The Wandering Tattler

On Friday we drove east and south from the Bay Area to Fresno in the San Joaquin Valley to visit my brother Ron, his wife Susan, and their two daughters, Emily and Katie. While driving along Rt. 580 we received the first of many telephone calls from our watchful neighbors, Gil and Alice and Jim and Mary, who notified us of an unpleasant development back in Keene. During a fierce windstorm a tree in an abutting yard had fallen against a power line that supplies electricity to that house as well to as ours and Gil and Alice’s. The first house lost power, while an electrical surge damaged a transformer up on a pole across the street and caused major problems in our house and in Gil and Alice’s. The Keene Fire Department arrived and the circuit breakers in our house and in Gil and Alice’s were shut down, turning off our heating systems. Gil and Jim visited our house repeatedly to monitor the situation, and we exchanged many phone calls Friday and Saturday. Outside temperatures fell into the twenties Friday night but were expected to reach zero degrees Saturday night. The temperature in our house was falling slowly but steadily, but by Saturday afternoon it had fallen only to the mid-fifties. Apparently our house is very well insulated, but it was also becoming clear that Public Service Company of NH would not repair the transformer and restore a normal electricity supply to our houses before the outside temperatures fell to zero degrees tonight, and it seemed wise to drain our pipes and plumbing before that happened. Therefore, at 3 pm we authorized Davis Oil to shut off our water supply and to purge our heating and plumbing system. Gil and Jim facilitated their entry into our house and watched over this process.

Our house is now “winterized” and should be able to withstand many sub-freezing nights. We will lose our houseplants, but at least we won’t have to worry about our house as we prepare to fly to Hawaii tomorrow morning. We’re very lucky to have such attentive and generous neighbors and hope that Gil and Alice’s heating and electricity are restored soon. I asked Jim to tell Gil that he could take some of the seasoned wood from our front porch for their wood stove.



We did have a great visit with Ron and Susan and Emily and Katie. Wish I had half as much energy as those girls!

Driving back from Fresno we saw an adult bald eagle perched on a fence post only a few feet from the pavement of California Highway 152, about 20 miles east of Los Banos and 1 mile east of the San Joaquin River. There are many wetlands a few miles away, but the nearby landscape was pretty dry. I wonder if bald eagles ever eat road kill… Upon returning to Castro Valley, we joined C’Anna and David and our nephew Alex for a nice walk at Lake Chabot. We saw several banana slugs and a salamander in a swampy area. The sun was shining brightly but the sky was filled with dramatic clouds.

Tomorrow – off to Hawaii!