I’ve been to New Mexico a couple of times and always enjoyed those visits, but we’d never spent any time in her largest city. Earlier this week Jackie and I had a chance to explore Albuquerque.
Continue reading Take a Left at AlbuquerqueOver the last couple of years I’ve noticed a weird trend in daily traffic. Drivers pull it up to a traffic light and stop several feet away from the car ahead of them. A friend of mine calls it “pre-stopping.” I call it aggravating.
It’s especially so if you drive a manual transmission car. Or a bike. Drivers stop several feet before they should, then roll up like they’re stalking the preceding vehicle. The cars ahead of me keep crawling forward instead of just pulling up to the stop light and- well, stopping. Busy intersections nowadays are more like pausing… to creep forward… every few… seconds.
At first I blamed this on small people piloting huge vehicles. The acreage your common SUV covers makes it challenging for the average driver to negotiate their expansive property line. How can we expect mom to see over the hood of that Tot Rod when she can barely see over the dash?
But when I began observing their techniques this theory seemed to evaporate like fuel from a Ford Expedition’s gas tank. I noticed the vehicles the “pre-stoppists” drive are not always huge. Or not by American standards anyway. Sure, you’ll see plenty of Hummers leaving a full car length or more ahead of themselves- but you’ll also see Camrys and Subarus sneaking up to the light.
So if the vehicle isn’t the common thread, maybe it’s the drivers? I started watching what people in the car were doing when stopping short. It didn’t surprise me there were a lot of cell phones visible. But I’m not so sure there is any higher proportion of conversations inside those cars waiting blocks away from the stop light. In fact, the scariest realization for me was everyone in traffic seems to be yakking on their cell phone!
So for now we’ll just wait and wonder. But please wait several feet behind me.
It’s been over a week now and still no electricity.
The total outage is now below 50,000 from a peak of nearly a quarter million. I guess we’re just one of the unlucky ones.
Our block is dark while all around us the lights are on. The din of generators drone 24/7 while we wonder why the hell our neighbor leaves it on all night. Somehow calling the police to complain about noise seems so menial. Work crews can be seen everywhere, but none ever stop on our street. Last week we cheered the white trucks with blinking yellow lights as if they were liberating Paris. Now we just grumble and wish they’d get over to our block.
We’re making the best of it and learning to deal with life in the dark. Hot showers are the only source of heat so we enjoy a little morning sauna in my bathroom to start the day. Sleeping has been pretty comfortable– after the initial cold shock wears off– since we piled on about 40 pounds of blankets and two cats. Just don’t forget to have everything in place because you do not want to get back out of bed!
The good news is the weather forecast is for warmer weather and we’ve got a crew taking care of the tree situation. As a matter of fact the big oak that pummeled our roof is probably about gone as I type this. The pile of wood in the yard hides the house and it’s a real shame seeing all that beautiful oak wood that’s going to go to waste. Getting the trees taken care of for a reasonable price was a big relief because there were some very large branches dangling over the roof. One branch fell on the garage Saturday when the north wind picked up during the brief snowstorm.
At least we still have a roof over our heads.
Freezing rain began falling yesterday and has turned much of Oklahoma into a deep freeze. Broken limbs and fallen trees have blocked roads and snapped power lines. Most of Tulsa is without power– officially described as 200,000 households, which sounds pretty darn close to the whole city to me.
Our bad day started last night when the power blinked off about 10:00 pm. The mist turned to drizzle and the sheen of the trees coated with ice became obvious. Jackie and I turned in for the night (what else is there to do with no light, heat or Internet connection?). But it wasn’t long before the eerie hum of self-destructing transformers and rolling thunder woke us. By 4:00 am the crack of nearby trees relenting to the burden of frozen water played like a symphony. Then a loud crash on our own roof sent us scrambling for our Maglites.
The 40-year old oak trees in our front yard had transformed into sinister mortars in a matter of hours. The sound of a splitting limb would send ice and wood smashing onto the roof. Each time our roof was pounded by a rain of ice and limbs we tensed. Would that be all? Or would another large branch fall and cause the entire house to shudder? All the while we grimaced because the roof was only a year old.
By 6:00 am I was fed up with shock and awe so we made a run for our nearest Panera. We absorbed large amounts of coffee and naively assumed the worst was over. The power was still out but new day promised above-freezing temperatures. We returned home after a couple of hours to find more large limbs had fallen, one poking right through the roof into our kitchen.
Fortunately the puncture was pretty close to the attic access in our garage. I was able to saw off most of the limb where it poked through our roof’s decking and put a plastic tub under it to catch any rain that dribbled through. I tried to push it out of the hole but it was much too heavy. Later that day a couple of entrepreneurs stopped by handing out flyers for their tree service. They were looking for future customers, I asked them if they wanted some work right now. They cut off the offending limb and nailed some shingles over the hole.
We’ll see how the patch holds up overnight. The forecast for Tuesday is scattered thunderstorms.
This week I’m in Atlanta for work. One of my tasks during these gigs is recording our presentations, which we later sell on audio CD. I use a Fostex MR-8HD multitrack recorderfor this because it can record up to four simultaneous sessions and uses no tape!
Last night I needed to check the Westin’s A/V setup in this ballroom that we’ll be recording in this morning. A guy from A/V was supposed to be available to meet me there around 6:00 pm. I call and I call and I call. No luck. So I sit in my room trying to get in touch with this guy. About 8:00 I finally give up and decide to go down to the ballroom. Fostex under my arm I head down to the tenth floor hoping to catch someone.
Of course the ballroom is locked. I loiter for a while, call the A/V guy once more, and loiter some more. I find a guy with catering who says he’ll try calling A/V, and if he can’t get them he’ll unlock the room for me. Bingo.
Finally he unlocks the room. I’m trying to figure out how to connect our recorder to the audio mixer when this whooping alarm goes off. Strobe lights start flashing and this electronic whooping noise echoes through this empty ballroom. Holy shit… I thought it was a burglar alarm connected to their mixer! WHOOP, WHOOP, WHOOP. There was this garbled digital voice babbling something I couldn’t understand.
Turns out it was the fire alarm. The garbled digital voice was saying something about not using the elevators. A hotel employee walks through the room. “That’s the fire alarm,” he calmly announced as he walked out.
Oh great, I thought, now I leave and I still haven’t tested this rig and/or somebody steals the damn recorder! I ignored the alarm and finished testing my connections. WHOOP, WHOOP, WHOOP. Since I was alone and the stage was about a hundred feet away the alarm came in handy as an impromptu mic test.
Once I was finished I boxed up the recorder and headed down the escalators (they were still running but the elevators were locked down). Fortunately this ballroom was on the 10th floor, which is sort of a huge mezzanine, so I could get downstairs without using the still-locked elevators.
I noticed there wasn’t any panic or rush of people heading downstairs. When I got down to the lobby it was as if nothing had ever happened. WHOOP, WHOOP, WHOOP. There was a long line of people checking in and everyone was ignoring the blinking lights and whooping.
The alarm finally stopped and everyone continued… um, ignoring it.
