Cop Car's Beat

Week in Review - 10/19/2019

Tuesday, as I mentioned in a comment to a post on Liz's Finding life hard? I had a neat, weather-related experience. As I wrote, there, "While working in the yard, this morning (a balmy 17 degrees C when I went out), I noticed that my clothes were suddenly soggy - and that the concrete patio was completely dampened. The dew point dropped, suddenly, and the moisture came out of the air in an instant! I've been caught in sudden fog while flying, but this was a new experience."

About an hour later, I noticed that the sun had come out, again. Looking out the window, I saw the fog bank that had just moved out. Grabbing a camera, I photographed the beautiful scene. In the first photo, below, The fog bank is the lower, dark mass of cloud, separated from the higher-level clouds, in the photo, by a small strip of blue sky.

Below is a zoomed-in photo of the largest piece of blue sky. Obviously, as is generally true when fog is present, the winds were light-to-non-existent; but, eventually, we had a totally blue sky.

 

This was the week to get a bunch of paperwork/licensure completed. Last week my renewed passport arrived, the old passport having expired in 2017 or 2018. This week, I took that passport plus a bunch of other paperwork to our local driver's license office (about 1 mile from our home) to get my "Real ID" driver's license, along with early renewal of the old license that was to expire next spring.

Below is a copy of information from Kansas Real ID web page delineating paperwork requirements. I have high-lighted the documents that I actually took with me. Please note that, by taking my passport, I was not required to present any of the documents listed in item 4. That would have been a real drag since I've changed my name twice and I'm not convinced that I have original copies of the documents attesting to those changes. Fortunately, for me, I proved to the Federal government, many years ago, that I am who I say I am, using my current name that was assumed in 1979, and they no longer require me to present documentation of name changes.

That same web site explains the need filled by a Real ID.

The REAL ID Act was passed by federal lawmakers in 2005 to enact the 9/11 Commission’s recommendation for a “set standard for the issuance of sources of identification.” This established a minimum security standard for state-issued driver’s licenses.

Beginning October 1, 2020, anyone 18 years and older will need a REAL ID compliant driver’s license or another acceptable form of ID to fly within the United States.

In addition, a REAL ID will be required to enter federal facilities where identification is currently required for entrance.

Courts, Post Offices, Social Security offices do not require identification for entrance, so they are exempt.

Kansas began issuing REAL ID credentials in August 2017. REAL ID is not a required credential but will help ease the check-in process when flying or entering a federally protected facility.

Since I no longer volunteer as a Government Liaison, I don't know why I should need to enter a federally protected facility - nor do I anticipate any need to fly; but, I've learned in life that I should be prepared. A couple of times I've been caught short by previously-made short-sighted decisions. The consequences of those decisions cost me money, time, and convenience.

Earlier in the week, I went into Wichita to renew my car tag which was set to expire at the end of October. Unfortunately, during the past year, the car tag office that had been in our City of Derby for several years had been closed. I wanted to go online to renew my tag; but, unfortunately, if I ever received a notice for renewal, I could not find it and a PIN from that notice is required to renew online. After waiting for 1.5 hours, my phone number appeared on the queue display as being the next person to be called. At that point, one of the employees got in front of our crowd of about 100 people to announce that another tag office, about a 7-minute drive away by freeway, had only one person to serve. About half of the crowd disappeared to avail themselves of a shorter wait. As I had taken Hunky Husband's tag renewal notice and check with me, I was able to pay for and receive the little stickers to add to each of our license plates (below photo).

Hunky Husband finally got around to opening the box to extract his new computer. In the olden days, one received an Owner's Manual with electronics. It was, for a computer, perhaps 100-200 pages long. Prominently featured in that booklet would be a cartoon of the front and back of the unit with arrows pointing to each feature and assigning a number. That number could then be looked up on the same/next page to give the name/description of the feature. Not anymore!

With this computer came an 8-page booklet, Quick Setup Guide. The front of the guide shows cartoons of only the ports into which one is to insert a plug with a representation of the plug to be plugged into each port. Well, I set about hooking it up (without need for the 8-page booklet!) and got to this point (photo, below) when I was stumped. Arrgh! This computer, being a new model, has no VGA port. Oh, swell. I hadn't even thought about HH's monitor being so old that it is VGA. **Gnashing teeth** Now, I must decide whether to go with an adaptive cable or bite the bullet and get HH a modern monitor. As this will probably be HH's last desktop computer system, I'll purchase the monitor. It'll work out better, in the end, I'm sure.

Take another look at the above photo. At the upper right-hand corner of the back of the unit you'll see "something" (closeup, below).

It looks like a short-wire antenna (WIFI?) to me. Whatever it is, it is flimsy. The upturned leg at the bottom was bent at about 45 degrees when I first saw it. I decided that it was supposed to have a plastic cover similar to the black plastic box 6" below it, below the upper fan. I looked for it in the plastic bag in which the unit had been encased, and found it; so, the fragile thing, whatever it is, is now protected by a black plastic box. (I can't really read the lettering on the thing or I might be able to learn definitively what it is.) I've made an exhaustive search, online, for labeled diagrams/photos of this computer. The online "User's Guide" to this computer has zero graphics included! In fact, by reading it one might conclude that software setup is the only real problem with computers.

Below are scans of the two pages (front cover and inside front cover) in the HP Quick Setup Guide that include graphics.

Rude awakening

Not since 1976 have I set an alarm to waken me. That rude awakening I can live without - especially since I have an internal alarm that wakes me at the "correct" time, no matter whether that is 3:00am or 6:00am. You can imagine my surprise, this morning, when a voice woke me at about 5:30am. Hunky Husband was my alarm. His phone had awakened him with a tornado warning and the emergency warning sirens were blaring in our neighborhood.

Quickly, I arose; donned my gardening clothes (old jeans cut off below the knees and an old tee shirt); put on a pair of eye glasses; put our valuables in their emergency hidey-hole; and put my jump boots, a hatchet, and two large screwdrivers (1 blade, 1 Phillips) into our own emergency hidey-hole. Only then did I join HH in the living room to watch the radar returns being shown on television.

By the exterior lighting on our house, we could see cottonwood limbs strewn all over the back yard - including our patio. The television reports soon indicated that the tornado danger that had been indicated for our area had moved on to terrorize other areas east of us; but, evaluation of the damage would need to be made nearer to sun-up when there was sufficient light. By 6:40am, I went outside to the serenade of chain saws, up and down our street, wielded by neighbors whose trees had sustained more damage than had ours.

The sun is not yet up; but, I'll post a few photos of our yard. Our damage was due to straight-line winds that probably gusted to about 70mph.

Our gingko tree in the front yard, planted in 2001, stands tall, straight, and proud. It shed but one small limb.

CORRECTION of 6/23/2019 4:03pm

So far, no one has corrected me (including the family members to whom I emailed a copy of this posting) in saying that our gingko tree had lost a branch. As anyone who looks at the photo can tell: that is no gingko branch, but another of the hundreds of cottonwood branches. It had to have flown over or around our house to end in that position! Sorry if I mislead you.

But two limbs were broken from the cluster of small redbud trees in our front yard, planted in about 2004.

The sugar maple tree in our front yard, planted in 2001, may be sick but it shed no limbs! The large cottonwood which, in any weather, is prone to shedding hundreds of small branches per month, shed all over the back yard. You can also probably see in the background that the creek is up - not out of its banks, but high. (The creek is visible to the right of the table, on which I note that the rain gage was knocked over by the wind.)

Fred's fence took a beating. Since the fence had already met its life expectancy before Fred moved in three years ago, and since one of the connections between sections has repeatedly failed, it wasn't a surprise to see a section of the fence down - plus another couple of boards a foot or so to the right of that section. The only thing on which it fell that I care about is a small red maple tree that I've been cultivating for Dudette.

I came in from taking the photos, without doing any yard work, because I was getting rained upon. I think it has stopped, so it's time for me to get back to work. Below is the section of the Planting Bed along the driveway in which I weeded and spread mulch, yesterday - with leaves added by the storm. Guess what yard work I'll be doing, today? HH has volunteered to help. Yay! Real muscle to apply to the task of cleanup.

ADDITION of 6/24/2019 9:30am - Information from the county emergency management office (excerpts)

The NWS [National Weather Service] determined that straight-line winds hit Derby early Sunday morning on June 23, 2019.  The damage was caused by 75 to 90 mph straight-line winds and damaged primarily softwood trees across southern and southeast Sedgwick County.  The path of the storm was about half a mile to a mile wide that stretched along a nearly 11-mile path from northwest of Peck to Derby.  Public Work crews in Derby are working on clearing debris and restoring power to the residences in the area.

....

Rainfall over the weekend totaled about 1.5 to 3 inches and the current warnings affecting Sedgwick County Rivers are as follows: 

....  

Big Ark[ansas] at Derby:  From early this morning until Tuesday evening.  At 3:00 AM Monday the stage was 11.6 feet.  Flood stage is 12.0 feet and Minor flooding is forecast.  Forecast - Rise above flood stage by early this morning and continue to rise to near 13.0 feet by this evening. The river will fall below flood stage by late Tuesday morning.  Impact - At 12.0 feet, the river will be out of its main channel and expand to a width near 600 feet wide. Expect flooding of low-lying areas around the river.  The Derby Park facility on downstream east bank of the Market St bridge is inundated.

Sounds bad, does good

When first I saw this embedded video from YouTube at Ronni's Time Goes By, I could think of several reasons why the system would be a bad idea. The people in the video answered each of my concerns. Enjoy! Note the spontaneous formation of hexagonal close-pack by the balls.

 

Derby Weather - Starting on Dudette's birthday, 5/28/2019

Happy birthday, Dudette, and many, many more!

Yesterday, we were predicted to have a non-rainy day, today, so I started unpacking from the "shall we evacuate" exercise. Now, our emergency management folks are telling us to expect severe thunderstorms (with hail) and torrential rains - starting at 4:00pm-6:00pm and lasting throughout the night. And...the nursery just called to say that they will arrive in a few minutes to plant the replacement dogwood tree. Yay!

Addition of 5/31/2019 7:17am: The torrential downpours missed us by a few miles. Yay! Yesterday and today have been dry - except for the heavy dew each morning. I've been "killing" myself working in the yard - hauling in bags of dirt, spreading it into the low spots, spreading mulch over the dirt, cutting the dead stalks off of the spent irises, pulling tens of thousands of tree seedlings, pruning bushes - and I doubt that anyone can tell that I've done a thing! Hunky Husband has mowed the grass twice this week, at the highest setting for the first mowing and at two notches lower, today.

Members of the second hatch of house finches are starting to crowd the nest on the front porch and the bluebirds have been feeding something within their nesting box.

The weather guessers say that we will have more waves of rain during June. Jason gave me the grand tour of their yard which includes a peninsula that is about five feet lower than the rim of the creek bank. There are huge trees spaced along the creek bed causing the water to snake around in about 50-foot (lateral) waves. Much erosion was in view that is not visible from our yard.

The temperature is 88 degrees Fahrenheit and the chiggers are biting. I'll let anyone else who wants it have summer in Kansas. Bah, humbug!

Addition of 6/1/2019 4:55pm: No wonder the house finch nest looks crowded. There are five youngsters in that nest! Below is a (poor) photo of mom feeding the brood. The photo was taken through a dirty window, without flash, which means my essential tremors blur the view.

Addition of 6/5/2019 1:12pm: All five of the young house finches have fledged. Since the nest is now three stories tall, I should probably take the swing down and clean it. I noticed that the young birds seemed to have mites and I don't want the next brood to get leftovers. 

Derby flooding - starting 5/20/2019

For ease of later retrieval, I am importing the flooding information into this posting out of the Tee Shirts posting. To see photos of flooding earlier in the month, please see One more entry into the non-ecclesiastical litany on flooding at CC's. 

Status report as of 5/20/2019 8:36pm: The creek is up to its banks, now, we've already had 2" of rain, and are expecting another 3". We are under possible evacuation alert - eastern part of Sedgwick County, on a creek. For the first time, ever, I have packed essential stuff into my car (it filled 1/2 of the trunk.)  If the water gets high enough (which we are expecting it to do), Hunky Husband will pack his car. If we evacuate, I expect us to leave at the same time. We plan to take turns watching the back yard through the night. 

Note to Bogie: Your quilt and materials are in my trunk. I'm not losing all that work to any flooding - lol!

Status report as of 5/20/2019 9:22pm: Hunky Husband just toddled off to bed. When he came in to give me a good-night smooch, he showed me an alert on his cell phone. Our City of Derby is under Flood Watch through next Sunday! I have the night watch.

Status report as of 5/21/2019 8:52am: The creek is high and thus somewhat out of its banks; but, it is flowing well and has not yet come up into the wild grass area of our yard. So far, I’ve not seen any logs floating down the creek – thanks to the clearing action of the flood a couple of weeks ago, no doubt. It rained off-and-on, all night. I failed to ask HH how much rain he removed from the gage.

Status report as of 5/21/2019 11:15am: Hunky Husband reports 3.3" in the rain gage. Sporadic rain falling.

Status report as of 5/22/2019 9:55am: We are breathing a sigh of relief, this morning. The creek is within its banks and the sun is shining. of course, rain is to resume this afternoon, they say. I unloaded my car trunk; but, I put the contents into my den rather than distributing it back into our household. I needed to haul some bags of dirt in my trunk to fill in low spots around the house's foundation. In planting the sedums that I bought Monday, I noted that each hole that I dug (about 2" deep) filled with water within 10 seconds.

Status report as of 5/23/2019 6:30pm: We had been told to expect thunderstorms starting at 4:00pm. At 4:08pm, it started raining, heavily. At 4:11PM, it stopped. We were on the edge of the storm, so we breathed another sigh of relief. I finished planting the sedums, after dinner, getting them all (36 plants) into the ground. I also staked the walnut tree that had been knocked over by the rushing waters of the flooding. If the staking works in flooding that we yet expect to have this week, I'll stake the umbrella catalpa tree that had, to a lesser extent, been knocked askew.

Below is a photo of the second tiny bouquet from Hunky Husband's rose garden, for the year. The large blossoms are Peace and Midas Touch tea roses, while the small blossom is from the fake Mr Lincoln.

Status report as of 5/24/2019 4:42pm: I went to the gym, this morning, then picked up Elegant Friend. We had lunch, toured the demonstration gardens that Kansas State University has up the that area of Wichita, then called it quits. I drove home through heavy rain and a small patch of stuff that looked like melted hail. (Hail in the forecast had been the reason I headed home so early.)

At about 2:00pm, it started raining heavily here at the house - at the rate of 4" or 5" per hour. Fortunately, the heavy rain lasted but about 15 minutes. The street was 2/3 covered by water (the crown was above water) and I noted the standing water locations that I still need to fill in with top soil. There was a small tornado about 10 miles from us about 30 minutes ago. We expect more storms (we see them training up toward us on the doppler radar display on TV) throughout the night and tomorrow. Hail and possible tornados are possible. Our big worry, of course, is the creek rising from all of the runoff. 

Status report as of 5/25/2019 8:47am: We received a total of a bit over 2" of rain, yesterday. We watched the creek rise, but it never really exceeded its banks. This morning (6:00am) the water level had fallen by about 2', but still very high.

A turtle made its way from the pond across the street from us (behind the facing houses) toward our creek. It came up the edging between our yard and Fred's. Unfortunately, my photo session disturbed the turtle and it took the long way around Fred's property. My bad.

               
 

Status report as of 5/26/2019 9:30am: It has been raining, off-and-on, all night and morning. The creek is about 1' higher than the highest it achieved, yesterday. Flood warnings have been extended through Tuesday, May 28. Tomorrow I shall probably start a new status posting. This one is getting rather long.

Tee Shirts

Over the years I've occasionally put together groups of tee-shirts (or pillows) on which were presented "cute/smart/sassy" sayings or visual treats. Instead of awaiting accumulation of such trivia, I present the photo of a tee shirt that was posted by ZapperZ at Physics and Physicists on 5/12/2019, The Geekiest T-Shirt That I've Ever Bought, below.

The shirt reminds me of a conversation I had with our next-door neighbor following our last flood. Whatever it was that I was trying to tell Fred, I couldn't think of the word "momentum"; so, I told him, "You know, mv." Fortunately, being a dentist, he had completed enough physics to translate mv as momentum. To his further credit, he asked, "Isn't momentum sometimes given as p?"

One more entry into the non-ecclesiastical litany on flooding at CC's

As I mentioned in a comment a few days ago, we have experienced "one more" flood - not of our house, I hasten to add, but of our property of which about 40% or so is designated as "drainage" easement. [A listing of easily found previous postings on the subject of our floodings, over the years, is included at the bottom of the posting.]

Tuesday of last week, Hunky Husband (my resident weather guru) and I were watching the weather. We had been experiencing rain, off and on, for a week or two. Weather was forecasted to dump another 3"-5" of rain on us. I heard the thunder and the pounding rain, off and on, all night. When I awoke Wednesday morning, HH had already been outside and marked the position of the resulting flood waters in our backyard. I could see that the nearest approach to our house had already passed...the water was receding. Below are photos that I took from our back porch as soon as there was enough light to take them.

There are several "views" shown in the photos, below. The upper version of each view, the larger photo, was taken at about 7:30AM while the lower version, the smaller photo, was taken at about 11:30AM. (I had actually taken photos, again, at 12:30PM by which time the creek had returned, nearly, to the confines of its banks; but, some of those photos are even worse than the photos at 11:30PM.)

View 1 shows the portion of the creek that we saw across Tonya & Jason's (T&J's) yard - approximately due East and showing the most upstream water that we see. [Our house is aligned at 45-degrees to the Cardinal compass points.] The rest of the photos are taken as I panned left-to-right. 

View 2

View 3

View 4, below, looks more-or-less due South.

 

View 5

View 6

View 7 - Unlike previous views, the upper (larger) photo was taken at about 8:30AM, my having failed to snap one at 7:30AM.

HH told me that we received over 7" of rain in the first eight days of May. I measured from the edge of our patio to the high-water mark to be 33' 4".

___________________________________________

Previous Cop Car's Beat postings concerning (or at least including information about) flooding of our property:

May 2008: The Rains Have Come...and Come...and Come....

May 04, 2008: Progress on Downed Tree

June 13, 2008: We've Not Had 40 Days & 40 Nights, but We've Had Enough, already!

April 27, 2009: Annual Flood – 2009 https://jelliclecat.typepad.com/cop_cars_beat/2009/04/annual-flood-2009.html

July 03, 2016: We set a new high

August 20, 2016: Enough, already!

September 18, 2016: More photos from trip to New Hampshire

Must share - stars!

Just found Pergelator's posting from 2019Mar18 that includes the photo, below. Wow! I've not seen that many stars since I was a kid. Unfortunately, most of our neighbors keep bright lights alight all night, every night. (The one across the street is a spotlight aimed at their flag which means we get it full-blast, lighting up our house, our yards, and our woods!) Thus, we can see few stars from here.

Well done, Chuck! (Click on the image, below, to enlarge, please.)

Kristy Berington waits on the Innoko River for her sister, Anna Berington, after they both left Shageluk during the Iditarod on March 9. (Marc Lester / ADN)

This has been one of those weeks

Like Bogie, Hunky Husband and I are, "Still alive and well. Just nothing going on to write about." In her latest posting, however, Bogie has some good links. One of Bogie's links is to an article about the Space X launching (the Crew Dragon capsule is now docked at the ISS). As an animal lover who for several years owned and ran an animal care business, Bogie also included a link to a story about dogs running the Iditarod this year.

WEATHER

Our weather has been whip-sawing us. Some days we didn't get above 20 degrees Fahrenheit. At least one day of the week, we reached the 60s. This morning, from about 3am to 8am, we received light snow - not nearly enough for ice cream.

Pretty but Insufficient

Just now the sun is shining brightly, but the temperature is 8 degrees F according to the thermometer on our front porch. (Parallax makes it look like 9 degrees F in the photo, below; but, trust me - it isn't that warm - lol.) 

Tonight, we are supposed to go to -1 degree Fahrenheit. Tomorrow night, we are supposed to go to +1 degree F - a real heat wave.

Hunky Husband even turned on the porch light last night. He said that our power company had asked that people do that in order to facilitate scoping out any power outages. We do, on occasion, lose power; but, we did not lose electrical power last night and when we do lose electrical power, it has never lasted for more than four hours - hardly worth mentioning. (We know if we have lost electrical power because the master unit of our intercom - between the breakfast room, upstairs, and HH's den, downstairs - "BINGS" when power is restored. Little did we know, when we built the house, what a waste of money would be that intercom system. It is easier for HH or me to yell up, or down, the open staircase!)

Officials worry about us old folks when power is "iffy"; but, unless a power outage continues for days and days, HH and I are good! We are fortunate that neither of us is on any health machine requiring electrical power. Usually, natural gas lines still flow and we have a gas fireplace and a gas cooking range - either of which we can light with a match. We have an oil lamp, and we fill our car tanks with gasoline when bad weather is in the offing. Oh! And we have a battery-powered backup sump pump (and could bail water from the sump, manually, if required.

Reprise of "The Blizzard of '83"

Liz's comment on snow ice cream brought to mind this posting from 2005. I've included the comments that were made on that posting. "Ronni" is Ronni Bennett of Time Goes By, who, in case you missed it has recently received good news during her "predicament" (as she calls it) with terminal cancer. "Bogie" is the same Bogie of Bogieblog, our dear younger daughter in New Hampshire.

January 27, 2005

The Blizzard of '83

Back in the late winter of 1982-1983, I wore so many hats that my neck bent from the weight. Being employed by a far-flung scientific and engineering firm that provided support to various branches of government, I headed up their onsite office that was located on an Air Force Base in the panhandle of Florida. From this office, virtually all of our work supported an Air Force program aimed at rapid resumption of aircraft operations from air fields that had sustained wartime damage. The office was staffed by a handful of engineers and one secretary.

There was quite a bit of travel involved in our work. At first, I did all of the traveling because my staff were all young and inexperienced; but, as rapidly as possible, I started to send the young engineers on travel, which they were eager to do. It was a professional advantage for them to gain experience in representing the company in a technical capacity, and it was an advantage to me to spend more time in the office. (We had to visit Long Island NY, Atlanta GA, Fort Worth TX, Seattle WA, St Louis MO, Los Angeles, and Dayton OH at least once each quarter. In addition, there were technical meetings to attend at Scott, Edwards, and Eglin Air Force Bases and management meetings to attend in McLean VA and Albuquerque NM.) Staff morale soared as they were shown that their competence was valued and by their occasionally being able to get away from the isolated venue in which we worked. I sent each staff member to meetings that were closest to the geographic area from which they had come--providing them opportunities to spend a couple of days seeing old friends and relatives without having to pay the expensive airfare or take time off of work. Our secretary was sent to company headquarters in McLean VA. We benefited greatly from her experience.

In the late winter of 1982-1983, my time on assignment was drawing to a close. I had told the company that I was only willing to be in Florida for two years—I wished to transfer to their Albuquerque office—and I had been vigilant in hiring and training the right mix of talents to take over the technical leadership and program management aspects of my assignment. One last program review was scheduled to be held in the company’s main headquarters in McLean. As the technical leadership role would be turned over to Mike, one of the young engineers when I left, he was required to accompany me on the trip. Geri, a secretary in Mclean with whom I had become friends during my two years on the program, was kind enough to invite me to spend the weekend with her and her family—in a suburb of Washington DC. I really looked forward to the weekend--it might be the last time I'd get to see her.

Mike, Randy (a young Air Force Captain), Stan (Civil Servant USAF engineer), and I flew into (then) Washington National Airport the evening before the meeting. There was a light snow in the air. The forecast prior to our leaving Florida had been for a goodly snow, so I had gone prepared. Wool slacks, high-topped boots, and my down jacket were in my suitcase. By the time we had rented a car and driven to the motel, there were a couple of inches of snow on the ground. When we arose the next morning, there were 6-7 inches of snow on the ground, snow was still falling, and it was forecast to continue throughout the day. We threw our luggage into the trunk, checked out of the motel, and left for the meeting—just a few miles away. Before we even left the parking lot, the shear pin failed on my (driver’s side) windshield wiper. Without an operative wiper, it would have been unsafe to drive, so I called the rental car agency to tell them where their car was and asked that they get a taxi to us—which they did in good order.

When we broke for lunch, there were about 10 inches of snow on the ground and still coming down at a good clip. I asked the Air Force if we could close down the meeting and let everyone go home—while they still could. No, we would finish the meeting. By about 2:30, the Air Force agreed that the meeting should be closed to let people get home. As my suitcase was in one of the offices, I stepped into a women’s room and changed into my “Nanook of the North” outfit. Before the guys took a taxi to the airport for their flights home, I checked with Mike to be sure that he had sufficient money on him. He assured me, twice, that he had “plenty". Off to the airport they went.

Geri and I threw my bag into her trunk and dug her car out of the by-now 14-16 inches of snow. Next, we picked her husband up from his office and set out on the 20-mile drive to their home. In their small Nissan, her husband was in the front passenger’s seat, while I sat behind Geri. This would later prove an interesting arrangement.

Never have I been as impressed by anyone’s driving as I was with Geri’s that afternoon. The county roads that she drove had been cleared at some point, but had plenty of snow on them. By now the snow was coming down at an alarming rate. How Geri could possibly tell where the road was, I’ll never know; but, incredibly, she kept us on the road. At about the 2/3-way home point, the windshield wipers quit. Geri quickly stuck her head out the window to see where we were going. She kept driving. Eventually, I thought to slip my mouton earmuffs out of my pocket and onto Geri's ears.

My sitting behind Geri proved interesting because, while leaning out the window, she could not reach the center console-mounted lever to shift gears. We quickly established that her husband didn’t think that he could shift left-handed, so she would call out the gear that she wanted and I would shift the lever when she pushed the clutch pedal forward. Valiantly, onward, Geri drove until we were only 4-6 blocks from their house. There, she parked the car and we went afoot. The snow plows would not get to the side streets, such as Geri’s, until early the next day.

What a lovely Saturday we had. The sun shone on a pristine, rolling sea of snow—all 26 inches of it! Geri, her husband, and I grabbed snow shovels and plied them for two hours straight—clearing the drive and clearing a parking place at the curb (the plows came through while we worked, so some of our work had to be done twice, of course.) We retrieved Geri’s car and then took a break for hot chocolate and snow ice cream—made at the behest of their 13-year-old daughter. They had never eaten snow ice cream and the daughter had me make every flavor imaginable. I, who had always made vanilla, that day made lemon, orange, chocolate, rum, and who-knows-what others. In the afternoon, Geri and I took a 2-hour walk through the countryside—just we and the bunnies left tracks in the snow. During our walk, Geri confided that she had worried about how they would entertain me. How little of a problem that turned out to be!