How Did I Get Here?

Tuesday Night

OK, people, I think this will be the last “special report” with the fire business. The news has switched from giving burn updates to blaming and second-guessing so it seems that most of the danger has passed. Except the warnings that the regular winds coming from the ocean might turn the fire back but the news has to hope for something now that the spotlight will no longer be “imminent danger.”

It seems the latest conflict is that the military was ready, willing, and able to go up and dump water even when the civilian aircraft was grounded during the winds but whoever said thanks but no thanks. That “whoever” is getting their @ss reamed by the public now but they used the old “it’s too windy” and “we can’t have multi-agency air assets flying around a low-visibility area” and the ever-so-popular “we have to have one of our spotters along for the ride” but there weren’t enough.

Tell that to Mr. Burny McHousefire who lost everything.

As my wife pointed out, “I think the military knows how to drop something on something else, spot on, right?”

My cop friend stopped by with his partner and told me of all the houses nearby that were torched. We asked him where the most damage was done and he said monetarily, it was in one spot that had multi-million dollar houses go up in flames. But number-wise, it was another place where whole neighborhoods were gone.

I asked if he caught any looters and he said no but there has been a couple caught. They had better protect him from the public because ther’d be a lynchin’ a-happennin’.

Mike’s schedule has been 18 hours working, 3 hours of sleep, 16 hours working, and now it’s down to 12 hours so he says it’s tapering off.

As we were talking, Carrie hands me an ammo can (we were unloading the car when Mike arrived). High school buddy or not, Mike is still a cop and I quickly explained what was in it: all the cards I’ve received from friends and family over the years.

Yes, I save them in an ammo box.

I also told him I don’t even own a firearm, which is true, much less any ammo.

OK, let’s end this with the mega-popular random thoughts (I don’t really know if it’s mega-popular but they make me laugh)

- Is it weird that I was going to have my daughter play one last song on her piano before we evacuated, kind of like the quartet that played as the Titanic sank? I figured since the piano had survived 100 years and now was going to go down in flames, it should have a respectable farewell.

- Part of me feels gypped that I couldn’t relax after my big race like I planned and now have to go back to work which I expect to be extremely stressful.

- Another part of me is kicking that other part in the onions and reminding it that people in the area lost homes and are still living in a football stadium.

- The signing lady on the news was cracking me up. Her face was animated when she signed the updates and some of the faces she made made me laugh out loud.

- Although still upset by my DNF, I cannot relay how much less I hate myself after reading a comment on my Flickr picture of me at the race that said:

My friend, I dropped here as well due to an I.T. injury, at 9pm, and I saw you here! This course was INSANE! 50% of the field dropped, plus the winds, and then the fires!?

I ran with a sponsored runner for a bit who dropped at 50 miles (who has run Badwater and Western States) who said that this had been brutal.

Congratulations on a run well run!

- I think I’m going to take the plunge and do Crossfit.

- I also think I’m going to hang in the present for awhile and try to backfill my blog as I go. This real-time blogging stuff is cool.

Tuesday Afternoon

Well, folks, we seem to be over the worst of it and the worst of it, on a personal level, is a messy yard from the winds, a house that smells of smoke, and ash over most everything outside.

Pretty minimal compared to a lot of people around here.

I will be going in to work in the morning and hoping they will let me come back to my neighborhood at the end of the day.

We continue to watch the news, field phone calls and email, and just to keep us busy, I forced the kids out of their rooms and we all cleaned up outside. We raked, cut fallen branches, and swept soot. It was something to do even though the soot will probably re-settle.

There is sun today! And the news is full of helicopters dumping large amounts of water on the fire.

Do you think it would be cool if the next person that calls me, I just push the answer button, and scream “IT BURNS!!!!” and then hang up?

Would that be cool?

BTW, here is the email I sent out to just about everyone I knew with an email address:

Friends and Family,

Don’t worry, we are safe. Our home was in the fire line but miraculously, it skipped us.

Yesterday we were told to evacuate and packed up what we could in our cars (Truckasaurus would have been left to fend for himself) and then watched the news. We spent the day tracking the location and progress of the fires and would have bolted if we saw flame.

We did not lose power and have been holed up in our house for two days. If we leave, we likely wouldn’t be let back in our neighborhood for a couple of days. Also, the air quality is terrible; soot and smoke in the air, blotting out most of the sun. We have to keep the A/C on to filter the air.

We have food, water, electricity, cable, and most importantly, Internet!!!

I have no problem lounging around the house for two days, the kids are thrilled to be out of school, and Buster is beside himself because everyone is home. Carrie is the only one suffering after being locked in a madhouse with the rest of us for two days.

I’m keeping my blog updated so you can see daily postings at http://www.grose.us/blog3/.

Tuesday Morning

“Slept” with the TV on last night, fading in and out of the news updates.

The fires seem to be going away from us which is good news but the swirling winds mean we can not fully rest assured we are in the clear yet.

The entire house smells of smoke. I guess we’ll have to get the carpets cleaned and do a wall-to-wall cleaning to get the smell out.

My phone had 9 messages this morning, 5 being from work, one an automated message from my kids’ school, one from my brother, one from Olga, and one from Mom.

We have to keep the A/C on so that we have filtered air. But we have power, cable, and Internet. Plus we have plenty of food so we should be able to ride this out. I’m a little worried that if I go to work tomorrow, I will not be allowed back home. I’ll have to play that one by ear depending on how things go today.

Physically, I’m feeling better today. I don’t wince as much going down stairs but crawling under my computer desk to hook up a power cable required me to rest afterwards because I was dizzy and exhausted.

I picked a hell of a time to completely deplete my body.

Mentally, trying to keep a positive attitude. In one sense, I would be lounging around my house anyway. The fire situation kind of distracted the negative feelings of DNFing but really, all it did was delay it. I will have to deal with it sooner or later. I even considered that maybe a life-threatening event would subdue my DNF depression and “put everything in perspective” but now I know it’s only a temporary distraction.

I take solace in the fact that my Gunny was bugging out when he couldn’t get in touch with me (I thought the Adj would let him know we were OK), that the XO called asking how we were doing, and that I got offers from Marisa, Killjoy, a friend from high school that lives near here, and an old friend that lives in Pendleton to come stay with them.

More as the situation develops unless we fry and then, well, blogging updates might be delayed.