The Fire

Saturday night was as ordinary as they come. The boy was spending the weekend with his grandparents. We went out for a bit of retail therapy and crashed in front of the TV. Around midnight we woke up long enough to go to bed. It ain't exciting, but it's our life. Or at least it was.

At 12:47am I awoke to a horrible incessant noise. It was a very loud 60-cycle hum, like the sound of a florescent fixture with bad ballast. I went out into the hall to see just what the hell had the audacity to wake me up, and my ears led me to the thermostat, which I immediately noticed was not on (it's digital). At that point I figured the heat had failed, so I turned on some lights to make my way to the breaker box.

And that's when I noticed the dining room was full of smoke. Oh. Shit.

Not ready to declare that anything worse than a bad heater was at fault, I made my way through to the den, which was somehow even smokier, to the breaker box. Sadly, whoever wired the breaker box had nothing smaller than a Sharpie to mark the breakers, and evidently couldn't be bothered to label more than 5 or 6 of them. I flipped a few, including the one vaguely legible "heat" breaker.

Nothing improved. I ran out the closest door to see if flames were leaping out of the roof, but they weren't. I came back in through the kitchen, into the foyer, and saw Katelyn coming out of the bedroom as I was heading out the front door to see if the front of the house was on fire. It also wasn't.

She started yelling that the smoke was coming out of the fridge, which we'd suspected of being near death for weeks. Ah! That must be it! Pulling it out revealed huge amounts of smoke billowing out of the back, so we yanked the cord and I congratulated myself for saving the house.

Then she pointed out that smoke was pouring out of the oven. I ran back to the breaker box and flipped a few more of 'em, but nothing was getting better, and the kitchen had become unbreathable. We opened windows to survive and to buy ourselves a few minutes to get the pets out, Katelyn called 911, and we evacuated the pets.

Once the pets were out, I went back to the dining room and pulled our sideboard away from the wall, whereupon I could see fire through the cracks in the floorboards. I grabbed a pot from the kitchen and started pouring water onto the floor. A little got through to the fire, but it was evident it was time to retreat. When I went to step away, I realized my slipper had begun to melt onto the floor.

Katelyn was on the phone with the 911 operator, securing the pets in the garage. I was trying to move a hose from the side of the house to the front, where there's a tap directly under the dining room window. The hose refused to engage the threads on the tap, and when I finally got it attached and opened the tap, hot water came out. It was clear the pipes were routed right through the fire. I called off my efforts to save the house and waited for the sirens.

When the fire department came, they came in force. At first we got 3 trucks, but over the next 45 minutes that number swelled to somewhere between 10 and 12. We had a legitimate 3-alarm fire, but never once did flames actually enter the living space of the house. It appears to have begun as an electrical fire in the crawlspace, but had entered the wall between the dining room and kitchen by the time the firefighters got to it.

The firemen will have my absolute unquestioning respect forever. Every single action they took was explained to us in detail PRIOR to it happening. They apologized in advance for everything they had to do, ensured that we understood what was happening was strategic, and kept us sane throughout. The fire marshal walked us through the house when they were done, and even went so far as to get our electric company to dog-leg power from the house to the garage so we'd have a warm place to sleep on our own property.

They helped us collect our essentials and even offered to run into town for any supplies we would need. They were AMAZING. Not at all the faceless drones who chop your house to pieces and leave a rubbly mess.

Everything was over at 4:15am, and we tried our hardest to get a little sleep.

In the light of the morning, we took our own walk-through. The wall between the kitchen and dining room is functionally gone. Fire had entered 2 sections of the wall, but because of modern construction practices (capped walls), the fire did not enter Alastair's bedroom, which was directly upstairs. Because of where it began, the firemen could not get directly to it through the crawlspace, so they had to chainsaw our floors and put it out from above. At least one floor joist is completely bisected by fire, and the floors in at least the kitchen and dining rooms (and likely the foyer because now it's wiggly) will be written off. There's ash and soot on everything, and the house smells dreadful.

All the registers in the main heating zone have black soot on them, so the heating will need to be replaced. Emergency vendors are working this week to winterize the pipes and prevent further damage. A textiles cleaner came today to collect all fabrics in the house for cleaning, and an electronics company en route to take...well...the electronics.

We're living in a hotel for the moment, but trying to get to another one that will let us have the pup, with the goal of being in a temporary rental house within a week or two. At that point all of our emergency cleaning (clothes, electronics, etc) will be delivered back to us, and we'll have a semi-permanent home for the next 3 to 4 months while our house is rebuilt.

All the wiring will be replaced. Every wall will need to be tested to see if it needs to be replaced. Every wall will be repainted (we get to pick the colors, so...huzzah?). Structural renovations will be necessary to support the kitchen, and all the kitchen appliances except the stove and dishwasher will be replaced. While there is no clear visible damage to the exterior, I watched black smoke pour out of the crawlspace door for 3 hours, so I have a feeling the exterior of the house will get a good cleaning, too. Insulation under the house will be replaced. At least one of the 3 heating zones in the house will likely be replaced in total, and the other two were breathing in the smoke, so they may be damaged, too.

So far everyone we've dealt with has been incredible, and even our blustery snow day has worked out to be an opportunity for me to spend time with Alastair. Incidentally, the kid is taking it REALLY well. He cried when we told him, but we immediately took him to the house and showed him exactly what had happened, and since his birthday plans were all necessarily ruined, we went ahead and gave him his go-kart a couple days early.

We are extremely fortunate to be alive, to have our pets still with us, to have a place on the property where we were able to stay, that is still viable if we need to be on the site during repairs, and above all, we were incredibly fortunate that Alastair was not home and that we still do have a house. These next few months will be a rough ride, but we will be able to face it together, and I know in my heart that will be enough.

Old Toy, New Button

This morning my phone greeted me with a new button in the Googy Music thinger: "I'm feeling lucky". Apparently what it really meant was "I'm in the mood to listen to 90's grrl rock EXCLUSIVELY".

To wit:
1.  Curve - Gift
2.  Letters to Cleo - Big Star
3.  The Amps - Bragging Party
4.  Belly - L'il Ennio
5.  Juliana Hatfield - the edge of nowhere
6.  Tanya Donelly - Manna
7.  Throwing Muses - Mania
8.  Tanya Donelly - Life is But a Dream

That's all I had time to hear this morning, and while the playlist assures me I soon would have heard The Lemonheads and Cracker, looking further down reveals more of the same: more and more Tonya Donelly (I only have 2 albums!), Tracy Bonham, Lush, Veruca Salt, that dog., and Frente!.

Maybe the Goog should rename that button to "I'm feeling stuck in a very specific genre", or "I <3 all="" and="" donelly="" her="" over="" p="" projects="" tanya="" the="" various="" years="">
Oh, and by the way: hi again!

I went slow, and then I didn't go at all

This is the weekend write-up I never wanted to do. Last weekend at VIR was supposed to be the culmination of 7 years worth of performance driving. Instead it served as the ultimate disappointment and early end to my season.

I'd prepared for a solid year to do NASA's Super Comp school in October. I'd read the rules, prepared the car, waffled over just the right setup, and ultimately chose one that was slow, but stable. I even had a crew member for the day to make sure I got from the classroom to the race car, and that I didn't run out of gas at any point.

The day began well enough, with a bunch of classroom sessions and on-track runs. We spent 40 minutes at a time doing starts, restarts, short (half-lap) races, and drills that kept us pinned to one side of the track or the other for upward of 20 minutes.  It was grueling, but really eye-opening.

I felt extremely optimistic going into the final session of the day. I'd managed to pass at least one car in each of my sessions, and only one person passed me all day. It was really great, and all I had to do was make it through 2 standing starts, 2 rolling starts, and a practice race.

The first standing start was crazy. I launched the car pretty well (4000RPM clutch side-step, just like at autocrosses) and got a run on a Spec E30. We were supposed to race to the start-finish line at the south paddock, but there were no flags displayed there, so we kept charging until we saw the first flags, which were displayed at T14. I passed a blue Mustang under hard braking as we approached the flags, and saw another instructor gesticulating wildly as I pulled up beside him.

I couldn't tell what he was trying to tell me to do, so I stayed beside him through the turn. What happened next I can't explain. Whether I went stupid or half-blind or just chose the wrong pedal or what, I got on the gas as he got on the brake. Maybe I thought he wanted me to pass him. Either way, the moment I got in front of him, I realized I was boned. I had just passed a car under double yellow flags and failed the school.

I completed the remaining starts and restarts and got about 2/3 through the practice race before the car started acting up.  Coming onto the front straight, she just wouldn't accelerate above 85mph. Once I hit 5000RPM in 4th gear, there was no further acceleration. I dropped back into 3rd and came through Turns 1 and 2 and the car seemed to be ok-ish, just a bit off pace, but when I started up the climbing esses in 4th, the car was actively slowing down. I looked down and saw that my oil pressure gauge was reading 0psi, so I pulled off-line and coasted the car to the south paddock.

What blew me away, though, was that the car was still running. You can't run a car for a solid minute at full-crank with no oil and have it reward you with a stable idle. I figured the motor just really really liked me and I shut it off and waited for a tow.

When I got back to the paddock, I looked under the car for a big gaping hole in the motor, but there was none to be found. Oil was still on the dipstick, too, albeit just the teeniest amount. A light tug on the wire for the oil-pressure sender revealed that the nut had fallen off, and that I'd just lost the signal.

Cool, but why then did the car die?  I tried to refire the motor, but the starter wouldn't even click.  I grabbed the charger and got my first clue: the battery was 100% dead.

In a comedy of errors, I had managed within one lap to:  kill the alternator, burn just enough oil out of the motor to make it appear empty (it was only down 1 quart), and lose my oil pressure sender.

The next morning, after charging the battery for several hours, I was able to start the car, though it was now producing a horrible sounding knock from the bottom end. Add a thrashed bearing or rod (and/or crank) to the list. Fun.

So with a tanked motor, tanked alternator, and failed attempt at race licensure under my belt, we packed up and came home. It was, without a doubt, the single most disappointing automotive outing I've ever experienced.

I've already begun work to transplant the "spare" motor, but it's gonna be a long road ahead, and it won't be done in time for November, so the year is done.

But there were some take-aways from the ordeal. I've decided unequivocally that I will keep the orange car in aero trim and make it my Summit Point (only?) car. The diff ratio, aero, and suspension seem to work very well there. Stacey (the 'new' car) will be coming home from the builder within a couple weeks, and will receive the orange car's transplanted motor with heavy-duty forged internals. I'm going for torque & horsepower above all else with this one, and she'll be dedicated to tracks with longer straight-aways. I'm not completely optimistic that she'll be ready for February ($$$), but dammit I'm gonna try.