April 16, 2015 – Wednesday

0 degrees (again), clear/calm

Pentoga Road

A big congratulations goes out to my son, Luke, who is South Portland, Maine’s, newest Lieutenant in the fire department. My second son took his officer’s exam a couple of week’s ago and underwent a panel interview last week. There were originally twenty applicants and the strict testing system narrowed the field to five. Luke emerged as the top candidate after the interview.

Luke always loved fire as a young child and his mother and I had to continually remind him NOT to play around the burning barrel. He loved poking sticks into the embers where he was singed more than once.

Luke majored in Fire Science after high school and worked his way through college by living and working at the Gorham, Maine, Fire Department, while attending classes. In his early years, while still in school, he did a lot of cooking for the crews and manned the phones, and later, gained valuable fire fighting experience. After graduation, he was hired by the South Portland Fire Department and has been there since. At age 34, he’s their newest senior command officer.

Congratulations, Lukie. I’m proud of you and love you so much.

I guess this is the calm before the storm. A foot or more of snow is forecast to fall during the next twenty-four hours. Radar indicates the snow is about 75 miles to our southwest and is slowly marching in this direction.

Tuesday morning was spent hoofing my usual five miles. I think I can pronounce the knee completely healed. I no longer think of it as I hike, climbing or descending hills doesn’t seem to bother it, and the occasional random twinges I used to suffer from are becoming fewer and fewer. It’s taken a full nine months, but I’m back to hitting on all eight cylinders. No doubt the Packers will be calling me to play for them this next fall; probably alternate with Eddie Lacey at running back.

I started working on the four-wheel drive of the Blazer when I arrived back home. It was fifteen degrees outside with bright sunlight. Initially, I had the SUV in the barn, but it was too dark to see and several degrees colder inside than out. I backed the vehicle into the sunlight and began my shade tree mechanics.

Once again, I had to take pictures of what I was working on, in this case, the actuator, bring the camera inside and enlarge the picture on my computer screen so I could tell exactly what was going on, keep that image in my mind, then go back out and do what needed to be done.

The whole process seemed to take forever, but thankfully, I was finished shortly after noon. It’s a temporary fix at best, but should ensure that the four-wheel drive will work so Sargie can use it to get home later this afternoon should the snow be falling heavily.

I chugged into town, first to try the four-wheel drive and be sure it actually worked, then to fill the Blazer and a five gallon can with VERY expensive gasoline. I encountered several brief periods of intense lake affect snow off of Lake Superior to our north.

My eyes were done in from working in the bright sunlight all morning. The snow had amplified its brilliance and I had welder’s flash for several hours. All I could see were very bright splashes in front of me, almost blinding light, even when I closed my eyes. The afternoon was spent surrounded by the relative neutral light inside the house. Later, I graded a few papers and listened to a documentary on television.

Sargie was home fairly early and we stuffed ourselves with popcorn while watching Monday night’s Dancing With the Stars.

I’m going to walk my five miles this morning then listen to Elder Interviews, one of the three final projects that are required in my Alaska Studies class. Even the graduate students seem to enjoy this method of relaying information and with today’s smart phones, recording and uploading an audio file is relatively simple.

Other than that, I guess I’ll wait for the snow to arrive and later, for Sargie to pull into the drive. Should the weather get too bad too soon, she has the option of staying at one of her sister’s in Iron Mountain.

Time to get this uploaded and listen to the news; possibly think a deep thought or two.

After all, man’s work is never done.

So are the tales from Pentoga Road…