Big Time Writing...Time To Get Back To It ~ Original Something or ...

"Why Don't He Write..?"

I think it is about time to dust off the extra-large writing utensil of creativity, and build some more stuff on Steemit. I have been remiss, if not pretty much downright missing from the site for a month or so. Just tossing out a short post now and then, to keep my blog site from going completely dark.

Not to be a whinger here, but it HAS been a rather busy, somewhat stressful time lately, with more than a few things to handle in the past month or so. Most importantly, the giant ice storm of 'Aught-16' blew in, and really lambasted the trees in our area of the planet.

And as is wont to happen with most normal trees...when heavy ice drags them down from where they normally be...they tend to fall on whatever is present, on the way down-below. And in this case, the down-below of my tree was the very important electric wires running from the pole to my house.

Color me silly...but for some reason, this anomaly seemed more pressing than writing regularly on the wondersite of Steemit.

The Big Ice Storm Of 'Aught-16'

Yee haa, is all I have to say. It wasn't a HUGE tree that fell, but then again, these aren't huge wires. The tree was heavy enough to pull the bolts that hold the plate that hold the cable that holds up the wires going to my roof stand-pole, out by their lag-bolty little roots.

As (Diagram A.) demonstrates, it did not pull both bolts out ALL the way...just one. The other bolt was left holding the whole configuration in place, with just enough muster to hold the wires in the air, and cause me a bit of stress during every waking moment of the day.

Hey Birds, Be More Careful With Your Little Feet!

And this whole business was tenuous, at best. Every time a 5.7 ounce Robin landed on my wires, which seemed to be often, with as much birdy abandon as possible, the cable/wires would wiggle-bounce up and down, and the bolt would pull out a micro-bit more each time. I'm sure the bolt actually made an "eek-eeking” sound, as it slowly worked it's way out of my wooden roof beams below, but the 6 inches of snow on the roof efficiently covered for it. I soon stumbled about on the roof, moved the snow, and continued to watch the daily progress of my changing situation.

Bounce bounce bounce... “eek.” Bounce bounce bounce...“eek.” I think the birds were actually enjoying themselves, messing around. Up and out the last remaining lag bolt slowly worked it's way, one small, stressful-homeowner-watching-bit at a time. Soon, only two thirds of the bolt was left in the roof plate, carrying the entire heavy, wire-load.

All I needed to do was take the bolts out, replace them with larger bolts, then re-attach the plate. But there is constant tension on the wires, and I would have to drill out the roof, with the live wires right in the way in front of me. Not a tenable situation. The wires would have to be turned off, then let down to fix the problem.

“Come on guys...can't you land on something else, beside my wires? ”...was about all I could come up with in my now-daily discussions with the backyard birds. But they wouldn't listen. Just kept bouncing around on my ailing electrical system.

Call Waiting, Help!

I phoned the local utility company, and we had an interesting discussion. “So what exactly is happening at your house?” I left out the part about the birds, but described the rest of my problem as best I could. The following conversation, though not verbatim, was a bit dis-heartening. They said my cable might hold up, or it might not. I asked for odds on this rooftop dilemma, and of course, they had none to offer.

They DID say there was a chance the wires could pull all the way out of the house 'stand pole', if the bolts gave out, and that “would not be good.” Evidently the 'stand pole' (see Diagram A., again), “might hold”... but, once the wires finally came down, “probably would not” . Which meant “bending the stand pole over”, or worse, “pulling the wires all the way out of the head”. I asked rather worriedly… “could this burn my house down?” “I suppose it IS possible”, but she continued on, with a more likely, “you'd just have live, charged, 220 volt wires dancing around in your back yard.” Which, “would not be a good thing .” We both agreed, NONE of this was a “good thing.”

“How soon can you come out to look at it”, was about all I could further manage on the phone. “Call back a week from next Monday, that's when we'll start taking new orders to schedule future work.” Please Note: this was not a plan to actually come out and WORK on my potential debacle, just a time to further talk about it, and SCHEDULE the work. In a week and a half. Meanwhile, the wind blew, the birds messed about, and my Stress-O-Meter inched up a dash or two on the dial.

Though I didn't WANT it to, this all DID make sense. The electric utility workers I'd seen lately, when driving around in my truck, were all VERY busy, putting the important, big stuff back together again. ALL over town. It was quite obvious. There were still trees on house rooftops, some actually sticking down THROUGH the roof, INTO the house. Yikes! As well as spurious trees down on cars, fences, sidewalks, and in yards everywhere. Pretty much all over the place, where they shouldn't normally be.

And very recently, I'd seen utility work trucks from all OVER the state, cleaning up the mess and fixing wires and poles. Understand? Yes. Have lots of stress watching the birds messing about on my wires? Yes. Wait and see what happens next? Not much choice in the matter...Yes.

Diagram A. ~My House and My Wires and My Birds~

But I Have To Leave Town Soon

To make matters worse, I was planning to leave on a trip to Arkansas in a couple of weeks. Right about the time that they could “maybe come out" to check my roof and see what needed to be done. How often it seems this is the way things transpire, in these sorts of endeavors of the unfortunate. Timing is everything, and the mis-alignment of the timing seems to be universal. I waited, and watched my wires bounce, and continued to have lengthy, non-cooperative-in-the-end conversations with the birds of my back yard.

This is where the magic of daily human interaction comes into play. I talked with a very nice utility woman on the phone, probably more times than she would like, and she said she would try to move me up in the list to get someone out as soon as possible. It is quite heartening, in such times when everyone is so busy and crazy things are going on all around, that there are still a lot of really nice people surrounding us that are very willing to help. Very heartening indeed.

When I told her I was leaving town, she seemed genuinely concerned with my situation. She very nicely arranged for someone to come out a bit early and check my wires, and told me they would probably drop them down into my yard, so I could get up there and re-bolt the plate to the roof without over-electrifying myself in the process. And of course, as so often happens in life, this all was to occur the Friday before I was to leave town. They could come out before noon on Friday. My flight to Arkansas was at 3:45 AM or so, the next morning.

Double I yi yiiii. Mr Stress paid me a visit once more. If this job followed Mr. Murphy's Universal, DIY Handyman Guide of we self fixit-er's, the work was pretty much guaranteed to balloon out to 13 or 14 times beyond the amount of time available to finish said job. In this case, finishing and re-attaching the all-important electrical wires to my house, before getting on the airplane way too early the next morning.

I briefly discussed a Plan B with myself: If nothing went as it should, I supposed I COULD leave the power off for a couple of weeks, if the job just couldn't get done. But this was January, and the irony of leaving my house unheated, with everything in 2 freezers going bad at the same time the house went block-ice cold, did not pass un-noticed. Plan B went out the window rather quickly.

The bad news of original Plan A: I'd have to finish the job somehow before 3:45 the next morning, no matter how snowy, cold, dark, and WAY too early to be messing about on the roof this time of year. The good news of Plan A: If I was still out there on the roof at such a ridiculous time the next night/morning, at least the dorky, wire hopping birds would not yet be out of bed, thus precluding any added wiggly-mayhem when I worked on the wires in the freezing dark.

Interesting hindsight...it did not dawn on me until much later, that in this grand plan, once I was done with my part, the utility man would NOT be able to re-connect my wires at 3:45 AM the next morning, since he would still be in bed, just like the birds. My freezer foods would have all gone bad in the cold-air irony of my house anyway, as I winged my way to Arkansas.

The End Of The Story

As luck would have it, the utility man showed up on time Friday AM, and went way beyond helpful, assisting me in a most efficient time frame. He was very capable, turning off my electricity, securing my wires elsewhere on the roof to allow me to finish cutting out the tree, and giving me time to then re-attach the plate bolts to the roof. He said he had other jobs to attend to elsewhere, and instructed me to call him when I was done, and he would come back and finish putting my house back together.

Visions of the movie "Cable Guy" flashed through my mind, but I persevered, hoping he would actually have time to return and put everything back together again. Right before he left, he added a bit more tension, noting as he climbed into his truck, “I go off the clock today at 4:00 PM.”

Amazingly, I finished my work without a hitch, I called, and he returned within an hour. He quickly and efficiently put everything all back together as it should be once more. I was very impressed by the service and timeliness.

In the end, my wires were re-attached as they should be, the new bolts held fast and strong, and I got to fly out to awaiting relatives in Arkansas before my friends' the birds were up the next morning. We had a most marvelous visit, and managed to do all sorts of fun things that I will probably write more about on Steemit in the near future.

The most important part of all of this, however, was that I was able to fully relax during my visit, knowing that the birds in my yard back home could busily bounce away to their little heart's content on my wires, and the electricity would still be on when I got home. And, wouldn't you know it, when I got home, it was. And hopefully, this sort of thing will NOT be continued.