What is it with twisty roads?

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Many years ago, my mother described the freeway system in Salt Lake City as having been designed by a drunken snake. Downtown Santa Fe used the same snake and added a sadist. My needs were simple. I wanted to see the Loretto Chapel, the one with the miraculous spiral staircase. Maps were unfolded, instructions were requested of local hotel staff, and off we started.

And discovered you can't get there from here.

Roads in the heart of downtown Santa Fe are, of course, leftovers from horse and buggy days. And from the days when laying out streets in straight lines was a thing for the future. They were narrow and often one-way. And not quite the way the map showed them to be. Due to road construction, and due to the fact the central plaza was blocked to auto traffic, we meandered all over the place, frequently totally clueless as to where we were in relation to where we wanted to be. "The map says we want to turn left here." "Wait, we can't turn left here." "Well, then, turn right." "Turning right... oh, the road's blocked down there, now we have to turn left." And now we're headed in the totally opposite direction. We did get to see the Santa Fe River several times, as we criss-crossed the downtown area. Jim's comment: "River? That's a crik."

Jim can't read really small print, and the street map was in really really small print to be able to fit it all in. I finally found a free public parking lot, the sign of which told me that I would be given a ticket if I didn't get a parking pass from the attendant. There was no attendant. I parked anyway. I read the map. One of the blessings(?) of being dreadfully near-sighted is I can read really fine print. I found where we were, where we wanted to go, the streets to get there, and started off. Silly me, I didn't verify the names of some of the other streets. Out of the parking lot, still with no attendant, left onto Paseo de Peralta. Right on Washington, which according to the map turned in to Santa Fe Trail.

I found upon reaching the point where Washington should become Santa Fe Trail that a building now occupied the space, requiring a left turn because the right turn was blocked to thru traffic. Now, I'm "off the map" again. Left, right, blocked, left, left only because it's a one-way street, right, past a wonderful unreachable multi-story parking lot because the entrance was on a one-way street with traffic against me with the other end somewhere around a bend, around in circles (Paseo de Peralta makes a big horseshoe shape around downtown), and back to that very same parking lot. By this point, however, I knew how far it was to walk to the Loretto Chapel. So off we went, on foot. I found several things on foot, one of which was Santa Fe Trail, the right turn off Washington that was blocked to street traffic. The other end of the street to the wonderful parking structure was a narrow, one-way road with a street name different than the one the parking structure was on. Since you couldn't see the parking structure from the point of entry onto the road, and the road changed names at the bend, finding that parking structure was more a matter of luck than knowledge.

Santa Fe is suffering from a "beautification" project that said every building on a major street has to look like a pueblo. Gas stations, cheap eateries, even a no-tell motel. Housing tracts, hospitals, the fire station. The McDonald's!! Downtown not only was suffering from this disease, but was suffering this disease in the exact same "adobe" brown color. There were a few buildings built in an "Old West" style that had so far escaped adobification. But the rest, OY!

And I used to like pueblos.

Pueblification, all the same color

Pueblification, all the same color, with blue trim.

Pueblification, ur doin' it rong*

Often in renovation projects, the original building can be seen behind the facade. This one is particularly jarring. And yes, almost all the buildings downtown were this shade of brown. And I used to like brown, too.

          
Can you say "Overkill" boys and girls?

Loretto Chapel

The staircase in the Loretto Chapel is amazing. What's also amazing is that almost all the pictures I took came out blurred. I can take decent shots from a moving car, but these? Here are a couple that came out ok.

The underside of the staircase.

The staircase and the loft.

At the other end of the Chapel.

Start of the day

The day started out beautifully, heading east out of Gallup. Clouds chasing each other across the sky,
rain in the distance.

Rain not so distant.

In typical desert rainstorm fashion, it rained for about fifteen minutes, trying mightily to wash all these pesky cars off the road.

Drivin' On Thru.

The shadows of the clouds allowed the brilliant color of the cliffs to stand out even more.

  

Topping a rise, the mountains rise blue in the distance.

Up close, the color of the land glows red thru the green of the grass.

Every so often, the earth's volcanic nature rises above the soil, leaving narrow tongues of broken lava littering the landscape.

Sweeping vistas are broken up by buttes scattered in the distance.

As well as up close.

When I first saw Albuquerque, thirty years ago, I came in by Greyhound bus at sunset. The red of the mountains behind the bowl of the city framed Albuquerque in a ring of brilliant flame. For this trip, the flames live only in my memory.

Albuquerque lives at the base of the far mountains.

Downtown Albuquerque. If you look really closely, you can see the red of the hills behind. I see the color best with my heart, with my eyes closed.

I drove from Albuqueque to Santa Fe, so there aren't so many pictures. The landscape was filled with hills and the long road ahead.

Coming in to Santa Fe, tucked into a bowl in the mountains, the city looked deceptively lovely. The fiendish desire to turn it into a modern pueblo village was not evident until much later. After realizing that I-25 went past the city, not thru it, we backtracked thru town to find our hotel. Then off all innocent and unknowing, to fight our way thru downtown Santa Fe.

An oft repeated phrase during this trip: "It is an adventure!"

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* Reference to a running Lolcat gag on I can has cheezburger

Twisty Mountain Roads, They Look All The Same

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The plan today was to drive from Prescott thru Jerome, Sedona, Flagstaff, Winslow, and on to Holbrook and the Petrified National Forest. The trip started out that way, under gray skies. Jim drove as the road to Jerome was a bit mountainous and twisty. I don't do well with twisty and mountainous. Either one alone is enough to slow my normal foot-to-the-floor driving to something less than the posted limit. Add the two together, and I am driving pretty much at a dead crawl. Jim said he wanted to make the drive at something faster than 2mph.
"Mountainous and twisty" was a major understatement. There were places where there wasn't even a token guard rail, nothing between the road and oblivion several tens of thousands of feet down except some sticks with reflectors on them. I'm sure it was tens of thousands. It looked like it went down forever. I practiced my deep-and-even-breathing techniques. I practiced a lot. In a couple of places, I closed my eyes to improve my deep-and-even breathing. I couldn't face the edge of the road, the twists in the road, or the distance to the bottom if we fell off the road. If I hadn't known what a hairpin turn was, I was given far too many examples today. Jim mentioned Sunday night that my "waHOOs" thru the thunderstorms had unnerved him a bit. He had a bit of revenge today, as those roads unnerved me a lot.
That stripe is the next segment of the road.

This is looking back to where the previous picture was taken.

Update: I was told to add more pictures. Thumbnails of the road to Jerome. The usual click for bigger images.

This doesn't begin to convey the breath-stopping beauty of the vista

Jim thought this a great picture.

Jerome

Jerome was just as I remembered. It's quite literally built on the side of the hill. This view is coming into Jerome,

(but the best view for seeing the shape of Jerome is from downhill)

and has the same twisty roads and hairpin turns as the road above. But there was no chance of falling off the mountain, as the buildings would get in the way. At one point, we got stuck behind some poor guy who couldn't quite make up his mind which way to go. The sign said "parking." The road to parking was a narrow, one-way road, going steeply up the hill. A deep breath was taken, and the driver went up the hill to "Parking."
The Road to Parking, Jerome style

The buildings were old, quaint, and in some cases, falling down. The town has turned into an art community, with stuff ranging from locally produced really cool stuff to kitschy tourist trap stuff.
Some of the first buildings as you enter Jerome.

Jerome Fire Station and hairpin turn.

More Jerome

And some of the artwork sold.

The stunning view from Jerome, even with gray skies

Sedona

The road to Sedona was quite green as befits an area called Verde Valley. It's apparently growing quite nicely as there were several new buildings under construction, and large sections of the roadway were being widened. Under the gray skies, the gorgeous red rocks of Sedona, normally vivid enough to take your breath away, were simply striking.
The normally stunning colors not so bright in the overcast.

Update: more pics, as requested.

The spires and pillars of Chimney Rock and other well-known formations were a stunning backdrop to the homes and businesses of Sedona, even without the sun's direct light.

The blue stripe at the top is the shading on the windshield.

Oak Creek Canyon

It turns out there's a longer, less mountainous route to Flagstaff, and a shorter route thru, you guessed it, twisty mountain roads. The shorter route, Highway 89A, went up Oak Creek Canyon, lovely and green. Sycamore, pine, spruce, ivy twining thru the trees. The cliffs above us showing the bones of the earth in stripes of rust red and beige. Scattered along the creek are homes, shops, campgrounds. As we go further up, the canyon narrows, and finally we ascend the cliffside to Flagstaff. At the top was a visitor's station, very welcome restrooms (it was a long way up the canyon), and a view point. A truly stunning view point, back down a segment of Oak Creek Canyon.
Oak Creek Canyon cliff sides.

Beautiful mixed forest.

From the view point at the top of Oak Creek Canyon.

This is probably the east side of the thunderstorm that almost drowned us the night before.

Road to Gallup

Catching I-40 again, heading east. The vegetation changes from pine forest to scrub trees

to sage and other small brush scattered across the landscape. It's high desert, and the farther away we get from the mountains around Flagstaff, the more desert-like it gets. Rolling hills covered in tan scrub brush, pierced by low mesas, ridges, and the occasional arroyo.

Jim said he didn't care for that part of Arizona, as it was too flat. Reminded him of the plains, where you could see all the way to the horizon, without benefit of mountains. I adore that part of Arizona. I have many summers' worth of wonderful memories spent in Winslow, on the high desert. I feel very much at home here.
I decided that I'd seen the Petrified Forest already, and wanted to go on into New Mexico, which I had only seen once, from a bus window thirty years ago. I drove from Winslow, so there aren't as many pictures. The landscape around the Petrified Forest and Painted Desert had mesas with those wonderful Painted Desert colors. Not too far from the road were several mound-like mesas, looking remarkably like petrified layered deserts.
As we approached the border to New Mexico, the land rose and got greener. Water could be seen in some of the washes, and there were thunderstorms in the distance.

Then we came over a rise and saw the most amazing mesa. It looked like a painted backdrop for stage.

The road to the right of the main highway is old Route 66, the Mother Road. I-40 paralled Route 66 all the way into Albuquerque.
This is that same mesa, up close.

Rain in the distance.

We arrived in Gallup, in plenty of time to find a new hotel when the first one couldn't get their wireless connection to work in the area of our room. Pack everything all back up, head back down the road. Check in to new hotel, set up the computer, finish a project and collapse for the night.
Sunflowers behind the hotel.

There were sunflowers everywhere in Gallup.

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It Rains in the Mojave?

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Man, it pours.

Eastbound on Highway 40, just west of Ludlow, for those following at home. Just ahead were some lovely thunderheads, with that wonderful desert phenomenon of rain-that-doesn't-reach-the-ground. At ground level, the winds were kicking up some serious dust clouds. Yet, there had to be some water in there somewhere, as one of the ground level clouds looked to have a segment of rainbow in it. We'll know when we get there.

Dust blowing almost sideways, dust devils twitching over the ground, the sound of the paint on my car being scoured off. I so wanted to bring the other car, as Brunhilde has a trunk you could pack a pigmy mammoth in, but driving thru this stuff, I'm glad I didn't. She'd just gotten a new paint job.

Then a raindrop. Another. Harbinger of things to come, as within minutes, I was driving thru a massive downpour. Drivers experienced in this sort of thing had their flashers on, the rest followed suit. It made sense, as flashing lights can be seen a bit better thru a wall of water. Because that's what we had. Wind and the speed of my car blew the rain up the windshshield; never touched the wipers. Everybody slowed down, partly because we couldn't see diddly, but also because hydroplaning was getting to be a serious issue. I was keeping an eye on the trucker behind me, as he could see the traffic flow farther than I, being higher off the ground. When he changed lanes, so did I.

Then the out-of-state wusses started pulling over to the side of the road to ride out the storm. Guys, that ain't gonna do you no good. This storm may sit here for hours, dropping rain in this one spot. You hafta go on thru. Which I did. I let the trucker I'd been watching pass me, then tucked myself in behind. The rain was still blowing up my windshield, but now at a rate that was almost blinding.

And I'm having a great time! Just enough adrenaline rush to keep me focused, furious rain thundering on the roof and sides of the car, and the Kingston Trio's "South Coast" playing an appropriate song for the adventure. Poor Jim wasn't too sure of me, as I kept laughing and saying "Wa-HOO!" every so often. He did get a touch of revenge, as he pointed out this is the kind of weather that generates flash floods. Now I'm really glad I'm behind the trucker. If he stops, you know it's bad.

And then we broke out the other side. Rain lessened, then dribbled down to nothing, just as we passed the exit to Ludlow.

Starting out a little late

We started out three hours later than I'd planned, four hours later than the official time. Plans were to start out between 8 and 9am. By 10am, things were getting put into the car, and those last minute "OH! I need this." was being found and packed. (Flying keeps your wants pretty much limited to your needs. Driving means there's always one more cool thing to take along.) Then Jim decided to try slicing the bottom of his toe off again.* Last time, lots o'stitches. This time, a pressure bandage. But by the time we got back, it was almost noon. So lunch, and then on the road.

And then back to the house because I can't drive anywhere without my Kingston Trio CDs.

The desert is glorious!

From Barstow, Interstate 40 runs thru a chunk of the Mojave Desert, a land cut down to its bare essentials. Creosote bushes and sage dot the landscape. Mesquite trees, looking almost ephemeral with the trunks of the trees showing thru their sparse leaves, take hold along the highway where drainage gives them a bit more water. Yuccas and joshua trees take hold in areas with a bit more water. The bones of the land are seen everywhere, from the piles of rusty stones and broken lava flows from long-dead volcanic activity, to the sedimentary layers resting like hats on top of basaltic pillars. Distant pillars and mesas float on haze, seemingly unattached to the ground below. Close at hand, the road meanders in and around the landscape, maze-like in the randomness of the mesas. When vistas opened, I could see how high we'd come, driving into the mountains ahead. Often the only sign of human life is the double ribbon of US 40 stretching away into the distance.

As we come up on that last bit of mountain, I could smell water, water from the Colorado river, the lifeblood of the Southwest. Topping the mountain, the green of the valley stretched away in long rectangles, with a sprinkling of buildings scattered about. Spread before me was the thriving metropolis of Needles. Three offramps later, I'm headed for another row of mountains.

The road slides thru a cut, and there is the Colorado. Slow, narrow, obviously deep as there are no rapids. Cross the bridge, past the warning signs for those bringing in livestock, slide into the cut in the mountains on the other side. Colorado river, come and gone.

The road to Kingman is as stark in its own way as the Mojave, but on this side, it's the stark of desert mountains. The pillars and mesas randomly scattered thru the Mojave have morphed into wind-carved sedimentary rocks in faded reds, ochers, and sands. Occassionally, the terrain widens out to a valley, with a few buildings to show that humans are stubborn enough to live anywhere.

The final climb to Kingman is steep and twisty. It passes thru some amazingly layered sediment showing the stresses the earth put on the land to build these mountains. There are pictures of one of these currently living in the camera. I'll add them later, if they came out clear enough. There were also some tremendous thunderheads, but when we finally stopped to eat, there was a huge sign structure right smack in the middle. So you'll just have to imaging thousands of feet of billowing cloud, lighting reaching down to strike the mountain tops.

As we pulled out of Kingman in the twilight, headed for Ash Fork, the lightning inside that thunderhead lit up the clouds like some gigantic photo studio. As we drove, lightning lit up the sky, cloud to cloud, or cloud to ground, sometimes forking down, once in an amazing s-curve on the mountain tops in front of me. Somewhere between Kingman and Seligman, the promise of rain became reality. Once again, I was driving thru a wall of water, this time in the dark. On the positive side, flashers on all the other cars were much easier to see this time. Once again, I drove on, still disturbing Jim with outbursts of "Wheee!" and "Huzzah!" and "I love Arizona." I spent some childhood summers in Winslow, and have always loved Arizona's thunderstorms.

By the time we got to Ash Fork, the rain had faded to the occasional splash. Turning south on Hwy 89, the rain became a steady drizzle. This wouldn't have been too bad, except instead of having a four-lane divided highway, two in each direction, I'm now driving on a two-lane highway that often just had painted lines without reflective dots. In the rain in the dark, this meant the road markers would disappear. I kept my eye on the truck ahead of me, the center line when I could see it, and Jim kept an eye on the right side of the road to make sure I didn't slide off that way. Earlier in the day, when it was clear to do so, I was moving at 90mph, but at this point, was happy to ride behind the truck at 65. When we finally made Prescott, the rain had stopped. It's close on to 10pm at this point, and I told Jim we were taking the first motel we found that had a name we recognized or any kind of rating in the AAA tourist trap book. We found a Holiday Inn Express and checked in. I grabbed the bag with the medical supplies so I could redoctor Jim's toe, said we can get clothes out tomorrow, blogged and went to bed.

I wish I had pictures of all of it. But if I'd stopped to take pictures, I'd still be on the road. I'll see what I can do on the way home.

---

For those who absolutely must know how he does this, his sandal gets caught under the lip of the step; his momentum drives his foot forward, bending the sandal back. The sandal reaches its maximum point of bend, snaps back, dragging Jim's toe across the top edge of the step, slicing the bottom. Now you know. And we're ditching those sandals. Once is an oops. Twice is not acceptable. Actually, once wasn't acceptable, but we didn't make a concerted effort to replace those sandals. Now we will.

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You know it's hot when...

You push your glasses up only to have them slide down almost immediately.

How do you know it's really hot? You push your glasses up, they steam up immediately, then slide back down your nose.

I decided to remove my back lawn, mostly crabgrass, that I never use for anything. Crabgrass is not the surface of choice for lounging, playing on, or pretty much anything requiring contact with the ground.

So I'm digging it up.

In the summer.

What was I thinking? Well, it's mostly that I want to do it now. I'm really good at finding reasons not to do something, so when I decide to actually do something, I better get started.

It will be a series of raised planters with seating scattered around. What it is right now is one largish hole and one middlin' hole, each centered around one of the existing lawn sprinklers. Since I'm having to go out at 5:30am to dig, before it gets glasses-steaming hot, I expect I'll have two really nice 4x4 planter boxes ready for fall planting. Yes, I know it's only July. It's also crabgrass in adobe soil, and requires a pickaxe to break up. Pick, shovel, pull the grass bits out, mix in some perlite to keep the damned stuff from clumping back together, repeat. Fingernail breakage and cursing scattered randomly throughout.

But why dig it up if I'm putting in raised beds? Drainage. There isn't any. Or rather, too much. If I dig down a foot or so, the untouched adobe holds water as if in a bucket. Two, the only way to kill crabgrass is to pull it out. Three, if I dig up the dirt, mix stuff in it, I have a decent growing base and I don't have to add so much packaged soil mix stuff, expensive packaged soil mix stuff, on top.

I'm a desk-bound computer geek in real life, which doesn't lend itself to heavy duty physical exercise. With all the picking and shoveling, I am developing a really good set of shoulder and arm muscles. Just what I need for beating difficult code into submission, or intimidating difficult clients. Yeah right.

Footsteps of Fire

Black cloud with legs of lightning,
Striding imperiously across the landscape.
Footprints left on the land burn brightly
In memory of your passage.

The 2008-09 California fire season is starting in northern California. Dry thunderstorms, strong with lightning but no rain, are walking their way across the Sierras. The area got much less rain in April/May, and is tinder waiting for sparks. CalFire (California forestry fire department) has the upper half of the state on fire weather watch, as more such storms are coming thru. The Governator has declared several counties disaster areas due to the fires. If you want good California wines, you might want to stock up now, as wine country from Sanapanoma* to Monterey is on fire, as well as other wine areas not so well known.

Oh my poor state. We're in for an ugly fire season again.

*Sanapanoma - Napa and Sonoma
BTW, the poem is original. You quote it, you put my name on it.

Adult Supervision Needed

I sent email to family and a few close friends, telling them I was adding this to my Christmas list. My uncle, older brother to my mother, (same uncle as previous post) sent back this in reply:

"You will need to have adult supervision when you operate it. Where in this family are you going to find an adult to supervise?"

I have a great family!

Don't wear shorts while using a weed wacker

Especially if magnolia leaves are involved.

Just don't.

Summer Solstice

Summer Solstice, the longest day of the year, is one of four solstice days marking the movements of the sun thru its seasonal cycle. It has a long tradition in pagan circles as Litha, and is considered the mid-point of summer, which begins with Beltane on May 1st and ends with Lughnasadh on August 1st. Some celebrate the triumph of Light over Dark, while others celebrate the coming harvest.

In the U.S., for those who aren't pagans, it's the beginning of summer, kids celebrating being out of school, and absolutely no holidays between July 4th and the first Monday in September, Labor Day.

Anybody Can Do It - Yeah Right

Pet peeve - Anybody who says "All you have to do is..."

The instructions for assembling all the pieces in my new drip watering kit assume a level of expertise that is sadly lacking in this household. Figuring out in which order to put all the screw-on pieces is fairly simple, as the piece that connects to the drip tubing must go last. There's only one piece that connects to that, which leaves the timer to connect to the water faucet. So far so good.

Attaching that to the water faucet proved to be the first of many stumbling blocks. I attached a four-way spigot to the existing water faucet. And realized that attaching the timer-tubing assembly would require I dig a hole so they could all get screwed together. Hmmm. Interesting phrasing. nevermind. Let's try this: turn the original faucet upside down. I don't need to reach the handle easily. It's going to be staying on so the drip system will work.

Ah, question from the audience? Why don't I take the original spigot off? As I was discussing the issue with Jim, thinking out loud and looking for suggestions, I got an amazing amount of static about leaving it on. Still don't understand why, but that's ok. If it keeps peace in the household, I'm not going to insist.

Turn the water off to the house. Unscrew everything. Wrap plumbers tape around the water faucet and screw back on. Spigot up, handle down - check. Turn the water to the house on and... no leaks. We're good to go. Screw the four-way on after application of plumbers tape, turn the water faucet on and... no leaks. Ok. Progress is being made.

Attach hose to one spigot, turn it on to test. I got water. And the most horrendously loud swooshing sound as water flowed thru the new faucet. You can usually tell when you've got water running somewhere. You can hear it at other faucets in the house. This new faucet was loud enough to be heard in the living room over the tv. There was no forgetting to turn the water off with this system.

Onward and upward. Besides the screw-on pieces to connect spigot to drip tubing, several extra bits were included, with no instructions as to where to put them. I had a grit filter which logically should go between the spigot and the timer. After putting said filter in, the connection leaked like a sieve and sprayed water in several directions. If I wanted a spray system, I would have bought one. Read the instructions again. All they said was "insert filter." I checked the website. The instructions said "Insert the filter." I hunted the internet for forums and help groups. Found some. The instructions said "Insert the filter." Guys, what part of thumb-fingered clueless did you miss? I'm a computer software geek. I don't do hardware. Getting the water faucets on was the extent of my previous knowledge. Upon the suggestion from friend PJ, I tried reversing the grit filter. aHA! Works. No more spray. From that connection anyway.

Also included in this kit was a flow restrictor, which came with lots of instructions on when it should be used, but not where. Just for fun, I tried searching the internet again. Same same. Let's put it between the timer and the connection to the connection to the tubing. Turn water on, turn timer to ON, and... get a face full of spraying water. Not to mention pants and shirt. Up side? I'm cooler now. Downside, there is no water coming out the tubing end. None. The flow restrictor is supposed to reduce the water flow to half a gallon per hour, not shut it down completely. What's up with that?

Back to the drawing board. If I... no, how about... *headsmack*. Take it out completely and just have the water spigot turned low. One more leak gone. And now water comes out the end. Woohoo. I has water.

I has water coming from the middle of one of the screw on bits. Turn water off, unscrew part, examine closely. The area of the leak has no adjustable pieces. Why is it leaking? Replace with piece from the other kit. Which leaks in exactly the same way. No spray, just water flow. Hmmm. Mint doesn't mind being very wet. Put the pot of mint under it and carry on.

Next step: tubing. The instructions very kindly said to cut the tubing at an angle to make insertion easier. er... I gotta get my mind out of the gutter. Tubing: insert, turn water on. You'll never guess. Spraying water. It's a hot day and I'm staying cool. It's all good.

Unscrew last connector piece, wrestle with connector, tubing, pliers, temper... The tubing connector is made to hold on to the tubing tightly. Which means getting the tubing in requires you be a 500 pound gorilla. Jim came out about then, said he could feel the cursing. He wrestled with connector, tubing, pliers for a minute or two, and handed the thing back to me. No, he isn't a 500 pound gorilla, he just plays the part when I need it.

Screw connector with tubing attached onto other connector. Turn water on. No spray. And we has water out tubing!

Stay tuned for the next exciting chapter in the building of the drip system. It's sure to be... I don't know. Pick an adjective of your choice. I'm going in now. It's bleedin' hot again today.

Bleedin' HOT

Why is the pavement melting?

It was 109 in Northridge, 111 in Chatsworth, yesterday, June 18. Downtown LA was 80-something, which is the one that's reported inter/nationally. The translation to metric is: bleedin' HOT. It's supposed to be that hot again today.

I am offering up prayers and sacrifices so that my a/c continues to work. The system has gone past the point where my a/c maintenance guy says, "You need to replace this unit." Now, he just shakes his head and adds more chewing gum and wire to the system. In these economic times, it's about all I can afford.

Spending the weekend in burned out buildings

What is an acrophobe doing leading a team down an almost totally black stairwell, one with walls but no railings on either side, in a burned out building? I'm glad you asked. Since I had gone up an almost totally black stairwell leading a team, we all kinda wanted to go back the other way. I had no flashlight, altho some of my team members did. I've never done live D&D, but the many times I had played on paper had instilled certain habits. Like walking with a hand on one or both walls. Testing the floor before putting my full weight on it. I found the door when the guys with the flashlights passed right by. Taking nothing for granted. And tell the helpful guy behind me to stop trying to be helpful and point the freakin' flashlight somewhere else. It was easier to go down the pitch black stairwell completely blind than it was with two flashlights putting strange shadows and shapes on the stairs. Twitchy, moving shadows.

It was CERT refresher weekend here in the sunny city of Long Beach, California. I was in the urban search and rescue segment, checking out a four-story building for victims. The previous segment was SAR in a one-story building, for which I had been scribe. That meant I got to record the injured "victims" brought out of the building, one of whom had been drafted with no instructions. When I asked for injuries, he looked at me blankly and said, "They didn't tell me." Right, delusional, send him to Urgent. In the four-story segment, I ended up being scribe again. I asked the fireman trainer if I could go in the building later, as I hadn't been in one. He then drafted himself as scribe, and I got to lead a team. My team, lucky people that we were, got the third and fourth floors of the four story building. And everybody got to follow someone who does not like stairs up and then back down three flights of stairs, slowly and carefully.

When we first arrived, there was a short segment of Opening Ceremonies, mostly reiterating why we were here: to practice what to do during and after emergencies, which included taking care of us first, then victims. We were to rescue victims, not become one. The fireman in charge of first aid said if anyone failed to take care of him/herself, and in the expected heat, that meant hydration hydration hydration, the person would be treated, and then the fireman would kick them in the butt. It was said to us in every segment, at every opportunity, that we must take care of us first. We can't take care of anybody else if we become victims.

When we signed in, we were given wrist bands of various colors. There were eight 45-minute segments; the order we took them was determined by the color. Beth, my best friend and CERT buddy, and I got Disaster Preparedness right off. We could have taught the course. Not necessarily better, but we didn't learn much. One thing we learned was that the Red Cross lady teaching it had never seen an MRE. Three of us tore open our backpacks/kits and pulled ours out. Beth and another guy had the full package, and explained the differences between civilian and military MRE packages. The military has a better eating utensil and has some additional things like toilet paper and chewing gum. I just carry the main dishes. I have to feed a sugar-sensitive person and therefore don't carry the rest of an MRE pack, which is often things full of sugar. Since there's a chance he may grab and eat without thinking, there are no sugar-filled things in the three-day pack. There is no way I want to deal with a sugar-charged guy when I'm also trying to cope with an emergency. And yes, MREs taste good. They aren't cordon bleu cooking, but they're not bad. They're edible in an emergency without wanting to go "ewwwww."

The next segment, Triage, taught me right off that I need to repack my kit. I know I have a pen in there somewhere, but damn if I could find it. Same with the above flashlight I didn't have. (It probably took advantage of my digging for the MRE to dive for the bottom of the kit.) If I have to be scribe for triage, I can't be huntin' for a pen. The firemen overseeing this exercise were quite pleased with our group. We'd cleared the field of "injured," sorted into the medical area in less than 20 minutes, and only misdiagnosed one. The various "victims" had been annointed with "blood," had a half-sheet of paper with "symptoms," had an assortment of prosthetic wounds strapped on, and generally had a hard time keep a straight face as we all poked and prodded them. Later, we heard from another group who said some of their triage victims were lying on the sheet of paper with symptoms, so the CERT team had to wing it. We identified and marked various levels of injuries, then cleared the field of victims, walking wounded walk out on their own, then urgent, not life threatening, and then dead. We were supposed to drag our dead guy to the morgue area, but we made him get up and walk.

Then we got to be Medical. Because Beth had some EMT training, we got stuck with a red tarp, meaning we got the urgent cases. (For those playing at home, in mass injury incidents, areas are designated, and colored tarps are used when you have them to easily identify: Red - Urgent/Dead without medical help NOW, Yellow - Not Life Threatening, Green - Banged and Scraped.) And again, I was scribe. We were told that we'd be getting some victims who hadn't gone thru triage, so we'd have to triage them in Medical. Since the red tarps were closest to the incident site, we got the first one. Open break, what used to be called a compound fracture, of his right arm. He got splinted and wrapped and bandaged within an inch of his life, because we didn't have any other victims at the time. We then got a little old lady with "chest pains." The lady as herself had to sit in a chair, which caused a bit of confusion a bit later when someone walked up and said, "She should be lying down." In reply, he got a chorus of "she is." We were treating her, or trying to treat her, as if she was lying down. Our third victim was a trauma nurse in real life. Which explained why she could replicate the symptoms so well, nausea, coffee-ground vomiting, new and wonderful pains that showed up, etc. We chatted at lunch and found that she was playing a ruptured spleen and something ugly to do with the liver.

Meanwhile, the other red tarp had a screamer. A rather large, athletic guy had been roped in to be a victim who wanted to find Susy, and was extremely resentful of anyone who wanted to tend his injuries. So resentful that at one point, he had two other guys lying on him, trying to hold him down. Better them than me.

I discovered that I should write each victim on a separate page, as victims in the Urgent section had a nasty tendency to add symptoms as we went along. The heart attack lady "stopped" having a pulse at one point, and had to have CPR. We "saved" a life, as her heart "started" again. I wandered over to our broken arm guy, who had initially been slated to go to the yellow tarp once we bandaged him, but was upgraded to urgent when he added dizzyness to his previous light-headedness, and low spinal back pain to his collection of "injuries." He was chatting with one of the firemen overseeing the exercise. I told him he was going to have to play victim again, as I was there to check on him. Life got a bit more interesting when two of the yellow-tarped people got upgraded to urgent. Our team leader decided that they shouldn't be moved, the first, with a head injury, because she was blanketed and comfortable, and didn't need to add to her trauma by moving, and the second because she was a neck injury, who just didn't need to be moved until the paramedics took her away. So now I'm running back and forth between our red tarp and the yellow tarp, tracking changes. The field had been cleared of injured, we were dealing with our last arrival, and starting on prioritizing for transport when the exercise ended. During the triage segment, our team reported to the IC regularly. In Medical, I saw him once. I asked if that was correct, as I all my time was sucked up by tracking changes in our patients. The firemen and the guy who was IC told me I did the right thing. If the IC wanted to talk to me, he could find me.

That was fun. No, really, it was. Beth and I found out we work great as a team. She does medical really well. And I do honest patient reassurance very well. Having been a patient in tremendous pain, I don't want someone telling me I'm ok. If you're going to lie to me on something I know is wrong, what else are you going to lie about? So my patients got variations on no, you're not ok, but you will be. My most difficult reassurance was the head-injury victim who'd lost her ability to speak or understand english, if she'd ever had it. She only spoke in japanese, and I was left with patting and holding her shoulder and repeating "OK?" a couple of times. She was coherent enough to manage "OK" back at me. It had an upside in that the person who'd treated her and I could discuss symptoms and secondary assessment in a light tone without freakin' the patient.

Next we got to talk with the USR people, Urban Search and Rescue. Why aren't they USAR? Because the US Army Reserve claims those initials. The USR guys told us what they did, which is everything from helping in multi-car accidents to whitewater rescue (we don't get a lot of rain here, but when we do, our little trickling rivers turn into whitewater monsters-think flash flood). Because Long Beach has a substantial harbor area, they do a lot of rescues in the port area, ranging from longshoremen trapped under equipment to longshoremen crushed under those huge cargo containers. They showed us their "tool box," a truck as long as the largest hook-and-ladder truck I've seen, full of hand tools, power tools, generators, air compressors for refilling air tanks, 2x4 and 2x8 to prop up collapsing building long enough for SAR to find victims and evacuate them, and just an amazing array of things for breaking stuff up or holding stuff together. Our guide said the busiest guy during the Paradise fire was the engineer, refilling air tanks. Another of his stories was interesting in the insights it gave into thinking outside the box. They couldn't get the truck in close, so hooked a firehose to the jackhammer air compressor and ran it out 300 feet from the truck to power the jackhammer.

Next was lunch. The Long Beach fire department put up several shade areas, so we could rest and eat out of the direct sun, but it didn't help with the overall heat. We were all very glad the event was being held in Long Beach, because it "only" got to the mid 80s. The San Fernando Valley was up around 102-105. It's only mid-May. What is the summer going to be like? *bleh*

After lunch and the above mentioned SAR, we learned how to improvise things to pry and prop up fallen things so we could get people out from under those fallen things. Mostly it was standing under awning, discussing the hows and whys of this process. Then we got to stand or kneel in the sun for a bit, while we built Lincoln-log type structures to pry up and then hold up a car, so someone could drag the victim out from under. By this point, the victim dummy had been dragged back and forth so much (we had to put him back under the car when we were done), his clothes were coming off and his torso was showing a bit of wear. We had a couple of primarily Spanish speaking people in our group, so we also got to learn how to give very simple directions understood by all.

Then we got to play with fire extinguishers. My first extinguisher lasted long enough for me to get within shootin' distance of the fire before it stopped extinguishing. Add it to the dead pile. Beth and I went back around and got a totally unused extinguisher, stood in line, and when it was our turn, tested the extinguisher before moving to the fire. The extinguisher didn't work at all. Add that one to the dead pile and try again. The third one did its test blast well, we moved in on the fire, put it out. But the extinguisher wouldn't turn off. The fireman supervising told me to back away from the fire area and let go of the handle. I said, it won't turn off. He came over and took it away from me, body language saying he will now show this trainee how it's... wait, this extinguisher won't turn off. Cool, guy, now it's your problem. The thing finally ran out of juice and got added to the dead pile. The fireman said we could try again. I said I've tried three extinguishers and they all broke one way or another. I'm not dealing with another one. On top of that, the wind was swirling. The fireman kept repeating, "Approach from the upwind side. Approach from the upwind side." You tell me which side will be the upwind side when I get there, and I'll approach from that side. Nope. Today is not my day for fire extinguisher duty.

By this point, it's late in the day, my feet hurt from standing on them most of the day (I'm a desk jockey most days), and I'm covered in grime and sweat (I'm an inside desk jockey). My thirty pound backpack full of food, water, medical supplies and CERT gear now weighs at least a hundred pounds. And the half dozen chairs in the shade already have people in them. So I sat on the ground. Which meant when that segment was over, I had to clamber all the way back up, not just stand up out of a chair. urf

Fortunately, this last segment was ICS and held indoors. In airconditioned indoors, where my grime and sweat turned into grime and salt. I could listen to ICS trainers all day. Being an IC is the part that scares me the most about being a CERT member. In an emergency, I'm it. No group who at least have taken CERT classes and have a partial clue. I'm going to be organizing civilians. Boy, does that give me sympathy with LEOs and other emergency personnel. Beth agreed, and said even after doing it in a real emergency, it's still the scariest part. She spent ten years in Tampa, Florida, picking up after hurricanes.

The trainer in this segment was great. In a lot of normal classroom situations, you have a "right" answer. Our fireman trainer said there is no right answer in emergencies. There are only choices made based on what we know at the time, which includes the training we have. One scenario was of a two story house, smoke coming from the back. When the view shifted to the back, there was fire visible in an upper window. As we discussed what we would do, the trainer added smoke from the other side of the house, and smoke coming from the attic. The trainer said for fireman, this house fire was routine to them. What would be a "don't go in" second floor area to a CERT member would only be a "proceed with caution" area to a fireman. What would be a "proceed with caution, if at all" first floor to CERT would be a routine no problem area for firemen. One scenario was a fire on or between two tanker cars in a train switching yard. Behind it was a couple of large storage tanks in an oil refinery. I said, "Ohh Shit." The trainer said I was the first person to say that all day. Either everybody else was too polite, or I was too tired to be politely quiet. Or I remember too many refinery explosions from my childhood. What does a CERT member do in that situation? Call 911 and get the heck outta there. Potential explosion, potential hazmat, potential so out of our league, after calling 911, one of the group said call 1-800-HaulButt.

ICS has a number of segments to it, and not all of them are necessary at every incident. Like finance/banking. The fire department needs to consider money when they have a lot of what they call "metal in the air" (firefighting planes, helis) which cost anywhere from $30k to $100k an hour (yes, an hour) to operate. CERT people aren't working with those kind of numbers and mostly don't need to worry about how to pay for stuff. Our trainer got us thinking about what CERT people need to worry about in different scenarios: status of utilities, SAR, supplies. We missed part of the event's closing remarks because we kept asking our ICS trainer questions. I could have sat thru another hour or more of that class.

At the end of class, I picked up my thirty pound turned hundred pound kit that somewhere gained another fifty pounds, and staggered with the rest of the group over to closing ceremonies. All the primary instructors were pleased with us, and were pleased that, even with the heat, we'd stayed hydrated and took care of ourselves. We'd only had one casualty among the CERT people. I got my one last look at all those fit, athletic firemen (one of the perks of having CERT affiliated with the fire department!), staggered out to the carpool van, and toddled on home.

This morning, I was a bit stiff and sore, but not too badly, and my touch of sunburn was still a bit pink but would probably turn into tan by tomorrow. Beth is annoyed, as she has pale skin that burns, peels, and stays pale. Her sunscreen application held up quite nicely, and she didn't get too much sun. I'm now off to find the flashlight I know I have in that kit, add a couple more pens, and generally set things up so I can find what I need in a hurry a bit more quickly. Personal protective equipment, flashlight, marking and writing tools, gotta be on top. And stay there. Bandages and medical supplies next. After that, well, it depends on what I learn in the next refresher, six months from now. With luck, not from an emergency in the meantime.