thundery afternoon
Posted by Zonie on November 04, 2024 at 03:43:46
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I'm in the midst of a quiet rebellion at work. In September the manager gave me a direct order in the presence of the day shift to make false conversions from Rockwell hardness to ultimate tensile strength. I wrote to the owners about it and made it clear I would not do it. He also ordered us to run bars outside the furnace's work zone. The other Kevin (the refugee from Fresno) and I cut the bars loose and warped them rather than let them be run outside the work zone. Nick and Chris of the night shift did the same thing to other bars that were too long for the furnace work zone. I'm glad we have two shifts in rebellion now. Nick has another reason to rebel. He was nearly electrocuted by furnace 19 twice last month. He won't work with it again until it's certified by a professional electrician. Friday a customer was surprised I wouldn't sign his certification with false conversions. I told him that if a plane crashed, I wasn't going to be the one to go to prison for it. Having been to prison before, I think there are good reasons and bad reasons to go. Endangering aviation safety just to please the boss is a bad reason. On the other hand taking a blunt instrument and beating the boss over the head...
Still enough premeditation, time for recreation. Today's mud hike clearly went much better than the one two weeks ago. There was some fatigue, but the knee pain wasn't nearly as bad. I credit the cortizone shots. Dr. Martin had something very strange to say. He said my body mass index was too high for knee replacements. Well I hadn't asked him for that. Maybe my X-rays looked worse than I feel. It seems very strange that you'd deny people with high body mass indices the surgery they need to exercise. All the medical advice I've ever heard is that high BMI people should exercise. He also said something about getting me gel shots when the supply is available. Oh well, I think these cortizone shots will do for this winter mudding season.
The forecast had been for a 20% chance of rain Saturday night and a 50% chance of rain this afternoon. There were showers and thunderstorms last night. I checked the automatic rain gage network, it looked like my best mud opportunity would be the east segment of Reach 11, as a gage near there had received 0.4".
Initially things didn't look promising for more rain. When I got to the trailhead the sun was shining, and there were few clouds. There were definitely some muddy patches in the trail and some small mud puddles, and I enjoyed going through those. As I hiked eastward I noticed clouds were moving in from the northwest. That looked promising.
As I stomped around in the mud from the runoff from 56th Street, I realized I had forgotten to visit the area with the strange irrigation I encountered last February. I figured I'd check it out on the way back.
I continued east of the 56th Street overpass and east of the construction site to a gap in the barbed wire adjacent to some state trust land. There was a rutted road there, and it contained several large deep mud puddles, and I had great fun stomping and churning up those. While I did this I heard thunder, and strong winds blew, and I hoped there would be a downpour, but I felt only a few drops. One of the peculiar characteristics of this climate is that a powerful thunderstorm can sometimes have most of its rain evaporate on the way down. The energy from this is transferred into strong downdrafts and outflow winds, and apparently that's what was happening. At least it was cloudy enough to keep the heat of the sun from troubling me.
When I got back to the main trail and decided to head back, I was surprised to see several joggers there. I thought maybe they also looked forward to a downpour, being out in the thundery weather. I remembered to detour to the area that had been irrigated, but there was no water coming from the pipe this time. The ground was damp but not very muddy.
I headed back and got to my car sooner than I had expected. Maybe knee pain had slowed my hiking more than I thought it had. This time I had no traffic jams and got home in daylight with time enough for cleanup with the hose. When I was inside and was doing laundry and it was dark outside, I heard the sound of rain on the roof. Well timing isn't always favorable.