Category: life

where everything else happens

Update on the floodwaters

Sue & the boys spent the night in a hotel in Arlington. I got up this morning and drove down the hill to check on the road. It still has water over it, but they are letting cars through. I called Sue and she’s coming home soon. The rains are still falling, and perhaps the snowmelt has finished in higher elevations, but the weatherman says it could still get worse. Better to be all stranded at home than scattered though, so while they can they are coming home. Arlington Schools have suspended bus service, so for all intents and purposes, this school day has been ‘rained out’.

For those that have asked me, no our home is in no danger. We live at an elevation of around 500′, and the rivers at flood stage are probably 300-400 feet lower than us. If the waters get this high, there are other things to worry about!

Update: 08:40 PST: We’re all together at home now.

Above is a view of some of my OSX dashboard widgets. It looks like the weather will let up tomorrow. The USGS river widget is lacking some useful data, like a timescale or depth measurement! But it does show that the North Fork of the Stillaguamish is really moving (the scale is cubic feet per second). They have no measure near Arlington for the South Fork, which is the one that caused the road to close.

Oh well, I have my Internet access, my IP phone, and my family here, so we’ll be OK.

Stranded.

Both the South and North forks of the Stillaguamish River have overflowed their banks. We live in the Cascade Foothills NE of Arlington. My kids go to school in Arlington. Those two rivers lie between our home and their schools. 🙁

I’m stranded at home. This kids are stranded at school (two different ones several miles apart) and I can’t get in touch with my wife, who is 20 miles away in Mt. Vernon.

Here are some more pictures.

Update: 15:40 PST: The rain has let up. It is still windy. Sue finally called me and is heading towards the schools. I have no idea if she’ll be able to get back tonight though. Both of the western approaches to our area, SR530 and Jordan Road up from Granite Falls are closed. The only other way is through the mountains via SR20 up the Skagit valley, then up the Suak River to Darrington and down. That however is a drive in excess of 100 miles and along two other rivers that could be flooding!

Update: 17:20 PST: Sue has the boys, and they found literally the LAST hotel room in Arlington. I am officially stranded. SR 530 is closed at milepost 22 (pictured above) and at milepost 67 between Darrington and Rockport.

There is one possible way out, via a gravel road and a steep climb up to stilly valley’s north wall and out via Lake Cavanaugh. I have no idea of the condition of the bridge over the river on the Lake Cavanaugh road though.

Update: 19:30 PST: The larger portion of the Goolsbee family are doing well, having eaten out and now watching TV in their hotel room. ME on the other hand are sitting here alone, and am forced to deal with all the family pets… the majority of which I am allergic to. 🙁

To add uncertainty to the mix it is raining again… pretty hard.

mmmmm….

Today I made popcorn the old fashioned way… in a pan on the stove. Boy was it good.

I’ve forgotten how good it is. Funny, when we were in the UK, it was a staple for us. One of those things we just could not buy at any store. So I always brought it back with me when I flew back to the US on business. Popcorn kernels, tortillas, and peanut butter. We had a big Aga stove and we’d make popcorn on it. For some weird reason I haven’t done so in ages.

Sixtynine point seven miles per gallon!

Above: The amazing 1.9 Liter, VW TDI engine. The thing that makes my Jetta go.

OK, so everyone knows I’m a cheapskate and make my own Diesel fuel from veggie oil. (yes Paul, I promise a diagram of the filtering setup soon!)

I also am a total lead foot and don’t drive very economically. I rarely drive the speed limit and frequently exceed it by a fair margin. I’m not an idiot, and I don’t speed where it would be dangerous to myself or others. I have only been *ticketed* for speeding twice in the past 10 years, so I must be good at avoiding speeding tickets (I have been stopped several times and warned though.) There was a blog post I saw linked off digg.com a few weeks back about avoiding speeding tickets that was partially wrong, and misleading in some aspects… perhaps I should write up a full post of my own. Anyway, this isn’t about speeding… in fact quite the contrary, it is about fuel economy. So even despite my lead foot and frequent runs at autobahn speeds, my car still averages 50 MPG. I find that amazing. It begs then how well would it do if I wasn’t such a pseudo-Schumi?

I once again drove half a tank (300 miles) in my VW Jetta TDI this past week or so, and when I topped it off tonight on my way home I was gobsmacked by the mileage I made. You see I spent the week driving verrrry carefully. This meant upshifting at 2000 RPMs on the tach, coasting down hills in neutral, coasting to stoplights and stop signs in neutral, (mostly) driving the speed limit, etc. I went 300 miles on 4.3 gallons of my veggie oil and Diesel fuel mixture. That is 69.767 miles to the gallon. That is US gallons for my overseas readers, which equals 0.832 Imperial gallons, or 3.78 liters.

69.7 MPG = 29.71 km/L

I could have managed 70 MPG if I hadn’t succumbed to temptation and NOT had a several mile long run @ 100 MPH a few nights ago. I ran an errand on Wednesday night that put me on a deserted divided highway at around 10 PM. I came off a stop light and onto the freeway doing my usual “shift @ 2000 rpm” routine, but once I realized I was alone I just kept accelerating to the mythical “ton” and rode along for several miles like that with a smile on my face. I did coast for quite a way after the ton-run to make ammends… in fact I was able to coast UP a big hill after that. 😉

My only issue with driving like this is that it is mind-numbingly boring, and lacks that je ne c’est quois… that essential Fahrvergügen I seek when behind the wheel. This is why I can never make it past half a tank! If I ran it all the way I’d die of boredom before I ran out of fuel!

So was this in some goofy anemic Hybrid filled with digital gizmos? Nope. It was in a low-tech car with an oil burning engine, albeit one running a very “green” fuel. I challenge any Hybrid or even electric car to go as far, as fast as a TDI equipped car. It just can’t be done. I could run from my home to Red Bluff, California (~700 miles) on a single tank of fuel, and do it in about 8 hours. Amazing. This car amazes me.

Whoo hoo!

In the spring, I entered some of my Jaguar photos in a contest sponsored by parts supplier SNG-Barratt. I liked the idea of the 65E earning some cash for parts, especially since my eBay quest for an air filter cannister has been fruitless – some guy named “George” has outbid me for every single one that has come up over the past YEAR. WTF? I give up George, you can have them all… every rusty cannister from now until eternity is yours. I’ll cash in my parts voucher for a “new” one from SNG.

As soon as I got the invite I burned a CD and mailed it off to the UK (The USPS has very good rates for overseas express mail) a week or so later I received an email from an Art Director there who praised my work and said that I was the entrant so far who “got” the idea of the contest, placing Jaguars in highly scenic or interesting shots. He had nothing to do with judging, but did want to send me a thanks. It felt great.

So here I get the big news in email yesterday and … they’ve misspelled my name! Oh well.

They also picked the “Miss January” shot.

Luck, or lack thereof.


Above: Ouch!

Though I don’t put a lot of stock in superstition, I am usually a very lucky guy. Life has rarely dealt me any serious whacks. Today however, is Friday the 13th. Something I didn’t even think about really… except perhaps when I updated the voicemail message on my work phone.

So I’m working from home today and at lunchtime I head out to the barn and prep the 65E for a weekend Jaguar club event. The Seattle Jaguar Club is having their “Fall Colors Tour” tomorrow and I haven’t even looked at the E-type since the Going to the Sun Rally finished up last month. I took it out once for a brief drive since then… mostly because the weather has been crappy most weekends since I came back… or I’ve just been too busy.

So I push the Jaguar out of the barn and get ready to wash it. The car number stickers from the Montana Rally are still on the car so I decide to take them off. The first one comes off pretty easily… after I was able to pick enough off to grab a handfull. It shreds up as I remove it, and I toss it in the garbage. The second one comes off in one big sheet until I’m about halfway down when it goes *pop!* and to my astonishment it peels a chunk of clearcoat, along with a layer of paint right off the car!

My heat sunk.

I stared in disbelief at the sticker, now shredded and hanging halfway off the car and held up by my limp hands. I wanted to cry.

I gathered my wits and gingerly pulled it the rest of the way off without further injury. I wandered around in a daze for a while… trying to think of what to do. I went inside, tried to collect myself, and wrote a note to the E-type mailing list to see what the collective mind suggested. I got some good advice (as always) and even some leads on good paint guys nearby (Thanks Roger!)… we’ll see how it turns out.

You can see the full set of damage photos here.

As you can see, 13 is NOT my lucky number!