend and hope for the best. Thanks for the update.

 

[300UGUY]

Drew - I'm going to have to try waxing my tractor. Already washed it twice this year, which is more than the cars get.

David - to save some of the work with the concrete slab, have you considered fiber reinforcement? I used plastic fibers last year and this year-- can't remember the brand, and surely it will be something else in the US, but concrete companies can add them to the mixing truck as well, and then you don't need to set up rebar-- you get reinforcement all the way through.

Gloria is not yet at the "helping out" stage, she's getting near to crawling I suppose. I know she'd like to be able to move around on her own anyway.

Didn't get to church today. Went up to check on the goats after adding a 4th polywire line to the electric fence, grounding one to make it shock harder if they went through, and I couldn't find the goats at first. Wandered all around, and eventually they turned up-- maybe they were at one of the barrels where the hunters feed the deer wheat. I brought them to the field behind the house and locked the billy goat up in a shed. Pretty sure he is the real problem-- the rest of the goats can't jump over the fence, only him, but when the leader goat is out of the fence, the others gain courage to squeeze between the wires. Our old billy goat who died this summer was too heavy to do such acrobatics.

Our van ran out of diesel fuel a mile outside the village. The low fuel light came on driving home last week, but its supposed to mean enough fuel to drive about 100km, and town is just 20km away. Its not a good idea to let a diesel engine run out of fuel, and seems like the more modern, the worse it is. The neighbor pulled it back to our house after my attempts on the road to get it started weren't succesful. Seems I didn't run the fuel pump (from the diagnostic software on the computer) long enough on the road, and when I got it home and gave it the full 3 minutes the battery was too weak to start. Hoping tomorrow that it starts up fine. Going forward I won't be letting it get below 1/4 tank.

We used to have goats. The little booger痴 are escape artists. I had 4 that into the yard, where I had 4 young fruit trees. Not anymore....

My neighbor had a contractor doing some bobcat work, a big Deere unit. He ran it out of diesel, and he had to pay a dealer mechanic to come work on it. Very unhappy about the bill.

 

[LS Tractor Owner]

RNG, so glad you found minimal damage or problems. You have definitely "done things right" .

 

[check]

Check if my reading of the weather is correct there will be no ice skating at Christmas too warm

Yup. And the cottage is WAAY north of you (check out the latitude of Dorset, Ontario), but nonetheless I am not optimistic. You can check out the webcam on our lake at mthmarina.com, and see for yourself how much water there is on top of the (thin) ice right now.

On the other hand, we will be up between Christmas and and New Year’s, and that is more than 3 weeks away.

 

[Buppies]

Some people in the SE are going to be in for a big surprise next weekend followed by a nice warm up and yes Check even you will be mild. I would say NC and SC might be in for a big bad winter storm

RNG glad you are home and mostly unscathed

 

[Buppies]

LS glad you were a good patient

 

[mostly_gas]

Good evening all. 44F for the start, mostly cloudy, and calm wind. Sky cleared to partly cloudy, wind stayed light and high temp was 56F. Went to chapel then cooked wife some breakfast. Back to town to do DASH then hit home depot for photo sensors to turn on Christmas lights but they were out! Tried Walmart with more success. Readjusted and rehung current sensors so far all are working May not hit 6K miles this week, weather looks cold and rainy for Friday and Saturday.
RNG Great news, have fun sleeping in your house tonight!!
Not sure how many can really drive in snow around here. When I lived in Missouri everyone including the truck drivers would keep driving too fast until the wrecks would start, then speed would drop from 70 to 15mph. Driving home during snowstorm were a challenge to put it politely.
FL good to hear from you again, hope your van starts.
Ted nice to hear you are taking your limitations seriously.
David nice dirt work, never got very good with the FEL except for snow.
prayers for all.

 

[txdon]

RNG, Glad to hear you are back home with minimal damage and will be back to normal soon.

LS - stay a good patient.

Harvey, a little hiccup of the heart can be very scary for the time they are happening, which only increases the anxiety which increases the . . . well you know the routine. I hope the monitor will catch something. I have worn a monitor twice and all it ever caught was PVCs. I never was able to wear the monitor the entire time - just too uncomfortable.