Good Morning!!!! 89F @ 4:15AM. Sunny. Hot. High 111F. Winds NW at 10 to 15 mph.
That router sled looks like a huge improvement over just a belt sander, Ken. Can you just flip the bench over and use the other side to hide the mistake?
The real estate listings for the new house showed an American flag flying out front, but the sellers took it with them, Don. In spite of requiring them, in the contract, to leave everything as pictured. Doesn't look like I'll be there for the 4th anyway.
There were two letters from State Farm waiting for me in the mail box when I got home yesterday, Drew. I haven't opened them yet.
Finally some light at the end of the tunnel, David?
Got away from Orcutt at 7:15AM yesterday, and noted that the north bound lanes of I5 were closed due to a jack knifed big rig. Took me a couple hours to get that far, but instead of checking traffic I made a big mistake and decided to just wait out the detour. Google maps reported a fifteen minute delay, but it took over two hours! CalTrans had traffic backed up for miles on the freeway, then the detour had road construction and more delays. What a mess. I almost missed my checkin time at U-Haul, which would have cost me another $75. Only one guy behind the counter and it took another half hour standing around watching other employees wander aimlessly around doing lord knows what. It was well over 100F outside and stifling inside the building as well. Needed a PVC union for a plumbing job so stopped in at HD, only to find the box for the 1" size stuffed full of 1 1/4" unions. That was enough to cause me to just abandon my shopping cart and leave, since I wasn't really sure of the size I needed anyway.
I was also more than a little concerned about the Thompson Fire that started just north of Oroville, CA at about 11AM. I passed under the huge smoke plume on my way to Chico, and there were lots of evacuation notices being posted. I was worried I wouldn't be able to get home, but winds were pushing the fire east instead of north. Hit a grocery store for milk and fresh fruit and got the heck out of town. No problems with road closures, and no smoke in the air at the house, either, but the plume was taking up a lot of sky to the south. The fire had grown past 3000 acres, and was threatening parts of Oroville's residential neighborhoods. I was starting to panic when I found a Facebook post to a
live stream being put on by a fire analyst covering the fire. His take was that the winds would shift and start blowing south overnight, good news for me but not for people living in Oroville. I was amazed by the number of online resources this guy had access to, and very grateful he was sharing his expertise.
That news was good, but I was still pretty nervous. Enough that I got the 7x16 box trailer hitched up to the Promaster van and backed it up to the garage. Loaded the one motorcycle I still have here along with anything of value that couldn't easily be replaced. A few years ago I watched as the Dixie Fire ran over 26 miles overnight, and with nothing much left in the house, there was no sense sticking around to try to save the house if the wind changed direction.
By then it was starting to get dark, so I took another look south and this is what I saw:
The fire is less than ten miles away, and the shot was made at 3X, but I didn't expect to see the fire cloud from the back porch! In spite of the expert assurances, I didn't get much sleep last night, but this morning the glow is gone. No new reports since midnight on Watch Duty, but according to reports fire fighting resources are coming in from all over the state, including three VLAT airplanes.
So yesterday was pretty messed up, and today looks to be more of the same. I was gonna get some work done on the house, but instead I think I'll reorganize the stuff in the van and trailer to make more room and just get everything in the house and garage loaded so the house will be truly empty. Then tomorrow head south and get out of this heat and away from the fire.
Happy Hump Day, folks!
