weather

I got those old walkin’ blues.

/ wvfurandroot / 8 Comments

[Soundtrack for the post below. I do love me some Eric.]

The journey begins

Every year starting about now, sometimes a few weeks later, I end up having to walk my hill.

I live at the top of a very steep hill. The driveway/road is very long. It’s also dirt and gravel.

Since I live in my own little ecosystem where I get dramatically more snow than the city 12 miles away in which I work, I’m always concerned my co-workers think I’m telling wild stories. Since I do, upon occasion, tell wild stories, I can’t say as I blame them. Perhaps the oddest thing about it is that my wild stories are true. I attract drama and insanity and chaos like the cat’s fur to my wool coat.

View after 10 paces.

Winter arrived early this year. I’ve been walking the hill for nearly a month. If the weather folk are to be believed, I may still be walking the hill in June. [Editorial comment: I LIKE split infinitives – who makes these damn rules?] I’m already a month into this seasonal aerobic exercise and weight loss regimen and it should just now be starting.

Going down in the morning is not so bad. Walking up in the pitch dark is another story. I religiously carry the cell phone, but as I can’t generally get a signal on the road it really will only serve to allow me to watch the clock to see how long it takes for hypothermia (or blood loss) to kill me. I ponder the wisdom of getting a Lassie – remember how Lassie was always showing up at Timmy’s feet carrying on and him saying, “What is it girl? What?!!!! Farmer John has fallen into the pond and is drowning while we stand here chatting? Let’s go, girl!” [I do need a Lassie. I’ve never had a smart dog. I can’t figure out if I choose slow-learners or if it’s something I do to them.]

The next 100 paces

I still have snow pack on the road. In a spot here and there, just this morning, I noticed dirt and gravel peeking out. When the thaw arrives tomorrow, it will begin to melt in earnest and then sunset will come and go, temps will drop down below freezing, and the road will turn into glare ice – a toboggan run of sorts. Tomorrow, I’m apt to slide down the hill on my back – head first.

My dad drives a big old honking Cadillac Escalade. You could house a family of 4 in there and the 4×4 is so powerful he can climb telephone poles in that gas guzzler. Last year, while trying to get up the hill, he got about halfway up, lost traction, and careened backwards all the way down narrowly missing the peon’s cars parked at the bottom –aka those of us without 4x4s. The penchant of 4x4s to not be worth a shit on ice is why I sold my Jeep a decade ago. I find it far less terrifying to walk the road than to slide down it – sideways and sometimes backwards. It made no sense to put up with that kind of mpg and still be walking the hill. [I might be misleading y’all here – I did sell the Jeep for that reason, but lately I’ve been experiencing 4×4 lust – the road has not been icy – with a 4×4, I could have been riding up and down for most of the past month.]

300 paces & an offroad shortcut.

Depending on the melt, nighttime temps and whether or not days are overcast or sunny, the road may become frozen mud which is worse in many respects. It looks like it’s easy enough to traverse, until I get my NASCAR Queen’s car a third of the way up and then have to back it down (usually in the dark with a filthy rear window).

Did I mention it’s a one-lane road?

A couple of years ago, I was walking down the back way which is easier if the snow is really deep or the road is badly iced. It was a nice walk. It wasn’t bone-numbing cold; and it was early enough that my little patch of earth was quiet and peaceful.

400 paces and more difficult

With Robert Frost in my head, I arrived at the fork of the road to find a car sitting in – actually in – the fork of a tree growing out of the ravine. Since I’d been reading Stephen King the night before, I imagined all sorts of icky stuff, but the car was empty.  [The transition from Frost to King is as awful as it sounds.]

As it turns out, it was my mailman’s car and it had been there since the day before. I had not noticed it on my way up, because it gets awfully dark in my little patch of earth and because my eyes follow the tiny circle of light the flashlight creates near my feet.

The Dreaded Ravine

The mailman had a driven up part way before realizing there was no sign that any vehicles had been the down the hill. Foolish guy – he stopped the car, turned it off, got out to better gauge the condition of the hill and watched his car slide over the edge of the road and wedge itself into a tree.

When they did manage to get the car out of there – [can’t you just hear the tow truck driver at his dinner table?] – they found no damage to the car other than some scratches here and there. Had it been my car, it would have been totaled and I would have had to tell the ridiculous story to my insurance company, friends and family, coworkers and all manner of people – all of them rolling their eyes and thinking, “Here she goes again.” Of course, I still get that when I tell the mailman story, but I take comfort in the fact that it wasn’t my car.

After 1123 paces, I get to de-ice/de-snow the car. Again. Still. Sigh.

With the weather of late, I arrive at my car only to have to de-ice and de-snow it – day after day after day after day. I won’t even get into the ongoing windshield wiper problem.

Even with the predicted thaw, I reckon it will be Saturday before I can get up the hill. Already, the weather folk are talking about the next system due in which may or may not be snow. It seems that my driving up the hill like a big girl will be short-lived. Oh, but really, I’m so looking forward to it.

[I’m thinking Subaru Outback. Do they make them with heated seats? I’ve become addicted to heated seats.]

I had to jumpstart the coffee pot.

/ wvfurandroot / 19 Comments

As my dad once said, It’s so cold out there, I had to jumpstart the coffee pot.

I’ve been known to say that sometimes coffee is just a caffeine delivery system and sometimes it’s a spiritual experience. Some days, it is both.

Coffee, is, and has been, my favorite beverage for decades. I drink it hot year-round. I drink a whole pot by myself before I ever step foot out of the door in the morning.

I cannot, and do not wish to ever, live without coffee. I even bought a gas grill for the primary purpose of being able to make coffee during power outages. I bought lots of BTU power, but it still takes forever to heat water.

I even have a spare coffee-maker to throw in the trunk on road trips. Those puny things in motels are all but useless not to mention the two little packets of coffee provided (1 regular, 1 decaffeinated). The travel pot also serves as the backup pot. This is how much I want and need coffee. There are always two.

I drink it black in a mug that is small by other coffeeholics’ standards. Like good whiskey, I sip my coffee. With a big mug, it’s cold before I get to the bottom.

Each night, I set up coffee for the morning, hit the timer button and toddle off to bed. This insures that the coffee is raring and ready-to-go when I stumble down the stairs trying to orient body and mind to an existence that seems more dream-like at 6 a.m. than my dreams.

Yesterday, on Facebook, a friend happened to mention that she’d gotten a brand new Cuisinart coffee pot and did I want her old one which was a snazzy red. I told her no, because I have a snazzy white Cuisinart albeit an older model.

Her original status update had to do with why she poured in 12 cups of water, but the reservoir only showed 10. We also discussed why, even after topping off the reservoir, 12 cups of coffee only produced 10 cups.  (Presumably, if we didn’t top off the reservoir, the brewed amount would be 8 cups.)

It’s one of the mysteries of the universe. It’s not just this particular brand of coffee-maker, but all of them.. I’ve never had one that produces the same amount of brewed coffee as water I pour in.

The immediate supposition is that two cups are lost as steam during brewing. Two cups is a lot of water. Really, I think I would notice two cups of steam collecting under my kitchen cabinets. I mean, really, wouldn’t it drip from the cabinets?

I have no suppositions about the reservoir.

Another mystery is why every single coffee-maker carafe dribbles. ‘Tis near impossible to pour a cup without having to immediately grab paper towel and wipe up the mess on the counter. I do pour carefully. I pour slow; I pour fast; I pour medium. I pour from great heights and I pour with the lip of the carafe touching the cup – there’s always that dribble.

For a long, long time, I was uncommonly fond of, and unapologetic of, Maxwell House French Roast coffee. All that fancy, schmancy stuff in coffee shops was wasted on me. And don’t even get me started on Starbucks. The first time I had it, I gave the cup back to them and told them they needed to make another pot because that one had gone bad. They did. The second cup was worse.

I did develop a fondness for Columbian coffee (though not Starbucks’). However, with the quantities I drink, it was hard on my stomach. I returned to Maxwell House French Roast.

And then they new-and-improved it to the point where it was undrinkable (unless that was the only coffee I had). I fumbled around in the coffee aisle at the grocery and eventually switched to Folgers.

With a twist of fate, I discovered Tanzanian Peaberry. Now there’s a coffee bean a girl could love. I bought 5 lbs of beans from a mailorder place and reached coffee nirvana.

At times I would run out of the Tanzanian and at other times I just couldn’t afford it. Folgers was the old standby.

During the course of yesterday’s Facebook conversation, we discussed the penchant for Cuisinart’s built-in grinders to gum up. Mine will be fine for weeks and weeks. Then, one morning, I will wake to half-a-pot of semi-brewed coffee and half-ground beans all over the countertop. This is not an event that provokes a good morning.

Wouldn’t you know it – shortly after closing Facebook, I made a new pot and the damned thing gummed up, overflowed, and thoroughly messed up the counter I had just cleaned.

So cursing and stomping (and calling my friend names because she jinxed it), I cleaned up the mess. I unplugged the pot and began cleaning out half-ground beans. There was one spot near the top of the brewer that I couldn’t get to. I turned that baby upside down and used the sink sprayer attachment.

Since I had the damn thing all torn apart, I decided to clean it. I poured in vinegar and I poured in water and I turned the pot on to brew. Nothing. No lights, no camera, no action.

I checked the breaker box – fine. I plugged the coffee-maker into another outlet just to be sure. Nothing.

Sigh.

I dragged out the backup coffee-maker – a Melitta that never did grind right – and got out the Folgers. All was more or less well, though I was still mad.

This morning, I stumbled down the stairs and realized I’d forgotten to set up coffee last night in the excitement of Chef Boy ‘R Mine’s 10 p.m. arrival. It took a minute to register and without thinking, I hit the power button even though the Melitta was sitting next to the Cuisinart. (Neither maker is particularly small and only an early-morning fog explains this.) The Cuisinart saluted, slipped into gear, and brewed me a nice pot of vinegared water.  The supposition here is that the electronic parts had gotten wet and just needed drying time.

Sigh.

I poured water and Folgers into the Melitta and hit brew.

The Folgers is right tasty this morning. I only got 10 cups and there’s coffee dribbles on the counter, but still I have cup of coffee and all is right with the world. Sometimes coffee is just a caffeine delivery system and sometimes it is a spiritual experience. Today it is both.

Good thing. It is so cold out there, I had to jumpstart the coffee pot.