Sooooooooo ... have you all wondered where I've been for the past 6 days? We've been hit by some pretty vicous wind and rain storms in the past week. Wednesday was the first biggie. I find it really funny that when Hurricane Bill was making his way through the maritimes, it was all over the news and weather channels. But when "only Newfoundland" is being hit with strong winds (130 kms/hr) and heavy rains (70 mm) you don't hear "boo" except on the local channels. Well let me tell you - I wasn't sitting on my deck eating popcorn and drinking beer watching the storm this time like I did with Mr. Bill!
I had to keep the horses in on Wednesday for a FULL day. It's the first time EVER that I've had to do that. They didn't seem to mind though. Probably because they could look out their windows and see what the weather was, not to mention hear the howling winds. I'm sure each time I came into the barn Stretch was thinking, "don't touch my halter, don't touch my halter - I don't want to go outside!".
Fronie's husband works on the rigs so is home for 3 weeks and then gone for 3 weeks. He always seems to be gone during any bad weather, and this time was no exception. The only difference is that last time he was home he decided he HAD to have one of those "shed in a box" things so he bought the 20 foot long one. Now, we all know that these are just glorified tents, but he was very proud of his new "garage". He didn't even wonder why this 20 foot garage only had 4 corkscrews to hold it in the ground. And why would he - it wasn't windy while he was home. So last Wednesday I had just come in from checking on the barn when Fronie called in a panic. The "garage" had lifted up and moved and she was afraid she'd lose the whole thing. I pulled on my rain gear, grabbed whatever baling twine I could find, cursed Mike and headed over to assess the situation. Sure enough the darn thing had pulled one of the corkscrews out of the ground and had shifted a good two feet. Fronie was inside the "garage" trying to get the corkscrew back into the ground. She was quickly reminded why they call this place "the Rock". Do you think she could find a spot to reinsert the corkscrew without it hitting rock? NO SIR! Meanwhile I had been assigned the task of holding onto the garage (aka KITE) while Fronie was screwing. Suddenly a HUGE gust of wind hit the garage and up I went - both feet off the ground. Fronie grabbed me and held on (laughing the whole time of course). When the gust was over and I had landed I told Fronie to hold onto things - I was bringing out the big guns! Off I went to get the tractor. Now as you may all remember from LAST winter, the tractor has lots of experience holding shelters down during high winds. So it was definitely the right tool for the job! I parked the tractor, tied ropes from the garage crosspieces to the tractor and then lowered the bucket to take up the slack. Unfortunately I only had one tractor so the other side of the garage posed a bit more of a problem. We decided to run ropes from the crosspieces to the base of a few trees. Good thing I had been trained well by the army because the branches were so low that the only way I was getting to the base of the trunk was to do the leopard crawl. I must have looked AWESOME! And BTW, I highly recommend the Mountain Horse Monsoon Rainsuit - I didn't get wet at all! Once we had everything tied down that we could tie down we stood back and admired our handywork. It looked, well ... very "ropey". You know the saying, "If you don't know your knots, just tie lots!".
I headed home afterwards and as I was getting closer to my house I noticed something grey on the side of the point near the river. I wasn't sure what it was so went to investigate. My FIL's 14 foot aluminum boat had been stored upside down on the point in amongst the trees. It's only been there for 3 years without being used. Actually, the last time it was used was when we had the flood and my BIL rowed around our property retrieving building materials - but that's an entirely different story! The wind had liften up the boat and blown it across the point - approx 40 feet - and it had come to rest against some trees. At this point I was cold, tired, and REALLY pissed off at the weather so I just tied the boat to some trees and left it to fend for itself.
The rest of the day was uneventful. The wind continued throughout the night. In the morning I went and fed the horses. On the way back I noticed that one of the trees by the garage had cracked off about 3 feet up. Upon closer inspection I realized that it had fallen on the phone line and pulled the line down. I went into the house and reported my findings to Lord Gord. He went out to have a look and came back to tell me that not only had the line been downed, the entire "mast" (new term for me - I always called it the wire holder) had been ripped off the side of the garage. So the wire was down, the mast was broken off and the siding had holes in it. The Lord was NOT pleased. I quickly decided that NOW was not the time to remind him that last winter I had pointed at just that tree and said, "we should cut that one down because it doesn't look very solid. A good strong easterly will have it broken off and it may hit the wires." That was definitely a conversation for another day! He was able to repair all the damage that day so I then put in a repair request with the phone company. They said that Tuesday morning (tomorrow) was the earliest they could come. Yesterday I got a call from them saying that they'd be there within the hours, so now we are back up and running.
Thursday was a beautiful day. Sunny and not a breath of wind. Fronie went to the dollar store and bought more corkscrews so she was doing some preventative maintenance on the garage. Then we rummaged around behind our garage and found some old 4 X 4 posts to use to weigh the flaps down. Fronie decided to staple them to the flaps and then for good measure she also screwed them in. I had work to do around my place so I left her to it. MISTAKE !!!!!! About an hour later she pulls into my driveway and gets out of her truck - COVERED in mud, sweating, plummer's butt on the go and a drill in her hand. It was scarey to say the least! Apparently she had been walking around the garage and forgotten about all the ropes, managed to trip over one and had fallen flat on her front in the mud. AND she'd been doing so much screwing that the battery in her drill was dead. That woman should not be left unattended ... EVER!
Friday night the winds and rain came again. This time we were prepared. Nothing moved. Nothing blew away. Nobody got dirty. It was a wonderful thing!
Sooo ... what have you guys been up to?
Mon Oct 19, 2009 9:34 am
That purple carpet is going to haunt me for years to come, I just know it.