At 18:45 24-02-02 -0600, Julia wrote: >Ronn Blankenship wrote: > > > It could be worse, though: there was the time while I was in the middle of > > all that, and some pipes burst and drenched everything that wasn't > packed . . > . > >Ouch. My condolences. I've never had *that* happen, I hope it never >does, and I hope it doesn't happen to anyone reading this thread.
It was February in Ogden, Utah. Anyone who has lived there will know of the canyon wind phenomenon, where a pressure gradient pushes wind out of the mouths of the several canyons in the mountains to roar through town at speeds from 60 to 100 mph. On the morning following such an episode, everyone would go for a walk around the neighborhood to locate their own garbage cans and return the cans they found in their yard to the appropriate owners, and on at least one occasion I found pieces of that green rippled fiberglass roofing stuff in my backyard that had been part of someone's storage shed. Sometimes, the wind blowing past the exhaust pipe on the roof would blow out the pilot light in the furnace. The first time that happened, during the first winter I spent there, I had to call the gas company, but of course I watched the workman they sent so I knew what to do the next time it happened, which as it turned out was a few times each winter. When I was in the process of moving away from there, circumstances required that for a couple of weeks or so I had to go back and forth between the old place and the new place. I had spent the night at the new place and gotten back to the old place to find that the pilot light had blown out and the temperature inside the house was 17�F. The water in the toilet bowl was a mouse-size skating rink. The movers were due that morning to put everything in the truck and move it, and the only place I could think of to put the things I didn't want put in the truck while the movers were there was in the bathroom. As things warmed up, though, the pipes for the washing machine (located, for whatever reason, in the bathroom--it was an older house) turned out to have frozen and ruptured and when they thawed, water started shooting all over the bathroom, drenching the stuff I'd put in there such as my jacket and gloves, my scriptures, etc. -- Ronn! :)
