Winter in the Pacific Northwest has been very unusual this year. After Christmas Taylor and Teagan were enjoying riding the motorcycle. The weather was more like March than December. Then one day a storm approached and within two days we had full on winter.
What a difference a couple days can make.
We love it and have a great time sledding. I got busy and made a run behind the house. Making a sledding run is more difficult than you might think. Taylor was enjoying himself as much as anyone. One day Latah borrowed my red jacket and spent a good part of the afternoon sledding all by herself. Schools in the area were closed for the entire week. My truck is trapped in the garage, as it is every winter, but Taylor is parked at the bottom of the hill. I am not driving anywhere until this snow melts a bit lower.
Winter, however isn’t always fun. News alerts were warning everyone to stock up on water and so forth as much colder temperatures than normal for our part of the world were on the way, which we did. The wet, icy, kind of snow and higher winds in the forecast almost always causes power outages as heavy tree limbs fall on the power lines. Every night I run water through the pipes to keep them from freezing. Sure enough, about 3:00 one afternoon a surge of water broke through the ceiling of the garage and shot clear across the room. Oh no, a frozen pipe. We were without water from Wednesday until Saturday. Thankfully this happened in the garage and not in the house and that we had stored up water as forewarned. As the water surged forth I opened the garage doors and it drained right out. A great, “Thank you,” to our neighbor, Nick, who offered to fix the pipe on Sunday. In the end Arife and her dog,” PokPok,” came by on Saturday and got the job done. A great, Thank you, to Arife and Pokok. We again have water, “Yay, thanks to great neighbors and friends.
Arife is a great plumber getting experience from her restaurant business in the Old Trout Lake Inn.
Arife and Pokpok
The snow had piled high. Freezing rain, reported on the way, prompt me to get the snow off my three decks. I started that very night and finished the following day
The weight of rain on the snow has brought down many structures. It is unbelievable how much rain saturated snow weighs.
Winter conditions can be far more dangerous than frozen pipes and collapsed buildings. Just as the storm weather was coming in Taylor received a call that someone he knew was stranded far back in the mountains on unplowed roads. The guy had to spend the night out there in a cabin not prepared for winter weather. His vehicle was frozen to the ground. He had Taylor called because Tay has a truck and knows where the cabin is located. Taylor said it was a very frightening trip but he found the guy, who was showing signs of hypothermia, and took him to Hood River. Tay arrived home just about the time visibility approached near zero.
While we live our recent days coping with the weather, the Pebble Creek Lindseths are off dancing.
Mean while Latah is hanging around riding dinosaurs to pass the time and Teagan has been skiing at Mt Hood Meadows off and on all week with her friends. Back to school tomorrow though, I think.
I have noticed, Jason and the gang have been hitting the dance floors a lot lately. It started with Salsa lessons, on to Swing lessons, and now this. I hope summer arrives before it is too late.
