When the prevention is worse than the potential injury

We have lovely neighbors. We don't see them that much because the proximity to our houses and driveways doesn't promote that. But they have always been considerate and friendly when we have and have been fine neighbors.

Last month part of one of there trees came down in a major wind storm and nicked our roof. This is part of a row of pines about 30 years old that divide the property and provide some major screening and privacy but they are on their side of the boundary line. The fallen tree certainly wasn't there fault and they were responsive in checking with there insurance and even attempting to clear some of it up by themselves. In the end we contracted with someone to cleanup just what fell and left it up to the neighbor if they wanted to take the rest of the tree down. It didn't matter to us and we had the work done.

We thought it was done until we came home one day to find 2 of the trees gone and the next day all of the 5 trees on a hill next too our house were gone and the bushes and under brush damaged or destroyed in the tree felling process.

While I understand, hearing from the tree guy, that they wanted to make sure it never happened again and it was totally within their right in also making sure they didn't fall on their house, we suddenly have no shade on that part of the house and have totally lost the separation and enormous privacy that the trees provided.

This is before



Below is an "after" picture. The clear area is about 30 feet across and the top of this hill had a row of 5 thick 30 year old pines. Where there was dense shade there is harsh sun. The tree to the right is actually half of a maple tree that was cut off at 15 feet high by the fallen tree and has no branches on one entire side.



Feeling like we have been kicked in the gut by a good deed that also was not cheap. Though the trees are totally lost, I am our there staking up the remnants of bushes to reclaim some amount of what we lost and have a major job cleaning up the cutting debris and we are scrambling to figure out what would grow 15 feet quickly, which is unrealistic stating in mid summer and I have to work to prevent erosion of the hill.

So to me this is an example of the prevention being worse than the potential. The trees were basically healthy with perhaps the need for trimming to prevent them from collecting too much wind in a storm. The roof damage we incurred and taking out the damaged tree will end up costing us (or our insurance) less that a thousand. The work and cost to regain some of what we have lost will probably be well beyond that.

4th of July weekend

The 4th of July weekend. The official beginning of the tourist season in the Berkshires, the weekend of multiple James Taylor concerts at Tanglewood , the out of town drivers who just continue to drive through intersections even though there are stop signs that are rimmed with flashing red lights, the tourists that think that downtown is like an open mall and that wandering aimlessly into and across the street without looking isn't a smart thing to do. The locals are pretty much attuned to this and we joke about having to watch out for for the tourists who do these things and then some of them yell at you when you call them on it.

As I came home from work Friday, the traffic on the highway heading toward the Berkshires was heavier, but it was also faster and much more aggressive. A sign that city drivers are on their way. Watching them continue their jockeying once off the exit, is irritating. The 2 lane road leading thousands to Tanglewood only goes so fast and unless they knew my route cutting through the back streets, they'd be in Lenox a while after I would be already home, regardless of their aggressiveness.

But the tourists are a tremendous blessing. Both my kids can hold down 2 summer jobs that are totally dependent on the waves of people coming in and out, spending what I would consider exorbitant amounts, but then I spend more more on vacation than I would at home, as well. I also don't want to come across as negative about all the visitors. Perhaps I should define them into "visitors" and "tourists". "Visitors" slip into the area respectfully and enjoy themselves and contribute to the economy and to the vitality of the area and are just nice people, something that we aspire to when we travel. Whereas "tourists" come in and wonder why this area isn't more like what they left behind and want to let their presence be known, can be rude and basically clueless and want to be catered to. The "visitors" are always welcome, the "tourists" are welcome for what they contribute economically.

I was reading that Tanglewood would draw 18,000 people at just one of the Taylor concerts, 3 times the town population. On my side of Lenox, you'd never know that this crowd was 2 miles away as the noise doesn't really carry and as a local, you know where and when not to go certain places. Yesterday I was scraping and painting the house and today will be digging up the septic tank cover for pumping next week. Quite a contrast from picnicking on the lawns of Tanglewood or strolling through the shops in town. But as we all know, regular life goes on behind the scenes of where others vacation.

Tomorrow is the big 4th of July parade in Pittsfield. A big event with floats and big balloon characters and preceded by the big 5k race, that draws over a thousand runners. Of course I'll be one of them and this year be joined by one of my kids.

Happening just before the parade and including a leg the goes up and back the parade route, running with thousands of spectators is quite different from my solitary runs along the back roads. I remember 3 years ago my goal was to finish this 3.2 mile race and not be dead last, tailed by the ambulance bringing up the end. Back then I finished well before the last runner and I logged 75 road miles last month and easily finished several 5 mile runs with hills this week and in good time. So the race tomorrow is more for fun and to try to beat my previous times.

It's starting to cloud up. Not a good sign, though supposedly there are only intermittent showers predicted. Sometimes that becomes intermittent periods when it isn't raining but I'll hope for the lessor amounts of rain. Being a little mercenary, outside diners are the source of good tips for my kids, so I don't like anything to discourage them.

Well, happy 4th of July weekend. Enjoy where ever you may be.

Is it rude or impolite or perhaps just clueless?

Yesterday afternoon I took the kayak out on the river. A beautiful afternoon with bright sun and a little bit of a breeze. A new dock has been added replacing the more tentative wood pallets floating on the mud banks and make entrances and exits a little less awkward. Or should I say,at least the entrances are.

It was remarkably busy on the river. Tourists, I imagined. Some of the rental places and high end resorts will truck people in with trailers of kayaks and return in a couple of hours. I don't mind that as I have been one of the out of towners on the Cape or elsewhere and there are enough branches of the river that go unnoticed to the occassional visitor.

Coming back, on schedule to meet the family for a fathers day dinner, there is a back up at the dock. From the appearance of one person standing on the dock, dripping, I knew that at least one kayak had tipped. At least it was at the end, not at the beginning, as I once did. On the dock was this younger guy trying to drag the kayak up onto the dock, with much verbal drama and with each dip adding more water to the inside and to the weight. The other kayaks are all over the dock, blocking me from getting out or getting on my way and blocking everyone for that matter. Waiting patiently as this guy, easily 30 years younger than I, seemed helpless in trying to figure out how to get it out of the water and was verbally clear that he resented the situation he was in helping his wet companions.

Having enough of his rants and wanting to get on with it and get my stuff out, I step out of my boat, knee deep in the mud, hoisted myself up the dock, grabbed on to his kayak, pulled it on the dock, turn it over and dumped out most of the water and moved it aside. Still somewhat perplexed, the guy is told to dump it over again to get the rest of the water out so that it can be brought to the truck. Meanwhile I have to manuver around them to keep my kayak from drifting away. They are now set and the truck is here to pick up their kayak and I can now move mine out of the way and out.

So, if someone helped you out in this way after you'd been struggling, would you say anything? I know I would, even if it were a simple thanks. But not a word. They went on their way chatting and the guy complaining.

Some tourists give others a bad name, they are absolutely clueless.

officially a runner

I have been running for about 3 years and for that long written about my workouts and running, but for some reason when people ask if I am a runner, I will often qualify it as yes I run, but not too much. In reality I logged about 450 miles last year and have so far logged 150 miles and over 60 miles just last month, but when I ran I would run a mile or so, then walk a small bit then run again. No matter how much I seemed to try, I always needed to walk for a bit. They were still good workouts but didn't seem serious and in the category of a real runner.

I have friends and relatives who are very serious and good at this and run great distances, that I at this point only dream of. though they have invited me to come along sometimes on the shorter excursions , I have always been intimidated because I wasn't a straight out runner.

The past month or so, I decided I needed to kick up my gain. Having burned off some winter pounds, my weight again had plateaued. Little by little I adjusted my pace and kept pushing a little more distance before the walking. I also started keeping my head down when I approached a hill, getting a little further up.

The past two weeks I have been making good progress, first hitting 2 miles, then three and last week four miles, before I needed to walk. Then a couple days off this week, one for rest and one because I didn't feel great, and today I headed out to see what I could do and ran continuously for 8 miles and an hour and a quarter. Stopping at the top of my street, where I usually start my cool downs. And yes I am able to walk still and don't hurt a bit and look forward to another good run tomorrow.

I reached a milestone not just in miles but in my mind. I now consider myself a runner because I know I can do it and can perhaps do more. It may take a while before I am ready for the half marathon, but knowing now that I can do a good distance straight on and handle some good hills, makes this goal much more real.

There are time when my wife will say that she wishes she lived in a condo or apartment so that when something goes wrong, you just pick up the phone and it is then their problem to fix. Romanticizing of course, but anyone who is a homeowner knows that there are times when it is not for the weak of heart.

We seem to be on a roll. The carpenter ants are back (or did they never leave) consuming huge amounts of time and mental energy for me to figure out how to tackle this rash and finally I called in pros, who told me they'd do just about what I am doing, except that they could fog the inside of the walls in the effected area.

So that is on the project list as is getting in a carpenter to do repairs and the gutter people back to diver more rain away from the house.

The weather too has been fierce. Last week it was the tornadoes in the area, this week it has been storm after storm of high winds and rain.




Last night's storm knocked out power in a wide area and left debris all over the night before we were readying to head for the basement, it was so heavy. An then there was the big bump in the night, which was this neighbor's tree hitting our house and taking a bite out of the roof. The rain and wind kept going so that I couldn't check out the damage from the outside until morning. I was able to assess from the attic that it hadn't gone through.






So at 6AM I am up on the roof patching this hole for the oncoming rains and winds. It looks like it held during last night. Now comes the negotiation with the neighbors and the repair people and insurance. Yeah I know I am whining, but I have to get it out somewhe

The past couple of work days have been dominated by planning and strategizing around the tornado damage. I work for a multi-program organization and one of the program sites is gone, another has a huge tree on top of it and another has moderate damage, mostly blown out windows, but neighborhood that it is in is one of those making the national news as looking like a bomb went off and where a mom sacrificed her life to save her child.

Fortunately most of my hundreds plus co-workers are fine, inconvenienced by lack of electricity but at least a couple people lost their homes and several had their cars destroyed or had major damage.

Working in this planning environment becomes very methodical and practical, such as retrieving the mail that can't be delivered or securing computers, and also the creative involving how to house people in multiple work places near where they need to be and how to compensate people who couldn't come to work and what can we as co-workers do to help those displaced and how to help staff with kids in schools that will not reopen. The latter group is the caring factor that makes this where I like to work. As far as "output" it hasn't been the most productive of weeks, but I feel exhausted and have been busy. Its come after a few weeks of doing several things that are emotionally depleting.

But I am by no means complaining and have little tolerance for the few that are whining because their electricity if off. They after all still have a house and a home and car when there are so many very close by that have lost lives and homes and so much.

Western Massachusetts like many other parts of the country rarely makes the big news. But yesterday as I am in my office about a mile away a tornado strikes. I had been looking out from my second floor office noticing the oddly yellow sky and the wisps of clouds that were coming down from the main clouds. I'd heard of tornado warnings and as I looked at this I was thinking, where is the safest place in this building. Then someone came in and I had to turn my attention in another direction and the sky just grayed. The below video is what was happening where I was looking.





As I was leaving work and driving west to the Berkshires (which was gratefully untouched) I had noticed that the storm was traveling east but not knowing that it was a tornado moving east.

This morning was surreal. People with stories about damage they had. Co-workers who had roofs lifted off their houses or barns that just disappeared. Several programs and clinics could even be accessed to determine the damage because the surrounding neighborhood were so damaged. At a meeting I heard the story of someone in her office watching the storm approach and noticing all the debris and the windows in her office blowing in and the window blinds ripping from the ceiling and her hiding under her desk. Total small towns wiped out as the tornado plows through.

The damage will take years to repair and rebuild and I am more than a little spooked.

This is not something expected here, yet it happened.

Seems like I've taken a hiatus from blogging when I look at how long ago I did the last post. This past week and a half I have had a volunteer or end of the year school commitment most nights. At lunch, when I actually stop to take a concentrated time, the time seems to be consumed with the prep work for everything else happening after work. Plus the rain and rain and did I mention rain. I have been trying to increase my running miles to improve my times and get off this weight plateau that I have been hovering around for months. I have this window of time between when I get up and have to be back to the house for wake up duty and to start the shower sequence. Starting at 5AM or a little before, I have to allow myself enough time to wake up myself with the early coffee. That window of running time at most can allow for a 4 mile run but more often that time seems to tighter and I am lucky to get in 3 miles. The rain doesn't help though last week I was out there most mornings rain or not for 3-4 miles. This morning the rain was heavy but I was determined, having taken yesterday off to rest a twinge in the foot, and though it was a little slow but I got in 3.3 miles tightly squeezing through this window.

My cell phone is fading. Fading in the sense that I have a hard time hearing people. First thinking that it's the coverage and then that I know my hearing has taken a dip in one ear and now I'm thinking its going in both, until my teen borrowed it and said Dad, what's up with your phone you can't hear anything. It has reached the stage where speaker phone or head set is about the only way it works, which limits my options. I have had it for a few years years and it is a few levels above basic, but it does the job. Cell phone service is one of those things I won't pay for gadget functionality (I have other places I can get that), so I am looking for a replacement that fit my limited plan before it totally dies.

Because my phone is on the simple side, I find that uploading mobile photos a real pain. Of course it came with no cables, so taking a photo requires uploading it to Facebook then downloading it to the laptop and uploading it again to the blog. Makes you weary just following that.

I had scheduled to take a day off a couple of Tuesdays ago to be in Boston for a performance that my eldest was to be in. The show was to start at 8:00pm and run 2 1/5 hours, so we figured we'd make a full day of it and accept that it would be pretty late when we got back home. But then another performance time opened up on the weekend and since we'd be driving back in the wee hours of the morning and then going to work the next day, we jumped at the new time. (the show was fantastic BTW)

But then what about Tuesday. I could go to work, there is always a reason to go to work. But I'd already rearranged meetings and no one was expecting me and since I already loose enough unused leave time, I was just quiet about the change and took it off.

So we decided to play tourist for the day and drive up into some areas we hadn't been to in years and just wander the roads.

Massachusetts is an interesting state in that at one end is Provincetown, at the tip of Cape Cod and definitely at sea level and at the opposite corner borders the mountains of Vermont and New York. A little factoid is that Massachusetts really doesn't have any mountains. The area I live in, the Berkshires, are the foothills of the Taconic range and Green mountains of Vermont. The word foothills sound somewhat lame and leaves an impression that they are much smaller than they really are. Some of the hills up north can look like mountains, such as Mount Greylock, the highest point in the state, but even it doesn't meet the "definition" of a mountain. No question, we are at a higher elevation and as you drive north towards Williamstown and North Adams the hills get steeper and rougher. The roads wind up the sides of the foot hills and there is a section called the hairpin turn which The photo at the top is a miserable representation of the view at the northern most part of my state looking across to Vermont.


The cell phone photo doesn't do it justice as this is from the top looking off to Vermont and multiple valleys and ridges.

On our day trip we wandered along the northern highway stopping in Shelburne Falls for lunch and checking out the Bridge of Flowers and the Glacial Potholes and off to the small town of Greenfield. Amazed as always how things had changed since the days I'd lived there 30 years ago. It was much more rustic, less built up (and by city standards it isn't built up that much now) A good use of a day off.

So, where did they go?

I posted 2 comment replies and had a couple of draft posts and this morning they were all gone. The gremlins are at it again!