So I drove to NC a few weeks ago. When I lived in PA, that would have sounded like an impossible trip. Heck, from Charleston, it is only 4 hours or so. I know you are wondering why I drove to NC…I mean, it is a lovely place, but so is WV.
Beautiful scenery on the way to NCWelcome to Brushy Mountain
I ordered a few packages of bees from Brushy Mountain Bee Farm and it was delivery day! So, I drove down in the morning in full anticipation of getting bees. This is not my first time to get bees and not even my first time to Brushy Mountain, but it is just so darn exciting contemplating a few boxes of buzzing honeybees awaiting my arrival to take them home to their new hives. I drove through some pretty wild snow which made me ponder whether this was the proper time to be getting bees. Of course, like spring across the country, wait a day and the weather will change.
At the Brushy Mountain living room…I mean store
The bee farm has a small retail outlet not much bigger than my living room. I wandered about it for 15 minutes or so. I bought a few supplies and stuff , but I felt like I ought to stay longer. I know once you walk to the bee pick-up location, they grab your bees and send you on your way. It’s sort of anti-climactic, you know? I mean, I drove all that way, full of excitement, to spend 20 minutes actually getting the bees…20 minutes if I stretch it out.
My package of bees
I could linger no longer so I got my bees, which looked very healthy this year. Sometimes bees have a hard trip from wherever in Georgia they originate. This year they were great. I made sure they were braced into my back seat well and I headed back home. I tend not to stop much when I drive by myself. It’s funny but I can drive all day by myself, but put another person in the car and I sometimes get groggy. Weird.
Under the mountain and then onward to home
Anyhow, we made it back home in one piece after another exciting trip to the bee farm! The buzz of my new bees kept me entertained and seeing the occasional escapee always makes me laugh. I especially wonder what would ever happen if an officer of the law pulled me over and saw that…I think I will try to avoid that situation…but it makes me sort of laugh! Yeah bees!
Typically, I cherish my Saturdays. A few years ago, I pondered about how many Saturdays I have and how I wanted to use them. They are special. This weekend, I learned that some can be “special”…yes…in quotes.
A got up early on Saturday to go to a farm equipment auction I had been looking forward to for awhile. It was overcast but ok. Rain was coming but it was supposed to hold off until after noon. I wandered about the auction and discovered that this year’s auction was sort of pitiful compared to previous years. Still, it was fun as I got to hear a few good auctioneers and I got to see all sorts of people. I ran into Granny Sue and her husband Larry so we had a good chance to drink coffee and talk a little. Emily and the kids were to meet me at the deluxe shed around lunchtime so I gave Larry a ride home as he lives next to our property.
Emily and the kids showed up, we ate lunch and commenced working on the inside stuff in the cabin. The rain came and then it picked up and then it got serious. I didn’t think much of it, but all the rain was saturating the ground. We do not yet have a driveway at the cabin…we just drive across the field. We have done it since day one and plenty of times in the rain.
This Saturday, the worst in awhile, was different. As we started to drive off, the car started sliding. I wanted to stop but it was sliding…in WV…which means down the hill. I was trying to go sideways across the field with my trailer in tow, but I guess the weight of the engine pulled the nose of the car down the hill. I was standing on the brakes and all tires were locked up but we were sliding…in WV…which means down the hill, nose first and I couldn’t steer or stop. Isaac and I were in for the ride as long as we had to be. Emily and Abigail were farther up the hill and watching helplessly. Fortunately we crashed through some wood and over a “hump” of dirt which finally stopped us maybe 15 feet from a tree and, more importantly, the edge of a significant cliff of sorts. All told, we probably slid 100 feet or so, totally out of control.
Emily flagged down a neighbor and asked if they could bring their tractor over to pull us out. It was so wet though that we decided that would leave them in the same boat with the tractor. Fortunately, many of the neighbor’s family live on the same ridge and one had a dozer nearby. Now I mean to tell you, WV has some of the finest people anywhere, but our ridge community shines above all other people I think I have ever met. I do not say that as a simple reply to this one incident but this one incident simply reinforces what we discovered early on up on the ridge. Our ridge community is built of wonderful people who would give the shirts off of the collective backs to help neighbors. So far, I have had very little to offer in return but I hope someday…hopefully soon, to be able to spend enough time on the ridge and be a helper in the community of such wonderful people.
Where it took a turn for the worse
So several members of the family…our neighbors, came around, brought the dozer and yanked first the trailer, and then the car up from the abyss. Somehow we managed to escape all injury and damage to us and the car. During the process, I was soaked to the bone with 38 degree rain and became covered in mud. That along with the injury to my pride was a pretty hard blow.
Scariest few seconds I have had in awhile
While Emily was waiting with the kids in the other car, somehow the battery went dead. Luckily the neighbors were still around so they jumped the battery but talk about adding insult to injury. We thought we had seen the end of the mess…I mean, two things go wrong…what else could possibly happen? Could this day get worse?
At least we stopped…
We drove home, wet and shivering. We all stripped down to get cleaned up and warmed up. Our laundry area is on our basement…the lowest point in the house. The lowest point in our house has a floor drain which was spewing water and…uh…stuff…bad, bad stuff…into our basement. I would guess there was 4 inches of stuff in the basement. Our furnace had water in it. The electric water heater had water covering its base. Lots of stuff we had sitting in the floor had water in it. In answer to “can this day get worse?” “YES!”
“#@^!%@…YES!”
We have a sump pump so I ran to the home improvement store and got some fittings so I could connect a garden hose. We pumped and the drain kept on giving. We pumped it down to a quarter of an inch or so and the drain would fill it back up. With no idea how deep it would get, Emily and I traded off all night getting up every hour to turn the pump back on and drain it out. Getting a plumber out in the middle of the night would be expensive and we didn’t know if it would matter anyhow if we needed excavation done. That wouldn’t have happened until the daytime anyhow so we decided to save the off-hours fees.
Ugh…
It slowed to where we could just pump every couple of hours so we decided to wait until Monday to get someone to come to the house and fix it (hopefully in the same day).
I don’t wish away too many Saturdays but this most recent Saturday is one I cannot wait to forget…
So, here’s the rest of the story…we toured around Punxsutawney all day on Saturday buying souvenirs and generally acting touristy. The town undoubtedly makes a good bit of money during this celebration and that is cool. We enjoyed seeing the sights but headed in a little early because we knew we had to be up early for the real celebration. You see, bus tickets to Gobbler’s Knob go on sale starting at 2am, February 2. I knew my family wouldn’t follow me quite that early so we opted to sleep in until 3:30 am. At 3:30, we hopped up (I did anyhow) and headed to one of the bus stops. I was shocked. I mean, there were a number of people around on Saturday, but the crowd was amazing for the real show.
Groundhog day entertainment
The powers-that-be had done it right though…there were a metric crap-ton of buses shuttling people the 1.5 or so miles from town up to the Knob. We got there sometime early…I can’t remember exactly when, but early enough to get a pretty good spot, not too far back from Phil’s burrow-of-prediction. It was still dark and had started to rain. It was still rain but it was that cold rain, just above freezing that is so pleasant. When we got there, the crowd was large but little did we know…
It really was fun!
Some of the members of the Inner Circle were there keeping the crowd excited and they did a heck of a job. When you see it all on TV, they look sort of formal, but let me tell you, they know how to have a good time. I mean, they wee singing and dancing and telling funny stories. Honestly, I see why Phil trusts them so much. They are good people for making this weekend a success!
And now, the bandGroundhog day fireworksMore fireworks
At some point, they had a band come on and play some music…and then some dancers…and them more music and singing…and then some pretty cool fireworks. Time is sort of a blur but we had a good time. More and more people showed up as time went on though and it got extremely crowded. We honestly had to shove back against people to keep from being knocked over or otherwise moved from our position. Being a jerk, I am pretty well disposed to that anyhow, but I do not think Emily or the kids enjoyed that part too much.
Panorama of the crowd at Gobbler’s Knob…this doesn’t really capture the size of the crowd (click to make it bigger)
Sadly, this isn’t really a kid-friendly affair. For too many people, it was an excuse to get dunk and act stupidly. I am all for a good time, but my only complaint is that the powers-that-be didn’t jerk people out of the crowd by their ears when they started acting like total morons. Oh well, such is life and my kids already knew all those bad words anyhow (thanks to their Mom of course).
The typical beachballPhil’s prediction with the Inner Circle
Anyhow, the Inner Circle finally retrieved Phil from his den. The President of the Inner Circle, the only human able to translate Groundhogese discussed with Phil his outlook and declared that Phil saw his shadow thus guaranteeing 6 more weeks of winter.
Just a few buses from Gobbler’s Knob
Now I never doubt Phil…after all, he is the Seer of Seers and the Prognosticator of Prognosticators, but I was a little disappointed in his prediction. I cannot be selfish however, as he is merely the bringer of news. And based on how things are looking, I’d say he was spot on (as usual)!
Oh my word! It’s here! The best holiday of the year! I love Groundhog Day…it signals the beginning of the end of Winter, my bane! This year, we decided to make the trek to Punxsutawney, PA, the home of the Seer of Seers, the Prognosticator of Prognosticator, the world famous Punxsutawney Phil!
Tourists…Check
This year, for my birthday, Emily gave me a trip with the family of my choice to the one true Groundhog Day celebration. We drove in last night and I had a terrible time falling asleep. I was like a little kid on Christmas!
Punxsutawney Phil statueAnother Phil statue
This morning, we drove into Punxsutawney and actually found great parking right away. There is still much snow on the ground so we sloshed around to the main square where we saw all sorts of sights. We saw wood carvers and magicians and all sorts of tourists. The first thing we bought were awesome wool Phil hats so we could easily be identified as “tourists”. Punxsutawney is all about Phil so there are groundhog statues and paintings all over the place! We took pics of a bunch of them. There were all sort of families were around so we had no problem finding people to take our picture.
Phil’s burrowPhil’s handlers
Phil’s Inner Circle were all about town and were quite friendly and approachable. We talked to a few of the fellows, probably for 10-15 minutes. They are great salesmen of the experience and I really appreciated their helpfulness in figuring out what we needed to see and do!
Me with Jim CantoreBald is beautiful!Groundhog hat compliant!
Jim Cantore and the Weather Channel crew were around and also very approachable (not while on the air of course). I asked him to take a pic with me, the two most handsome bald people in Punxsutawney (and maybe all of Pennsylvania) this weekend. He was very nice and kind to allow us to get pics.
Gobbler’s KnobGobbler’s KnobPhil’s den at Gobbler’s Knob
Gobbler’s Knob, the location where Phil makes his prediction, is open ahead of the big reveal so we got a chance to walk around and actually touch his chamber. I was trembling like a little girl from the excitement!
We bought all sorts of souvenirs and walked all over town. I am so excited for tomorrow morning! We plan to get up around 3am to make the trek to Gobbler’s Knob on this best birthday trip ever!
We had a bit of a water disaster here in Charleston. It’s been called Aquapocalypse 2014…that’s probably a good term for the mess that we’ve had, but good news is coming! It looks like our zone just got cleared to flush our water system (edit: this just “undid” our area…dang it!). WV American Water has done a fantastic job (in my opinion) as far as being rightly conservative in issuing the “Do not use” order as well as providing information and getting the systems back on line. Sure, it would have been nice if our water system hadn’t been polluted, but that wasn’t their fault…it was the chemical company that apparently did not maintain proper safety systems.
Charleston Last Night
So, the plan was to monitor the treatment system to find a point when the dilution of the chemical was at a level the CDC reported was safe…that is less than 1 ppm. In laymen’s terms, what that means is if we had a million gallons of liquid, 1 gallon would be 4-methylcyclohexanemethanol (MCHM). There is much discussion as to whether that is truly a safe level for consumption. I am concerned of course because the plan means I will be consuming some of that chemical…even in my “safe” water. I get that my drinking water is not straight h20 even before all this, but I wish it could just be MCHM-free again. That’s not a reality now however so we will proceed to shower in the water that has been declared “safe”. In our house, we will not be drinking or brushing with it for awhile longer but ultimately, we will have to just “go for it” I guess. Again, I don’t blame the water company of the officials on the ground for making this decision and all will probably be well…I just want my perfect world to return!
“Safe” water zones…we are in the blue!
So we will drain our hot water tanks and all of the pipes in our house. We will follow the nicely written directions provided by the water company and we will get back to normal. I think most people have done really well in handling their situations. Thursday night when this all started, it was a little wild as initial panic set in but people quickly got their heads on straight.
Water was trucked in from far and wide and distributed all over. Neighbors checked on neighbors, and friends in safe-water-zones offered the homes and showers to others to make this all a little better than it would have been. I am proud of my fellow West Virginians and of my state and local government (and maybe even the feds?) for how they handled this situation. I saw a little more clearly as it was exercised before my eyes, the importance of community and helping others. I also saw very clearly the benefit of having some extra water and water containers on hand. I now realize how very much I appreciate having a shower and even more importantly, I realize how much I appreciate other people having showers. Even so, I am proud to be a Mountaineer, stinky or not, and I am delighted to have such a great community who get down to business when the going gets tough!
We made the news here in Charleston, WV. It seems that there exists a several-thousand-gallon tank of chemicals used to clean coal (See here for a reddit discussion on it…thoughtful now but reddit often quickly turns wild wild west…so be warned) which is stationed along the river from which all of our water is drawn and processed. The tank developed a leak recently…maybe yesterday and maybe earlier depending on who you hear…which leaked into the river. Of course, that means that the water system pulled it in and ran it through the processing plant in preparation for distribution to everyone.
Water systems are designed to process typical stuff one finds in river water so this extra 5000+ gallons of stuff was not properly removed during the intake process. No one seems to know how to remove it actually, even if it had been detected earlier. That means the entire water system supplied by the water treatment plant was contaminated. More good news…the plant that services Charleston, WV’s Capital and largest city, is the largest system in the state and supplies water to at least 8 surrounding counties leaving 300,000+ people with tainted water.
My family is among those lucky 300,000 so we are following the order to not use the water under any circumstance aside from fire protection (which we have not yet needed, thank goodness). The water company is not at fault here but there are people blaming them for not notifying customers sooner (it took several hours for the entire issue to become apparent). Some folks cannot believe that the water treatment plant didn’t detect the chemical until people complained of a “licorice-like” smell in the air, at their faucets, etc. The water company replied that this was such an unheard of problem and that there was no good protocol to test or clean it and that they cannot possibly test for every potential contaminant. Rather, they are designed to handle typical river-source contaminants. I am not doing it justice but the water company has an excellent answer to the question and is not to blame here at all as far as I am concerned. Instead, the owners of the leaking tank are completely to blame and I hope they find very expensive justice.
Ok, sorry for the rant. Anyhow, people are behaving in all sorts of ways…some nice and some not so much. There were runs on all of the stores for people trying to buy water, ice, drinks last night. The local Sam’s club apparently went through 4200 cases of water in 1.5 hours. Everywhere was wild and the cops were called into most stores to manage the unruly. It makes me thankful that we have some water at the house. Showering is my only real concern and I figure we will make it one way or another to get clean.
I heard that something like 20% of the state’s area is affected by this so we can’t just go to the next town over to get a hotel. They are out of luck too. Restaurants are closed, hospitals are on rationing protocols and stuff generally sucks. Local government and FEMA are (from what I can tell) doing a great job in getting water to people who need it. The big issue, from what I can tell, is that no one knows how to remedy this situation or how long it will take to work through the system/get cleaned/kill us all.
So dear friends, please consider keeping a bit of water for bathing and drinking in your house. This problem hit fast here and may last for a significant time. The unprepared rushed the stores and not all behaved appropriately. I am very thankful we have water stored at the house so we didn’t have to go out amongst all of the people, some of whom were desperate. While the government sources seem to be doing well in passing out water today, I am hoping to avoid those distribution areas as well as crowds have drawn there too. It’s really a matter of how long this lasts though…we shall see!
Ok, that’s all from here. I’d say we’ll keep a light on for you, but you probably shouldn’t visit right now!
As you may have discerned from reading my drivel, I am a practical sort of guy. Most times that blends well with my continued happiness and allows me to maximize money and get stuff done. Among some of our friends and acquaintances, however, my practicality has become somewhat notorious. But really, what person doesn’t want to get gifts they can use? And sometimes Emily needs to use vacuum cleaners or frying pans.
Practical…cast iron muffin pan!
So, this year for Christmas, I decided to get Emily one practical gift and one not practical gift. I like to cook bacon (and other stuff too) using a cast iron skillet. Occasionally, Emily cooks cornbread and uses my skillet. I figured a good practical gift would be to get her a cast iron muffin pan she can use when she makes her excellent cornbread. It’s practical, will last forever and is something she needed. I am thinking, “score!” with the practical…and normally that would be enough, but this year, I went above and beyond. Friends, I got her the infamous practical gift but I also got her a frivolous gift just because I care and want her to be happy.
I may have made a huge mistake…that “smile”…
Imagine my surprise when she didn’t run over and hug me when she opened her throwing knives! I mean, what woman wouldn’t enjoy a nice set of throwing knives? Apparently throwing knives are not a suitable Christmas gift for one’s wife. After much discussion among the men in my circle, none of them understands the problem with the gift either. I asked if she wanted me to return them and she said, “No, I intend to get very good at throwing them…” I couldn’t hear the end of her sentence but I think she said something like, “…just keep smiling target-boy”
When I was a kid growing up in the country, we pretty much stayed dirty all the time. We picked up worms and snakes and drank from the hose and ran barefoot. We ate wild teaberries and jungled around on grape vines…stuff a kid ought to do, you know? We currently live in the city so it’s not quite as easy for the kids to explore the woods but I am so pleased when we get out to the cabin.
A girl and her toad!She’s such an encourager! “You’re a good toad…”
Abigail has a couple of really great girlfriends that live nearby out there who all like to explore and enjoy all that the woods has to offer. She ventures over to their place as soon as we get to the cabin and we don’t see her until we ring the dinner bell. When she finally does come back home, she is filthy and exhausted and absolutely full of joy!
Last weekend, our neighbors were working on some old fence. They moved some slabs of wood and found four toads and a turtle….the toads were the biggest I think I have ever seen! In typical fashion, those three girls saved the toads and turtle and made a regular home for the critters. Each one had a name and, by the time I came around, a label on their personality…
I am so glad that Abigail is not a girly girl, squeamish around such lovely creatures. I am thrilled that she climbs trees and enjoys the mud between her toes while she catches salamanders near the pond. I am delighted that she has some fellow girl-explorers who love to spend time in the beautiful creation all around them!
Poor Abigail. She has some bones she hasn’t yet broken. That number is shrinking though. You may remember a while back she broke her wrist while riding her scooter. I finally found the x-rays. I have a real thing for x-rays I guess. I really like to see what’s happening inside. It’s just fascinating that we can see inside a body without being Superman and without doing surgery.
Can you see the break?
Anyhow, if you check out Abigail’s big arm bone towards the head of the bone, you can see the break. Not bad (aside from the fact that broken bones are always bad) and she is completely healed by now.
I think it is easier to see here
Of course, she couldn’t be completely in one piece. Last weekend, somehow, she broke her toe. She didn’t complain much and I don’t remember when it even happened but she started hobbling a little bit. I looked at her toe and it was bruised badly…like black and blue and red and ugly. It was her little toe so I figured it was no great loss but Emily wanted to get an x-ray to make sure it was ok. They headed to the doctor and he confirmed it (but we didn’t get copies of the x-rays). She has her toes taped together for a few weeks and should be fine. Still, it’s another broken bone…
Her other non-broken wrist
I wish I could say this will be our last broken bone report but I know better. Abigail is growing into her body so I figure there will be more “moments”. That’s ok and if I had my druthers, I would prefer broken fingers and toes to bigger bones!
We were up at the cabin this weekend working on some fairly large projects. We were pretty busy running around doing things and trying to get stuff situated. Nearing the end of the afternoon on Sunday, something came up that was a bit of a family emergency. It wasn’t huge but it wasn’t insignificant either. No one was hurt and everyone is ok, but we just had a bit of a freak-out.
Anyhow, we had to do some exploring about the ridge to handle the problem and we were in uncharted territory. Typically, when we are on the ridge, we go straight to our place. We don’t have time to explore and honestly, I have been on similar back roads…if you don’t know where you are going you better have all day and a full tank of gas. Still, we had to venture out and we saw a good bit of the area in the process.
A WV farm we discovered on our tour of the ridge
But that’s not the point of the story…we weren’t lost but we needed help and as we drove about, we happened upon some folks on 4-wheelers. I explained the situation to them and asked for advice on how to take care of the issue. Really, I just figured they would give me a quick answer and we’d be done. Instead, they asked if we wanted them to help out and I said, “only if you have nothing else to do all day.” They said they would help in spite of my attempt at a warning. They drove all over the ridge to help us out. I suppose they each burned at least 45 minutes of gas and didn’t give up until we finally got back together at the cabin to report that the issue was handled.
Anyone who says there aren’t good people around is wrong. I offered to fill them up with gas or give them a drink…they wanted nothing and simply laughed and smiled and moved on. I didn’t even get their names but I hope they will stop back by the place sometime when we are up there. I hope I can be such a neighbor and be equally willing to help someone in need. I know they won’t see this, but thanks to my new anonymous friends and to all folks willing to help a stranger!
