We had been running Bertha, our '97 Nissan Pathfinder that had gotten a tankful of bad gas , trying to burn off the gunk, but it was still taking several minutes of cranking to get her to start. I had learned what to do to make her stall in traffic and, more importantly, how to recover before she completely stalled out. As our friend Brian - who apparently reads the blog from Oregon - commented, we would have to replace the fuel filter because it was undoubtedly fouled with whatever bad was in the gas.
We had heard something similar from a guy here who commented that filters have a tendency to foul more quickly on the island anyway. So we made up our minds to do it. After doing a little research on Nissan Web sites I decided not only could I do this, but it would actually be pretty easy. Maybe the easiest thing you can do on the car. We don't have a mechanic here yet, and finding a good one you can trust is hard under the best of circumstances. So we were game to DIY it, even though virtually all my tools are still in storage 4,000 miles away in Oregon. I have here one small crescent wrench, a couple of pairs of pliers and four screw drivers. But based on my research that ought to do it.
It's a typical St. Croix story. This (Saturday) morning Tori and I walked four blocks or so to the auto parts store, got the filter for 15 bucks, went across the street to the hardware store where we got a couple of clamps for the fuel line. I was thinking, "I really should have a socket wrench for that bracket, cuz the bolt is probably frozen." But I already have two socket sets – in Oregon. It was hard to decide to spend the money, so we decided to forgo the new wrench. We walked home and got to work.
First - disconnect the battery. Always a good idea when you're working on the fuel system. Then clamp off on the tank-side hose and remove the hose. No trouble. On to the bracket that holds the filter in place.
And that bolt was stuck. I mean stuck solid. WD40. Still stuck. It's been in place for 11 years and wasn't going to loosen without putting up a fight. Part of the problem was the bracket frame had a small lip on it so I couldn't get wrench or pliers or anything on it squarely. Finally I said to Tori, "Gotta have the right tool. I'm going back for the socket wrench." She just said fine, but didn't get out from under the car where she continued tinkering with that frozen bolt. (Frozen Bolt would be a good name for a rock band, wouldn't it?)
I walked to the hardware store. Now this is the most typically St. Croix part of the story. The hardware store only had half-inch drive socket wrenches, but only had 3/8-inch drive sockets. So I also had to buy an adapter - which thank God they had! I knew from my research that the bolt was 10 mm, but I also bought the 9 and 11 mm sockets "just in case." I was tired of walking to the hardware store.
Thus armed, I walked back home. Where Tori was sitting on the porch. "It's done," she said. Two minutes after I'd turned the corner she had worked the bolt loose enough to undo the clamp. The rest of the job was absurdly simple, and she'd finished it up before I got back. I did use my new socket wrench to tighten the bracket – the 10 mm socket was right. I was able to get almost two more full turns on the bolt, so it wasn't a complete waste. That filter won't be coming loose until the day of judgment.
The first time I started Bertha up it still took five minutes of cranking. "The line is empty, drained of fuel. It's supposed to take a few minutes," I told myself with more hope than certainty. Bertha finally roared to life and I drove to the gas station, the good one, the uphill one, where I paid a lot more for the gasoline but it's worth it to just get gas, not gas and something else. I had to turn off the engine to fill it of course.
Now here's where the rubber meets the road. I got back in the car and turned the key.
And Bertha fired right up! Huzzah! We did it! It's certainly no worse (always a concern when I crawl under a car with tools) and it appears to be fixed.
So we seem to have a functional car again. And a good thing to since we haven't even started our Christmas shopping. That'll be the subject for a post in the next few days.
Saturday, December 20, 2008
Thursday, December 18, 2008
The Topography of Fuel
Our 1997 Nissan Pathfinder – named Bertha for the tropical storm that passed the island two days after we bought her in July - is ailing. It's not, I believe (and fervently pray) a fatal illness, more like a bad flu.
Sunday I bought gas - not at one of the two stations I usually fill up at. I was on the road and noticed the needle was almost on E. The station I pulled into happened to have the best price I'd seen in a while, about 20 cents less than the other stations I'd noticed that day. So I was feeling pretty clever as I filled the tank. 15 and a half gallons into a 16 gallon tank. I figure I saved somewhere around $3.
And then the trouble started. The next morning the car died right after I'd dropped Tori and the kids off at school. It took almost two minutes to get it to start. Trouble getting started the next time and the next. Tuesday morning it started up fine, but that as the last good news - automotive-wise – since. Yesterday it actually stalled for Tori on the highway (the one actual four-lane road on the island.) It was rough getting back home.
Clearly I'd bought a bad tank of gas. Almost certainly there was water in it. What seemed odd about that is that every station on St. Croix gets its gas from the same place – the Hovensa oil refinery on the south side of the island. So it can't be the source. What had happened?
At our regular service station Tori put in a half tank of premium. While she then tried to restart it – another two or three minute ordeal - a guy on the corner drinking offered the observation that the place we had bought the bad gas is situated in a small depression.
You have to understand there are no storm drains on the island at least none I've seen. Rainwater runs down the street and guts, and pools in low spots - like that gas station - and sits there, seeping into the tank. He pointed out that our regular station – where Tori ran across the guy – is actually raised slightly above street level, not much but enough, so that the rain runs away instead of forming a lake.
So there you have it. On St. Croix you can't make your fuel-buying decision solely on price, and quality is a non-issue since it all comes from the same place. You have to consider the topography of the station. Is it nicely elevated? Or do you have to worry about what might be in the underground tank besides fuel?
Anyway, we've run about half the new tank out, and I added a water-treatment product (which cost slightly more than the $3 I saved on the cheap gas.) We drive over some fairly bumpy roads (of course we do, we live on St. Croix) so that should mix the dirty gas, the new gas and the additive. This morning Bertha started after less than a minute of cranking instead of two or three. All the way to school and back it ran pretty well, except for once or twice when I sort of goosed the accelerator and the engine hesitated and hiccupped. Backing off the gas smoothed it back out.
The problem will probably continue another week or so, but it should clear up eventually. Sort of like when you get over a flu. You're not better all at once. But eventually everything's all right again.
Sunday I bought gas - not at one of the two stations I usually fill up at. I was on the road and noticed the needle was almost on E. The station I pulled into happened to have the best price I'd seen in a while, about 20 cents less than the other stations I'd noticed that day. So I was feeling pretty clever as I filled the tank. 15 and a half gallons into a 16 gallon tank. I figure I saved somewhere around $3.
And then the trouble started. The next morning the car died right after I'd dropped Tori and the kids off at school. It took almost two minutes to get it to start. Trouble getting started the next time and the next. Tuesday morning it started up fine, but that as the last good news - automotive-wise – since. Yesterday it actually stalled for Tori on the highway (the one actual four-lane road on the island.) It was rough getting back home.
Clearly I'd bought a bad tank of gas. Almost certainly there was water in it. What seemed odd about that is that every station on St. Croix gets its gas from the same place – the Hovensa oil refinery on the south side of the island. So it can't be the source. What had happened?
At our regular service station Tori put in a half tank of premium. While she then tried to restart it – another two or three minute ordeal - a guy on the corner drinking offered the observation that the place we had bought the bad gas is situated in a small depression.
You have to understand there are no storm drains on the island at least none I've seen. Rainwater runs down the street and guts, and pools in low spots - like that gas station - and sits there, seeping into the tank. He pointed out that our regular station – where Tori ran across the guy – is actually raised slightly above street level, not much but enough, so that the rain runs away instead of forming a lake.
So there you have it. On St. Croix you can't make your fuel-buying decision solely on price, and quality is a non-issue since it all comes from the same place. You have to consider the topography of the station. Is it nicely elevated? Or do you have to worry about what might be in the underground tank besides fuel?
Anyway, we've run about half the new tank out, and I added a water-treatment product (which cost slightly more than the $3 I saved on the cheap gas.) We drive over some fairly bumpy roads (of course we do, we live on St. Croix) so that should mix the dirty gas, the new gas and the additive. This morning Bertha started after less than a minute of cranking instead of two or three. All the way to school and back it ran pretty well, except for once or twice when I sort of goosed the accelerator and the engine hesitated and hiccupped. Backing off the gas smoothed it back out.
The problem will probably continue another week or so, but it should clear up eventually. Sort of like when you get over a flu. You're not better all at once. But eventually everything's all right again.
Friday, December 12, 2008
A Sports Fan's Lament
You pull up roots, move halfway across the hemisphere make new friends, develop new habits.
But you never lose your connection to your sports teams.
I moved from Chicago almost half a century ago, but I'll always be a Cubs fan - even though I don't even follow baseball anymore. I was born a Cubs fan, the son of a Cubs fan. That means I have a family legacy of some of the most painful memories in sports. Summer of '69? That might mean all sorts of political and social upheaval to you, but mostly to me it means the Great Choke, the year the Cubs fell apart in August and lost the pennant to the Mets.
I lived in L.A. in the '70s and still have an affection for the Dodgers, although as I say I don't care about baseball anymore. (I figure if the owners and the players don't care about the game, why should I?)
Now I've left the Pacific Northwest after 28 years in the region, but my heart as a sports fan is still there. And it's been a very, very bad year to be a fan. It's even harder watching from a distance.
You see, part of a fan's job, his or her duty to the team, is to always be supportive, always to believe, always to care so damn much that collectively we fans can will the team to victory. (See, you can tell I'm a Cubs fan. I still believe, even though it's been a century now.)
The year started with a bad season for the Portland Tailblazers. Seattle lost the Sonics. Not just a game - they lost the whole damn team! Oregon State's men's basketball had a pathetic, awful season, fired the coach and hired a guy who happens to be the brother-in-law of the president elect. Not that that will help. The Mariners started the MLB season with high hopes based on their huge team salary, and turned out to be the worst team in baseball this year.
But the hardest part has been football season, because I'm mostly a football fan and it's been terrible.
I've been a Seahawks fan since they started the franchise. Seriously, I was still in L.A. when the team first took the field, but I've been a fan from the beginning. I really, truly believed they were Super Bowl bound this year. Instead, for one reason and another having mostly to do with a vengeful God, they pretty much suck this year. Almost the same personnel that won the division last year, and they've lost all but two games so far in 2008. It's been crazy. They've had so many injuries, so much bizarre trouble, that it can only be ascribed to the diety. (They will win this weekend - they're playing the Rams who are much, much worse - but all that'll mean is they'll drop down the list for next year's draft and lose a chance at a better player.)
And if the 'Hawks have been in the toilet, the Northwest's college teams have been much, much worse. U-Dub didn't win a game this year. Not one. WSU won two games, but one was against the Huskies so that doesn't really count.
The lone shining spot was the OSU Beavers. They started shaky (they ALWAYS start shaky - when will Riley get them to start the season sharp?) but then they went on a roll. They won six straight games. They beat highly touted USC (I hate USC. Beating the Trojans was great.) All they needed was one more win or a USC loss and the Beavers would go to the Rose Bowl, which they'd last visited in 1965 (or 4 B.C. – Before Choke - for any Cub fans keeping score.) All they had to do was beat the hated University of Oregon Ducks in the Civil War game two weeks ago.
It took quite a bit of effort to find a way to listen to the game. We finally found a station in Oregon that streamed the game live, downloaded software, and gathered around the computer to listen to history in the making.
So of course, having built up our hopes, the Beavers lost. And they didn't just lose. The Ducks crushed them, exposed them, made us see that the whole six-game winning streak was a sham, even the win over SC. It was pretty awful. They'd just been setting us up to break our hearts. Why would you do that, Beavers? Why?
But it wasn't quite the end. The Beavers could still smell Roses if USC lost to its bitter cross-town rival UCLA last weekend. It could happen. That's the stuff that makes sports so engrossing, the possibility of the impossible, of the underdog rising up and bringing down the bigger, cockier rival.
Which of course they didn't. The Trojans ran roughshod over the Bruins. It wasn't as bad as the Ducks dismantling the Beavers, but it was a steady, workmanlike victory that put the nail in the coffin that was the Beavers' season.
Really, I can only blame myself. Even though I've moved 4,000 miles from the region, the fact that I still care about teams from the Northwest is enough to doom them.
Don't believe me?
Remember, I am the son of a lifelong Cubs fan. Dad brought his sports jinx with him when the family moved to Los Angeles in 1970. The 1972 Lakers were the greatest basketball team of all time. Don't give me Michael Jordan's Bulls or Larry Bird's Celtics or the Kareem-Magic-Worthy Lakers of the '80s. For one season the 1972 Lakers were better than any team ever. They finished 69-13, won a still-record 33 straight games. Think about that. For almost two months they didn't lose a single game. In the finals they beat the Knicks four games to one. Chamberlain, West, Goodrich, Hairston, Riley, Erickson, Ellis. They won all but five of their home games - they were 36-5 at the Forum.
My dad went to four Laker games that year. They lost all four. What are the odds?
So even though I'm now out here on my warm sunny island, as far from the Seahawks and the Beavers and the Huskies as it's possible to be, those jinxed fan rays that shoot out of me are still beaming clear across the continent and dooming my teams.
But just wait. Next year the Seahawks are going to win the Super Bowl. I know it. I'm sure of it.
I believe.
jb
But you never lose your connection to your sports teams.
I moved from Chicago almost half a century ago, but I'll always be a Cubs fan - even though I don't even follow baseball anymore. I was born a Cubs fan, the son of a Cubs fan. That means I have a family legacy of some of the most painful memories in sports. Summer of '69? That might mean all sorts of political and social upheaval to you, but mostly to me it means the Great Choke, the year the Cubs fell apart in August and lost the pennant to the Mets.
I lived in L.A. in the '70s and still have an affection for the Dodgers, although as I say I don't care about baseball anymore. (I figure if the owners and the players don't care about the game, why should I?)
Now I've left the Pacific Northwest after 28 years in the region, but my heart as a sports fan is still there. And it's been a very, very bad year to be a fan. It's even harder watching from a distance.
You see, part of a fan's job, his or her duty to the team, is to always be supportive, always to believe, always to care so damn much that collectively we fans can will the team to victory. (See, you can tell I'm a Cubs fan. I still believe, even though it's been a century now.)
The year started with a bad season for the Portland Tailblazers. Seattle lost the Sonics. Not just a game - they lost the whole damn team! Oregon State's men's basketball had a pathetic, awful season, fired the coach and hired a guy who happens to be the brother-in-law of the president elect. Not that that will help. The Mariners started the MLB season with high hopes based on their huge team salary, and turned out to be the worst team in baseball this year.
But the hardest part has been football season, because I'm mostly a football fan and it's been terrible.
I've been a Seahawks fan since they started the franchise. Seriously, I was still in L.A. when the team first took the field, but I've been a fan from the beginning. I really, truly believed they were Super Bowl bound this year. Instead, for one reason and another having mostly to do with a vengeful God, they pretty much suck this year. Almost the same personnel that won the division last year, and they've lost all but two games so far in 2008. It's been crazy. They've had so many injuries, so much bizarre trouble, that it can only be ascribed to the diety. (They will win this weekend - they're playing the Rams who are much, much worse - but all that'll mean is they'll drop down the list for next year's draft and lose a chance at a better player.)
And if the 'Hawks have been in the toilet, the Northwest's college teams have been much, much worse. U-Dub didn't win a game this year. Not one. WSU won two games, but one was against the Huskies so that doesn't really count.
The lone shining spot was the OSU Beavers. They started shaky (they ALWAYS start shaky - when will Riley get them to start the season sharp?) but then they went on a roll. They won six straight games. They beat highly touted USC (I hate USC. Beating the Trojans was great.) All they needed was one more win or a USC loss and the Beavers would go to the Rose Bowl, which they'd last visited in 1965 (or 4 B.C. – Before Choke - for any Cub fans keeping score.) All they had to do was beat the hated University of Oregon Ducks in the Civil War game two weeks ago.
It took quite a bit of effort to find a way to listen to the game. We finally found a station in Oregon that streamed the game live, downloaded software, and gathered around the computer to listen to history in the making.
So of course, having built up our hopes, the Beavers lost. And they didn't just lose. The Ducks crushed them, exposed them, made us see that the whole six-game winning streak was a sham, even the win over SC. It was pretty awful. They'd just been setting us up to break our hearts. Why would you do that, Beavers? Why?
But it wasn't quite the end. The Beavers could still smell Roses if USC lost to its bitter cross-town rival UCLA last weekend. It could happen. That's the stuff that makes sports so engrossing, the possibility of the impossible, of the underdog rising up and bringing down the bigger, cockier rival.
Which of course they didn't. The Trojans ran roughshod over the Bruins. It wasn't as bad as the Ducks dismantling the Beavers, but it was a steady, workmanlike victory that put the nail in the coffin that was the Beavers' season.
Really, I can only blame myself. Even though I've moved 4,000 miles from the region, the fact that I still care about teams from the Northwest is enough to doom them.
Don't believe me?
Remember, I am the son of a lifelong Cubs fan. Dad brought his sports jinx with him when the family moved to Los Angeles in 1970. The 1972 Lakers were the greatest basketball team of all time. Don't give me Michael Jordan's Bulls or Larry Bird's Celtics or the Kareem-Magic-Worthy Lakers of the '80s. For one season the 1972 Lakers were better than any team ever. They finished 69-13, won a still-record 33 straight games. Think about that. For almost two months they didn't lose a single game. In the finals they beat the Knicks four games to one. Chamberlain, West, Goodrich, Hairston, Riley, Erickson, Ellis. They won all but five of their home games - they were 36-5 at the Forum.
My dad went to four Laker games that year. They lost all four. What are the odds?
So even though I'm now out here on my warm sunny island, as far from the Seahawks and the Beavers and the Huskies as it's possible to be, those jinxed fan rays that shoot out of me are still beaming clear across the continent and dooming my teams.
But just wait. Next year the Seahawks are going to win the Super Bowl. I know it. I'm sure of it.
I believe.
jb
Friday, November 28, 2008
Thanksgiving
An interesting holiday, to be sure.
First, I'm sure there are Crucian Thanksgiving traditions, but I didn't learn them this year. I heard something about potato stuffing. In the store I saw yams bigger than my head – and I have a largish noggin! But we went very traditional this year. Turkey. Bread stuffing. Mashed potatoes. The green-bean thing with the mushroom soup and French fried onion bits (yes we could find them on the island! Surprised me, I'll tell you!) I've always assumed that recipe came from Minnesota.
But all was not smooth sailing. Two days before the holiday the water started spitting when you turned a faucet or flushed the toilet. II checked the cistern and it was full, so that wasn't the problem. Except, as it turned out, it was. We have two cisterns, and we'd been drawing from the back one, which when we opened it up was empty – an excellent place to store a body. Or a whole LOT of bodies.
So I learned a lot about the plumbing of the house in the next 12 hours. Tori figured out how to switch from one cistern to the other. I had to glue back a piece of PVC pipe that had come loose when the pump ran dry. Then I got to learn how to prime a pump.
It's not perfect. You've heard the phrase describing something as "being held together with baling wire?" Well, literally, that's what ours is like right now. Saturday I'll take it apart, re-glue it and put it back together. But that'll mean being without water for at least 24 hours. That takes a bit of planning.
Which means that "pie day" was delayed. Pie Day is the day before Thanksgiving when Tori and the kids make a dozen or more pies – sometimes a lot more. Once I think they made two dozen. This year, what with the late start, only seven pies were made. Which turned out to be more than enough.
Pie Day was also slowed down by the fact that Wednesday was also Alex's birthday. And the next day was Thanksgiving, which is Alex's very favorite holiday. Seriously, she likes it better than Christmas. It's always, all her life, been a time when we get together with crowds of friends (hence all the pies) and it means a lot to her.
Her birthday Wednesday, then her favorite holiday. So, naturally, she got sick on Tuesday. Spectacularly sick, with lots of throwing up and other unpleasantness. Which – let me tell you - was a LOT more fun with no running water for 12 hours. Poor kid. She couldn't have her birthday cake because she'd just toss it back up. She couldn't eat Thanksgiving dinner for fear the sight of the food would make her sick.
So that part of the holiday – not so good. But in all, it was a good day. We flew in an out of he kitchen in teams and shifts and singly putting together the meal, checking the water system, enjoying each other's company. The kids enjoyed the fact that the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, which in Oregon airs at 7 in the morning and they never see the beginning, any of it, aired at 11 p.m. here because of the time zones, so they enjoyed the whole thing. Had a delightful dinner and enjoyed each other's company very much.
Then Tori and I took our after T-day dinner walk. We've been doing that since we were first married. Sometimes with the kids, sometimes alone. This year we went alone, because instead of walking through the neighborhood in Oregon with the temp hovering in the low 40s, we were walking along a starlit Caribbean beach with the temp in the low to mid 70s. Who wants kids with you in those circumstances? Even when it rained a little (and with one empty cistern, we certainly didn't object to that) it was warm, and just enough to make skin glisten in the star light.
I can unequivocally state that it was the BEST post Thanksgiving dinner walk I've ever taken. I think the girl by my side agreed with me.
So Thanksgiving. What were we thankful for?
Running water. Health and the fact that Alex seems to be on the mend. Thankful for food and family, and for the friends who are far away but who we thought of a lot during the day we associate with them.
jb
First, I'm sure there are Crucian Thanksgiving traditions, but I didn't learn them this year. I heard something about potato stuffing. In the store I saw yams bigger than my head – and I have a largish noggin! But we went very traditional this year. Turkey. Bread stuffing. Mashed potatoes. The green-bean thing with the mushroom soup and French fried onion bits (yes we could find them on the island! Surprised me, I'll tell you!) I've always assumed that recipe came from Minnesota.
But all was not smooth sailing. Two days before the holiday the water started spitting when you turned a faucet or flushed the toilet. II checked the cistern and it was full, so that wasn't the problem. Except, as it turned out, it was. We have two cisterns, and we'd been drawing from the back one, which when we opened it up was empty – an excellent place to store a body. Or a whole LOT of bodies.
So I learned a lot about the plumbing of the house in the next 12 hours. Tori figured out how to switch from one cistern to the other. I had to glue back a piece of PVC pipe that had come loose when the pump ran dry. Then I got to learn how to prime a pump.
It's not perfect. You've heard the phrase describing something as "being held together with baling wire?" Well, literally, that's what ours is like right now. Saturday I'll take it apart, re-glue it and put it back together. But that'll mean being without water for at least 24 hours. That takes a bit of planning.
Which means that "pie day" was delayed. Pie Day is the day before Thanksgiving when Tori and the kids make a dozen or more pies – sometimes a lot more. Once I think they made two dozen. This year, what with the late start, only seven pies were made. Which turned out to be more than enough.
Pie Day was also slowed down by the fact that Wednesday was also Alex's birthday. And the next day was Thanksgiving, which is Alex's very favorite holiday. Seriously, she likes it better than Christmas. It's always, all her life, been a time when we get together with crowds of friends (hence all the pies) and it means a lot to her.
Her birthday Wednesday, then her favorite holiday. So, naturally, she got sick on Tuesday. Spectacularly sick, with lots of throwing up and other unpleasantness. Which – let me tell you - was a LOT more fun with no running water for 12 hours. Poor kid. She couldn't have her birthday cake because she'd just toss it back up. She couldn't eat Thanksgiving dinner for fear the sight of the food would make her sick.
So that part of the holiday – not so good. But in all, it was a good day. We flew in an out of he kitchen in teams and shifts and singly putting together the meal, checking the water system, enjoying each other's company. The kids enjoyed the fact that the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, which in Oregon airs at 7 in the morning and they never see the beginning, any of it, aired at 11 p.m. here because of the time zones, so they enjoyed the whole thing. Had a delightful dinner and enjoyed each other's company very much.
Then Tori and I took our after T-day dinner walk. We've been doing that since we were first married. Sometimes with the kids, sometimes alone. This year we went alone, because instead of walking through the neighborhood in Oregon with the temp hovering in the low 40s, we were walking along a starlit Caribbean beach with the temp in the low to mid 70s. Who wants kids with you in those circumstances? Even when it rained a little (and with one empty cistern, we certainly didn't object to that) it was warm, and just enough to make skin glisten in the star light.
I can unequivocally state that it was the BEST post Thanksgiving dinner walk I've ever taken. I think the girl by my side agreed with me.
So Thanksgiving. What were we thankful for?
Running water. Health and the fact that Alex seems to be on the mend. Thankful for food and family, and for the friends who are far away but who we thought of a lot during the day we associate with them.
jb
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
Timing is Everything
Except when camping, I've never used bottled propane as my cooking fuel. But when we moved into our home here, well, that's how you do it on St, Croix. So we contacted Antilles Gas Co. and ordered our first bottle - 100 pounds of gas. The big blue and silver tank sits out back where it's hooked up to the house. During the hurricane we made sure it was tied down securely, but other than that we haven't done anything to it except use it.
There's no gauge on it, so there's really no way of knowing when it's empty except sort of hefting it and guessing. When the guy delivered the first tank, he said it would last three months. That was in August. It's now been almost four months and there was no sign of it giving out, nothing you could tell. The flame didn't flicker any more than it had when we first got it.
But with Thanksgiving coming, we decided not to wait for trouble. The last think you want is for the flame to go out in the oven half way through cooking your turkey. (Yes, we've decided to go with turkey this year. More on that another time.) So I called the gas company and the guy came out.
Tori was here when he arrived. He unsecured the tank from where we'd tied it down, disconnected, and lifted it. And his eyes got big.
"This tank is empty!" he said with surprise. By that, he meant completely empty. As in, not one more meal could have been cooked by it. He rarely sees a tank that empty except when the resident makes a mistake - as we almost did - and runs out of fuel.
So we were lucky there. I had cooked dinner Sunday night and there was no sign that I was running on empty.
I cooked breakfast this morning an there was no difference in the blue flame from the stovetop.
Just lucky I guess. In life, as in comedy, timing is everything.
There's no gauge on it, so there's really no way of knowing when it's empty except sort of hefting it and guessing. When the guy delivered the first tank, he said it would last three months. That was in August. It's now been almost four months and there was no sign of it giving out, nothing you could tell. The flame didn't flicker any more than it had when we first got it.
But with Thanksgiving coming, we decided not to wait for trouble. The last think you want is for the flame to go out in the oven half way through cooking your turkey. (Yes, we've decided to go with turkey this year. More on that another time.) So I called the gas company and the guy came out.
Tori was here when he arrived. He unsecured the tank from where we'd tied it down, disconnected, and lifted it. And his eyes got big.
"This tank is empty!" he said with surprise. By that, he meant completely empty. As in, not one more meal could have been cooked by it. He rarely sees a tank that empty except when the resident makes a mistake - as we almost did - and runs out of fuel.
So we were lucky there. I had cooked dinner Sunday night and there was no sign that I was running on empty.
I cooked breakfast this morning an there was no difference in the blue flame from the stovetop.
Just lucky I guess. In life, as in comedy, timing is everything.
Friday, November 14, 2008
I Find That Very Odd
I've got CNN on while I work this morning, and they ran that ad again – the ad extolling the joys, the adventure, the sheer DELIGHT of taking your family on a vacation to beautiful Nebraska.
Nebraska??? I live in the freakin' Virgin Islands!! Nebraska??!? Let's see – Virgin Islands? Warm, beautiful beaches, balmy temperatures, deep, deep blue waters, friendly smiling people, tropical rain forest. Nebraska? Prairie. Rolling fields of wheat. Tornadoes. Raging blizzards. Have I missed anything?
I'm just not sure why the Nebraska tourism people even bother running the ad here. Sure, maybe if you lived in some rusting old industrial city with a winter composed of three months of howling bleak frozen nothingness, maybe Nebraska would look good. But in the Virgin Islands? The worst thing I can say about this place is a lot of people here seem to think Coors Lite is beer.
I think my family drove across a corner of Nebraska 40 years ago on our way home from Yellowstone. That's about right, a dozen or so miles of Nebraska every half century or so.
As I recall, the Nebraska rest areas were very clean. That counts for something.
jb
Nebraska??? I live in the freakin' Virgin Islands!! Nebraska??!? Let's see – Virgin Islands? Warm, beautiful beaches, balmy temperatures, deep, deep blue waters, friendly smiling people, tropical rain forest. Nebraska? Prairie. Rolling fields of wheat. Tornadoes. Raging blizzards. Have I missed anything?
I'm just not sure why the Nebraska tourism people even bother running the ad here. Sure, maybe if you lived in some rusting old industrial city with a winter composed of three months of howling bleak frozen nothingness, maybe Nebraska would look good. But in the Virgin Islands? The worst thing I can say about this place is a lot of people here seem to think Coors Lite is beer.
I think my family drove across a corner of Nebraska 40 years ago on our way home from Yellowstone. That's about right, a dozen or so miles of Nebraska every half century or so.
As I recall, the Nebraska rest areas were very clean. That counts for something.
jb
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
Milestones and Holidays
Many things to talk about.
Halloween
Two weeks ago we found a place to take the kids Trick-or-Treating for Halloween. Up to an hour or so before we left I didn't think that was going to happen, but Tori was determined. There's a housing development near the refinery – owned by the refinery, as it turns out, with a terrific view of the refinery (if that's what you want) – that seemed almost Southern Californian. All the houses almost identical, only differences being the foliage and the slight angles or distances they were set off from the road. Kids all up and down the streets, which were closed to traffic. It seemed almost like something from the states. That didn't mean much to Tori and me, but it was nice for the kids. Not everything from their lives has been changed.
Four months
The next day, Nov. 1, we were driving somewhere and I turned to Tori and said, "Happy anniversary."
"What?" she said.
"We've been here four months now."
She thought about it, then turned back to me.
"Is that all? It seems like we've been here longer."
It does, she's right. We live here, it's home now. We're settled in, know where we're going when we get in the car. Know what to expect from traffic (basically, we know you can never anticipate what traffic is likely to do.) We have our places we like to go, people we know, stuff like that. It seems like we've been here a lot longer than four months. But that's the truth of it. She got off the plane with her mother and our son Max on July 1. That's four months.
And counting.
Election Milestone
Election night was something, wasn't it?
We were glued to the TV, enjoying every minute of the big news.
But whether you supported Barack Obama, as we did, or preferred Sen. McCain, you can't deny it was a breathtaking moment. Let me share just a little bit of he reaction here on the island, where the population is 76 percent black. VI residents can't vote in the U.S. presidential election, but we sure felt a part of it here. I've seen more Obama T-shirts here than I did on the mainland, and people here contributed to the campaign even though they couldn't vote.
On election night we spent an hour at an Obama victory party at Pier 69, a restaurant/bar in Frederiksted. The woman who owns it was dancing, her arms raised in the air and shouting, "I'm 64 years old and this is the most important day of my life!" There was a woman there who said not only had she not ever thought she'd live to see a black U.S. president, her 22-year-old daughter had said the same thing. Her five daughters, by the way, all live in the states and all voted for Obama.
Another woman said she couldn't help thinking about the old Danish fort just a few hundred feet from where we sat. For centuries African people had passed through the fort in chains, bound for slavery in the sugar can fields. Some no doubt were moved on to the states, where now their progeny were lining up to vote for a black man for president.
It's hard to overstate how much last week's election meant to so many people all around the world, even those who couldn't vote.
We got home just in time to see the projection – CNN Projects Barack Obama is Next President of the United States" and opened the bottle of champagne we'd bought fr the occasion.
Somehow it felt even more important to me for having spent some time with my neighbors at Pier 69.
Halloween
Two weeks ago we found a place to take the kids Trick-or-Treating for Halloween. Up to an hour or so before we left I didn't think that was going to happen, but Tori was determined. There's a housing development near the refinery – owned by the refinery, as it turns out, with a terrific view of the refinery (if that's what you want) – that seemed almost Southern Californian. All the houses almost identical, only differences being the foliage and the slight angles or distances they were set off from the road. Kids all up and down the streets, which were closed to traffic. It seemed almost like something from the states. That didn't mean much to Tori and me, but it was nice for the kids. Not everything from their lives has been changed.
Four months
The next day, Nov. 1, we were driving somewhere and I turned to Tori and said, "Happy anniversary."
"What?" she said.
"We've been here four months now."
She thought about it, then turned back to me.
"Is that all? It seems like we've been here longer."
It does, she's right. We live here, it's home now. We're settled in, know where we're going when we get in the car. Know what to expect from traffic (basically, we know you can never anticipate what traffic is likely to do.) We have our places we like to go, people we know, stuff like that. It seems like we've been here a lot longer than four months. But that's the truth of it. She got off the plane with her mother and our son Max on July 1. That's four months.
And counting.
Election Milestone
Election night was something, wasn't it?
We were glued to the TV, enjoying every minute of the big news.
But whether you supported Barack Obama, as we did, or preferred Sen. McCain, you can't deny it was a breathtaking moment. Let me share just a little bit of he reaction here on the island, where the population is 76 percent black. VI residents can't vote in the U.S. presidential election, but we sure felt a part of it here. I've seen more Obama T-shirts here than I did on the mainland, and people here contributed to the campaign even though they couldn't vote.
On election night we spent an hour at an Obama victory party at Pier 69, a restaurant/bar in Frederiksted. The woman who owns it was dancing, her arms raised in the air and shouting, "I'm 64 years old and this is the most important day of my life!" There was a woman there who said not only had she not ever thought she'd live to see a black U.S. president, her 22-year-old daughter had said the same thing. Her five daughters, by the way, all live in the states and all voted for Obama.
Another woman said she couldn't help thinking about the old Danish fort just a few hundred feet from where we sat. For centuries African people had passed through the fort in chains, bound for slavery in the sugar can fields. Some no doubt were moved on to the states, where now their progeny were lining up to vote for a black man for president.
It's hard to overstate how much last week's election meant to so many people all around the world, even those who couldn't vote.
We got home just in time to see the projection – CNN Projects Barack Obama is Next President of the United States" and opened the bottle of champagne we'd bought fr the occasion.
Somehow it felt even more important to me for having spent some time with my neighbors at Pier 69.
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