Monday, August 06, 2012

Neighborhood.

Yesterday morning's bike ride felt more like bomb damage assessment, what with the vicious line of storms that had rolled through just before dawn. I opened the garage door to find a giant limb the size of a small tree had come down in the alley, knocking a hole in the roof of the garage across the way.

Other than the occasional siren dopplering in the distance, the misty streets were quiet, littered in branches and leafy debris. A giant wad of said debris clogged a sewer drain a few blocks down, with concentric bathtub rings of mud spreading out from it across the street like the contour lines on a map, telling the tale of what must have been a car-drowning puddle at its peak.

Getting down to Broad Ripple Village proper got me out from under the trees and gave me my first view of the sky, lit by the dawn and featuring a ruler-straight wall of cloud that ran from horizon to horizon and looked for all the world like a mountain range in the distance.

The Great Central Indiana Mountains loom in the distance.
I picked up breakfast for myself and Bobbi at the Ripple Bagel Deli (Loxy Lady for me and Monon Roadkill for her,) little realizing that businesses all around me were without power. Bagels in the basket, I turned the Broad Ripple SUV around and pedaled for home.

La Vie Boheme being encroached by La Vie Bobo. Charming hippie bagel deli bordered by doggie bakery and Starbucks. Note near-ubiquitous jogging stroller.
After breakfast we assembled in the alley with the neighbors to either side of us and went to work on the tree limb across the way, using some loppers and a reciprocating saw to reduce a tree to a brush pile and three quarts of sweat. The kids whose garage it smacked then called a tree service company (most of whom appeared to be doing land office business in Broad Ripple yesterday) who showed up, chainsawed the remaining log, and hauled everything off.

 I had other plans yesterday, but between the bicycling and amateur volunteer tree removal work, I felt I had earned a spell on the porch with a book and a beer, and so I did just that for the afternoon.

8 comments:

  1. Ah, the Starbucks building.

    Originally known as Light's Eldorado Hall. My Lodge met there when it started in 1902, until the lodge hall half a block south on Bellefontaine (now Guilford) was built in 1907.

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  2. Oh, so THAT'S what 'weather' is!

    I think I'll stick with what we get here, the more effete version known as climate (I think). You know, a light sprinkling of rain, a slight breeze, a few (very few) hours of warm sun, and at most two or three snow-flakes (sometimes all in the same day).

    See! We have a better class of weather over here ;-p

    (Oh and I'm impressed with the neighbourly spirit, it still happens here in the countryside. The city? there'd be a crowd gathered, for sure, but just to point, laugh, get in the way, and steal your saw)

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  3. Having both a snow plow and a chainsaw, I'm now a highly respected member of our street.

    Well done to you and Bobbi for pitching in with the clean up.

    Gerry

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  4. Harbor Fright has an electric chainsaw for $55. Might be worth having one for storm cleanup duties.

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  5. "Great Central Indiana Mountains ".
    We have something similar in Denver when the wind and conditions are right, only it looks like the Pacific has made it this far and is about to slop over the Rockies.

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  6. They sell Baked Dog in Broad Ripple?

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  7. Wait--- those are mountains? I thought that was a low cloud bank.

    And what do you mean, "mountains"? Those look like hills. (Then again, my judgement is colored by the fact that I have stood on the summit of Mt. Whitney. And got very lucky. I collected a handful of summit pebbles, and one of them looks like the very mountain from which it came.)

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  8. Good thing that wasn't a Pacific Redwood, as the limbs they drop are the size/weight of big trees! Last one that fell on my sister's driveway required construction equipment to get it out of the ground, so it could be cut up.

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