Klamath Falls

I Looked

When we moved into our house in Aiken in 1989 there was a metal mailbox attached to the side of the house for the mail carriers to put your mail in. We unfortunately were not allowed to use it, we needed to put a mailbox on a post out at the street. The city had transitioned from walking carriers to using trucks to deliver the mail a few years earlier, but the previous owner was grandfathered in and she could still get her mail at her door. The neighborhood carrier had to hop out of their truck and walk up to the porch for them, for us they just cruised down the street and stopped if required.

When we moved into our house here there was no mailbox at the street and there was no metal mailbox attached to the house, but there was an honest-to-god mail slot next to the front door. Klamath Falls uses a walking mail carrier still and our mail comes right inside the house!. We of course have got to know him a bit as he will knock on the door if he has a package for us. We will wave when he is doing his route and we are out for walk around the neighborhood. Donna makes sure to give him some fresh baked cookies if she has made some.

Now that the weather is nice we are often sitting on the front porch when he is doing his delivering. We will go several days running getting mail and then we might go a day without. If we don’t get any mail and he passes by, Donna will say, using a sad voice, “What no mail for me today?” A couple weeks ago we went a couple days with no mail. On the third day, Donna said, “If you don’t bring me any mail tomorrow, I’ll never bake you cookies again.”

The next day he came up the stairs as we were sitting on the porch with no mail in his hand, but he did give Donna what you see to the left here.

Long Long Short Long

We live about a third of a mile uphill from some railroad tracks. They are not just any old railroad tracks either, if you are traveling by train from Seattle to Los Angeles you will pass thru our fair city of Klamath Falls. These tracks are kind of like I-5 in that they are the main north-south route along the west coast, so freight trains also pass through here every day. There are probably ten to twelve trains total using those tracks per each 24 hour period.

A direct line along that third of a mile crosses three regular surface city streets, a bike path and one 5 lane US highway before you get to the tracks. Not too far that direct line is a street called Portland that those tracks cross. This is the only street crossing on this side of town, the rest have bridges over the tracks. This street crossing doesn’t come into play on any of our trips, so we really don’t have to worry about waiting for any length of time at the crossing when any of the long freight trains pass thru town. What we do have to contend with is the train’s engineer signaling his approach to the crossing.

It wasn’t until we moved here that we knew that any train approaching a street crossing, whether it has automatic gates or just flashing lights, the train’s engineer has to sound the train’s horn in a series of blasts – two long, one short and a final long. Because we can actually see the train through the trees and gaps in between houses in the winter from our front porch, we have no trouble hearing these blasts of 96-110 db sound. When we first moved into our house those horn blasts could be startling because our living room faces front towards the track. After a few months though, we got used to them and we are to a point that we almost don’t hear them anymore. Almost.

I have noticed that different engineer’s each have a different way of sounding that signal, some have longer longs or a shorter short blast. Because we are a stop on the Amtrak route and have a very large rail yard south of town there are probably several of this engineers who live in town. I am convinced that the different variations in the horn blasts lengths is similar to the pilot whose landing pattern took him over his house and wagged his wings as a greeting to his family, these distinctive horn blasts let their family know they are coming home.

These Traffic Signal Control Boxes Are For The Birds

We had been walking to downtown for shopping, dining and Post Office Box visits practically daily, since we moved here in the end of October, so for the life of me I can’t understand why I never noticed that the traffic signal control boxes were painted with bird themed art. Well, I’m sure I noticed them, but never thought to take a picture of one of them until mid May. There are 14 traffic signals in the downtown area and all but one is decorated. The lone undecorated one is probably the brains of the system, as it is three times as large as the rest of them.

The gallery is as if you walked west on Main Street, turned south on 4th Street, turned east on Klamath Avenue, turned north on 9th Street and then turned east again on Pine Street.

February’s Average Snowfall Total

From yesterday morning to this afternoon we had snow fall in the amount the equivalent of February’s total average snowfall – 6 inches – in November.

Shortly after it started we took a small drive downtown just to see what was what and to check our mail at the Post Office. It had barely started to accumulate, maybe an 1/8″, but the roads were getting pretty slick. We came home and parked the Mini. The photo above is what it looked like 24 hours later. And now 12 hours later it still sits there unmoved.

We did go out and spend an hour shoveling a path to the car to brush off the snow covering it. Because it is parked on grass we also shoveled off a path to the street down to about an inch or so to allow me to back out if needed. I hope it is not needed though, the roads have been packed down to a super dense icy consistency. The high performance all season tires on the Mini would be able to handle a little bit of snow on the grass okay, but the roadway, not so much. Looks like a set of dedicated snow tires is in our future…

Yawn

One good thing about living way out west is Monday Night Football starts at 5:00 PM. When living on the east coast it started at 8:00 PM and usually ended around 11:30 PM, which is almost too late to stay up for the whole game.

The one bad thing about living way out west is it gets dark early in the fall, so that when Monday Night Football ends at 8:30, it is hard to resist not going to bed right after it is over.