A Lull in the Storms

The snow seems to have stopped for a little while, although it will apparently be back either later today or tomorrow. I've managed to mop up the project on which I was working this week, albeit one day late because of being knocked offline yesterday. Lisa's dentist's office called and said, "don't come in today for your appointment -- the snow is too bad for us to open the office today." And that tree that in the past has dropped branches across the path that crosses the property has dropped four more branches. (I'll post pictures if Lisa ever gives me the memory card with the photos on it.) With more snow coming tomorrow, I guess we'd better get out there and cut branches and clear the path today. And maybe, just maybe, go get some groceries with an eye toward not having another chance until this weekend at the earliest.

A Near Miss

With the snow having stopped falling for a while and even some sun coming out, melting snow on the tree that overlooks the trailer, and with more snow forecast through Christmas, we decided that we would take a shot at going in to Salem to fill up the propane bottles and get groceries. Had we known what was ahead of us, we might have decided to stay home.

Conditions weren't too bad at Mehama, but got steadily worse as we approached Salem. Fog began to form, and the road, while mostly clear, had icy patches. Oregon 22 coming into Salem is a freeway with an open median, and it approaches Salem by coming down a medium-steep hill. As we headed down that hill, a pickup truck powering up the hill tried to change lanes, lost control, and came careening across the snow-covered median right toward us. It happened so quickly there was no time to react, which turned out to be the best for us. The pickup missed us by centimeters, kept sliding across both oncoming lanes, and crashed sideways into the barrier on our side of the road behind us. Lisa heard the loud crash, although I was too distracted. At no time did she lose control of the Vanagon, but she was badly frightened, of course. A half-second earlier and he would have plowed right into us!

( After you've survived a near-death experience, the rest is sort of an anti-climax )

Lisa sent me back over to her father's house, where I'd left a hard drive to be cloned for her. Unfortunately, the clone failed for reasons unclear -- the destination hard drive may have defective sectors on it. I'll try one of the other spare drives I have here and let it run overnight, as drive clones take a while. Lisa also gave me the chip with the photos she's taken the past couple of days, and I'll post them later.

Storm Photos

I've finally had a chance to organize some of the photos taken by Lisa and her father documenting the snow we've had here in Mehama.

This is no action photo -- it's how badly the snow clumped on the shovel while I was doing my part to keep the path clear.

See the two identical grey boxes sitting against the red wall behind me? The one on the left holds the battery/inverter setup Lisa built for her father's home office. Essentially it puts all of his computers and ham radio gear on a large UPS. Remember this box; I'll be talking about it again later. (The other box is empty for now but will be put to use in the future.)

( Lots more photos behind the cut )

Getting these photos posted was delayed for quite a while due to power problems here. Remember the battery box/inverter I mentioned earlier? The ground-fault circuit tripped sometime today (or possibly yesterday when the power glitched badly) and we didn't realize it until the batteries drained and the power died. (There may have been a way to know something was wrong inside the house, but I don't know what it is and Lisa's father didn't notice -- Lisa probably knows.) After poking around the inverter box for a while, we found the tripped breaker and reset it, so utility power began charging the batteries and powering the office again. The office circuits include the DSL modem, so once it rebooted, we were set to go again. It's annoying to have drained the batteries, however, in circumstances like this where we really want full batteries in case we lose utility power.