Ice

2002 All Over Again?

I started blogging in January of 2002 and if I remember right the first few posts I wrote back then were about the cold weather in Aiken, so here is a throw back to those early days:

Last weekend we had some uncharacteristic weather for Portland, snow. Maybe an inch with two inch drifts, we really didn’t need to go anywhere, so we didn’t. The Mini would not have had a problem in it. I kept the snow tires we bought for Klamath Falls living and mounted them on the car back in December. But, the chance of finding another driver out there with something other than all-seasons and snow driving experience were pretty slim, so we stayed at home. Along with that snow came bitter cold and then a couple days later on Tuesday we got freezing rain which continued all the way through Thursday morning.

Yesterday the high, for the first time in nearly a week, made it a couple degrees above freezing. Today, Friday, we made it to around 35 and actually got some melting. Tomorrow, hopefully it will actually get to the predicted 41° and maybe we can get out and do some grocery shopping.

Penultimate My Foot

Destination - Horse Track

Yesterday’s posted photo is the last one for the Moss Motoring Chllenge. We went out today to retake that Horse Track photo because we really didn’t like that pile of tree limbs leftover from February’s Ice-aggedon that was visible behind the car. Well, guess what, that spot must be where they always put that sort of thing because there was a different pile in the same place there today. So we said forget it, and we’ll use the photo above from March.

A Picture Is Worth A 1,000 Limbs

Focus

I was trying to take a picture of my just cleaned up front lawn through the kitchen window and the camera must have focused on a spec on the outside of the exterior pane. Looks kinda neat, almost like there is dust on your monitor.

We stayed a little late at work and stopped at Kroger to pick up a couple of things which made our arrival at home nearly perfect. As we came up the side street to our house we passed and saw several dump trucks full of tree debris. Not wanting to be disappointed we kept our expectations in check, but as we turned onto our street the road seemed a lot wider than it had been in about 6 weeks. They were cleaning our street. As we got closer to home it looked like they were right in front of our house. They were, but there was still an opening to our driveway, so I zipped in. Right after I parked a dump truck took up station blocking the street and a guy in a super-sized bobcat picked up the stuff in front our, and the house across the street’s, house.

Yikes!

Up A Tree

We had the dead and broken branches trimmed from around our house today by a crew that ordinarily would be ice fishing in Minnesota at this time a year. We called a couple local places but either they never returned our calls or told us that it would be at least a couple weeks before they could even think about giving us an estimate. These folks were going door to door with flyers. They were here for over 4 hours and they worked on seven trees total with 4 of them working at death defying heights without a net.

While watching the crew of four guys working we chatted up the owner of the company. He told us he has collected a couple hundred cards from the different tree companies working in the area. While helping clear out Hitchcock Woods he got to talking with someone familiar with the workings of the city and he found out that in the ice storm of 2004 the city collected 80,000 cubic yards of debris and so far from this storm, and they are nowhere near done, as evidenced by the piles of trees lining along our road, they have collected over 800,000 cubic yards…

Winter Is For The Birds

Winter Is For The Birds

On Thursday while we waited for Joan to pack her “Go Bag” I stood at her patio door gazing out at the ice that had accumulated on the patch of trees on the other side of her backyard fence. Suddenly something large and brown landed on a limb. Unlike the other 99.9% of wildlife that surprise me when I have a camera handy, this bird stayed posed while I had time to pull the camera from my back pocket, turn it on, zoom in, focus and press the shutter. It didn’t stay long enough for a second picture though.

There was no sign of winter around here anymore today, it was a nice sunny, warm afternoon, so I washed the gray road film that accompanies any snow or ice event off the Purple Whale. I was going to do it the easy drive-through-car-wash way, but there was a really long queue at Lulu’s and because I hate waiting in line more than physical labor I returned home and broke out the bucket and sponge.