Friday 15

Friday 15- I did my stretches. I was going to go on a two mile run but Marcie Hines daughter called asking me if I could put the pictures of Lee’s memorial I took on these two electronic picture frames that she has. I told her to come on over and I’d do it. She and Marcie arrived an hour later with the frames and I installed the pictures on both.
Today’s Weather was: Temps of around 38 and 62 degrees, calm winds, humidity around 32 percent, clear skies.
According to the National Weather Service: “Saturday: Partly sunny, with a high near 65. Calm wind becoming south southeast between 5 and 8 mph. Saturday Night: Partly cloudy, with a low around 37. West southwest wind between 3 and 10 mph.”
Ginger called asking me if I’d run down to her property and measure a door to see if a sofa she wants to get will fit through them. (What happened next is why this post is going to be short)
I jumped into the Gross Polluter and headed on down to her place about half a mile away. I was doing about thirty as I neared her driveway I put on my left turn signal, slowed down and started to make my turn when I heard a loud honk and just then a delivery van that was speeding behind me and trying to pass on my left smashed into the left front of my car as I tried to stop my turn after hearing the honk! When he hit me I saw pieces of the poor old Gross Polluter flying in the air. His Van went up on the embankment into the dirt and traveled for a distance. He told me that his brakes didn’t work when he tried to avoid me. He must have been doing sixty MPH when he tried to pass giving him no time to stop when he saw me making my left turn. Nobody was hurt but we were both well shaken up.
We exchanged information and he offered to give me $100 to fix the damage to my truck. I told him that it was more than that; the front side above the wheel well was caved in, the hood was so tweaked that it won’t open all the way up, the headlights fell out when the bumper was nearly ripped off, and the radiator came loose from its welds and is just hanging there. I can drive it at night and I don’t have a left front turn signal. I took pictures and will post them tomorrow; I’m just too raddled right now.
I did get Ginger’s measurements for the door and called to tell her what happened, and fed Princes (her horse) a carrot I brought for her before I left and stopped off at Stoney’s to show him the damage.
I got back home, took a tranquilizer, and didn’t do much of anything else but call my insurance company to file a report, write this to my journal, posted it to the web, and called it a night.

Saturday 16

Saturday 16- I did my stretches and ran a mile.
Today’s Weather was: Temps of around 37 and 63 degrees, slight breeze, humidity around 39 percent, mostly cloudy in the morning clearing to sunny skies around 1pm.
According to the National Weather Service: “Sunday: A 10 percent chance of rain after 4pm. Mostly cloudy, with a high near 61. Calm wind becoming south southeast around 6 mph. Sunday Night: A 50 percent chance of rain, mainly after 10pm. Mostly cloudy, with a low around 40. Southwest wind between 6 and 10 mph.”
When I got back from my run I noticed that Ginger left some biscuits on the outside table for me; she felt responsible for the car accident yesterday, but of course it wasn’t her fault and I told her that these things just happen. I ate my breakfast and headed on down to her place to take some more pictures of the “crime scene”. She was home and was working on putting together a folding bed and I spent the next hour or so helping her and her daughter Lola constructing that. I fed her horse Princess a carrot; Lola fed her a lollypop, took my pictures and headed home.
I called my insurance company to make sure that I said westbound on Winters Rd and not eastbound. I told the lady that I was very rattled when I called yesterday and may have made that mistake; she said I did. She also went on to say that she has been working at this job filing accident forms out for years and that when she had a minor accident herself she was so rattled that she forgot everything too, and if it wasn’t for the police officer that hit her she would have been lost! I told her that made me feel better.
I called Family and Friends throughout the day.
I went over to Stoney’s to grind a telescope mount to fit my new Meade 4.5” reflector that FedEx delivered Friday (I forgot to write about that yesterday). We had lunch and sat around yapping for a spell.
I got the mount back home and put my new telescope on it and it fit perfectly! The scope isn’t the most powerful one I got but I needed one that I can transport easily, plus it’s better than the 90mm refractor I have. I still have a lot of work to do on that 12” Dobsonian that I bought a few years ago; the manufacturer did a shoddy job, there were parts missing, the mount is horrible, and the spider that holds the secondary mirror is so thin that it warps easily. I hope to rework the whole dang thing and make it a useful instrument.
I had a nice fire going in the woodstove and practiced my guitar, and then read aloud from the textbooks: “Astronomy Today” about Interferometry, and “The Cell: a Molecular Approach” about Coenzymes.
I spent an hour reworking and updating the Copper Mountain Mesa Website and sent out the Newsletter.
I did my stretches; practiced my guitar; wrote to my journal, posted it to the web, and called it a night.