7 am
I'll start with a lousy photo, but the only one I have at the moment and you'll understand its purpose as you read:
Wow. What a blur. Sunday started out quite nice. I very much missed the girls but stayed busy as therapy. Did my run, we performed our Sunday morning ritual walk into town with Tigger to get a paper and biscuit (that’s Tigger’s treat) and tea/coffee and croissants (our treat). I puttered around after we got home: plucked bunny, picked blueberries, dug more compost, all the while watching as a huge storm threatened. We got the storm but it was very brief. And then, at just about 4:30, K left to do some errands in town and 5 minutes later I got a phone call that the camperbus was on fire. And indeed it was. We don’t know why, but it stalled right around the corner and as he tried to restart it, he saw 2 neighbors running towards him shouting that he was on fire. They tried to put the fire, coming from the engine compartment, out with the little fire extinguisher, but that was no go, so they called 911. By the time I walked over, the police had blocked off the road, there were several fire trucks, and a huge gush of water was being sprayed into the engine area.
It took a solid 45 minutes for them to put it out and it was quite dramatic, with lots of billowing smoke, gas spreading and burning under the bus, white hot chunks of the magnesium engine dripping down and shooting white hot sparks, and through it all about 4 firefighters hosing and hosing. They finally got some sort of chemical suppressant and then DPW came with a truck and back-hoe to dump sand on the engine to cool it and stop the magnesium burning. I heard later from one of the firefighters up at the station when we gave our report that water on hot magnesium just oxidizes it more and makes it burn more. So there we were at last: a very sad looking bus surrounded by charred junk that had been pulled out. Ernie’s came to tow it away. Obviously K was devastated. We went back to eat something before we drove up to the station to give our report (our renter lent us his car). After that we just came home and tried to process. There was a fair bit of texting with the girls, I texted them some photos I’d taken and I guess G showed them to folks at school and put them on Facebook and got lots of amazed reactions. The girls were both very supportive. I tried to be supportive, but as I said, K was and to some extent still is, pretty devastated. I am trying to give him lots of attention. All the neighborhood came down the street to watch the excitement and they were all also very supportive. And sad, since after all, the bus has been a neighborhood icon for 10 years.
Here I'll add the updated photos:
So that was Sunday. Monday was just a whirl of dealing with it all: calls to the insurance and to NC to deal with the other car, then we borrowed a neighbor’s truck to fax the corolla title to NC, then to get to Leon’s to see if he had a suitable car to buy. He had a decent one – a Plymouth that he claims is the same engine etc as a Toyota. We took it for a drive and it was fine. I don’t love it, I will sorely miss the station wagon, but it will do. We decided to eat lunch at Whole Foods to think things over, and then we drove to another dealer to see what they might have, and they had a nearly identical car for several thousand more, so we decided in the end to go for Leon’s. It has high mileage, but it looks good – no rust, runs fine. We may end up putting some money in before too long, but I think it will be ok for an around town sort of car, and it is big enough that I think I’ll be able to transport fair stuff and haul hay, etc. So we went back to Leon’s and gave him $100 to hold it for us, we stopped at the other house, and came home to collapse. I guess we had supper, and then just puttered more – I fed buns, called a few folks, messed with fiber….
So what about today? Well, K will take the truck into work around 1. He agreed to go for a bike ride early which we’ll do after I do buns. After that I have a huge list which I was planning to write down here but I’m not sure I have the energy:
· Start working on repairing cages
· Deal with the last compost bin and :
· Build new bins from pallets
· Get stuff from work network space re last fall’s labs
· Write notes about all that and start a new calendar for this fall
· Start spinning Crystal’s angora that I weighed last night
And there are lots more but I can’t think of them all right now. So I’ll stop and add as I go along today.
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