You Can't Get Lost - January 19, 2023 = Ouch......

 So, what do you do in Laramie when there have been two heavy storms, two days of 40 degrees where it has been cold enough to freeze the street gutters full to overflowing onto the sidewalk and then two weeks when it won't get over 29, and most of that not above 24.  

Why, you chip the ice out of the gutters.  And not just your own, but your downstream neighbors, because her flooding is affecting yours as well.  And because you live on a block where there are two group homes for mentally retarded adults that walk back and forth between the two houses and they need dry sidewalks.  

So... this started Tuesday a week ago, the 10th.  The highs before that had been in the high 20s and low 30s, but Tuesday, the high was in the low 40s and there was significant melting, enough for the water to dam up in the gutter and overflow onto the sidewalk.  My snow shoveler, the teenage girl next door and her father upstream, have been doing a good job of keeping the sidewalk and driveway clear, but the water flowing up on the sidewalk is beyond their control, so it's up to me to work on it.  I had my handy ice chipper and a shovel and I was able to get a narrow trench dug along the curb so that the water wouldn't overflow.  It worked ok by the time I quit at sundown, but the water froze overnight and filled in the channel.  I worked on it two more hours on Wednesday (another 40 degree day) and got it flowing again, until I had my much needed massage.  But it kept freezing and filling in.  

I hit is hard on Saturday.  I spent four hours with my ice pick and snow shovel trying to widen the slot.  But when the ice is hard enough that you can't throw an ice chipper down as hard as you can and chip anything, you need something different.  I got my axe that I used to use to split firewood, 'way, 'way back in the early 80s to heat the den and living room.  It's a special axe that has a ledge along the side of the blade that causes the axe to twist in your hand and split the wood without using a wedge.  It helped, but the twist meant that I had to hit the blade tilted so it would chip off a piece. However, it wouldn't split the ice all the way down because of the ledge.  Anyway, after three day and eight hours, this is what I accomplished.  I had to quit at this point and go to Joe Lord's 74th birthday party.  Sunday, it froze in again and while it didn't overflow, the ice in the middle section was one inch below the top of the curb. 

My tools, including the axe.

What I don't have a picture of is the neighbor's gutter downstream (behind me).  The water is backed up the entire length of the her lot, and there is two inches of ice on the sidewalk at some points.  I need to work on that also.

Monday was Martin Luther King day and low 30s in Cheyenne so I drove over.  My objective was Harbor Freight and a drill hammer.  They had the one I had looked at on-line and it was 10% off in store, and they had bits for it.  $130 and I'm out the door....to Red Lobster for a late lunch, and then to a locksmith to get duplicates of the keys for my bike and for my new front door lock.  (The Yale lock I installed a year ago failed connection so many times and would 't reconnect that I didn't trust it, and you'd better trust your house lock.)  I learned a lot about locks and keys that day, and that he didn't have a key blank that matched the Chinese key.  He kept the key and said he would try to figure something out.  He left a message on my phone today, so maybe he got it.  I'll stop on the way down to Denver next Wednesday.  I'll bring the battery down with me so we can be sure it works.

Driving home from the locksmith, Google recommended driving the back way home, on Happy Jack.  Happy Jack is always a nice alternative to the interstate, a lot more interesting drive and usually very little traffic.  I've noticed some new signs on the interstate and on Happy Jack for the USDA Agricultural Research Center and for the Cheyenne National Cemetery.  I still had some daylight available and the time to do it, so I turned off the road and drove up there.  The road was on the west side of F.E. Warren Air Force Base and I had never been on it before.  The turnoff was for both the Ag Research Center and the National Cemetery, so I went to the cemetery first.  

The Cheyenne National Cemetery is new, dedicated in 2021.  It's not large, (it is primarily for veterans and families from Wyoming), but it is still a cemetery for those who have fought and in some cases, died for our country.  

Members of Congress should be forced to read this at the beginning of every year.

Memorial Wall and Columbarium                  

 

So many of them were born from 1942 to 1954 and served in Viet Nam.  That was my age group.  They gave years out of their lives, or their lives, for me.  Thank you.  (I still have tears in my eyes as I write this four days later.)  

On the other hand, the Ag Research Center felt like a location out of a Hitchcock movie.  Being MLK Day, no one was around.  The buildings are on a hillside above the road and look like they were built between the 1920s and 50s.  

Headquarters

Operations?                                                                    Laboratory

Greenhouse

I will definitely go back...... during the summer... and the daylight.....  Interesting.....(Like a train wreck).

The hammer drill is incredible.  I should have bought one years ago.  It split the ice into big chunks, it pulled up the ice that was frozen onto the concrete, it was just amazing.  Between Tuesday and Thursday, I've cleared Paula's gutter and mine, wide enough so that you can run a shovel down the gutter and keep it cleaned out.  The down side is that it required me bending over the whole time, and that is tough on me.  

It snowed 2" last night so it doesn't look like much, I'll take one later tomorrow so you can see more clearly the amount of ice and snow I've removed.  

That wall of ice was 6-8" high, 2" higher than the 

curb.  The hammer drill split it without a problem.  

But I hurt.  My back, the back of my legs, my arms from lifting and the vibration, my little fingers getting really cold (it was 16 degrees when I quit this afternoon), Tylenol is my friend, and Lorena, and Jeremy (massage and chiropractor).