What a WEEK!

 With all due respect to Mrs Sarge, there is one thing I absolutely hated about Korea.  Loved the flying, loved the people, felt like I was doing something important, but.....I didn't like the winter.  Winter weather would come in on a High Speed Direct Flight from Siberia with a pass over the Yellow Sea to pick up some extra ice cold humidity.  Nope, they didn't make a flight suit warm enough to keep you from losing feeling in your extremities while doing the preflight walkaround of the jet.  That was followed by the fact that the cockpit heater got its hot air from the engines, which aren't started until start time and even then were in idle.  

Yes, Beans, the exhaust temperature was quite warm, but, for whatever reason, didn't warm the cockpit until the afterburners were lit on takeoff.  Then it was nice and toasty.  But fighting in a fighter is hard work and hard work produces perspiration, which is wet.  So, on engine shutdown and opening the canopy...Well, it wasn't unusual to have ice on portions of your flight suit, sometimes even in very sensitive parts of your body.  The walk to the crew truck, ride to the squadron and walk into the squadron were "memorable" to say the least.  

No, I don't like cold weather.  

Fortunately, Texas is, well, more reasonable in its Cold Weather climate.

Sometimes....

Other times, well, we had a "special" week last week.

Forecast for last Tuesday was for the temperature at dawn to be 13F with a Wind Chill of -1F.  Now, having flown a lot and received a weather briefing from a weather person prior to that mission, I learned that they weren't always accurate.  Fortunately, most of them would hedge their briefing by quoting the "bad" side of the forecast.  Nobody ever bitched about the weather being better than forecast was their thought process.

Can't disagree with them.

Unfortunately, the actual temperature here of 7F and  Wind Chill of -5 isn't "better".  

But, living in the country, we've been through cold weather before.  Our biggest weak point in the living in the country is water.  Our water comes from a well.  No, Beans, the City doesn't provide it.  We're on our own. 

Having lived through a few cold snaps, we know that we need to turn the water on in the buildings that need it and let it run.  Supposedly, that keeps it from freezing in the pipes.  I had not done that once before and had that happen. Then one's plumber has to repair the pipes because they burst, since water expands when it freezes.  Expensive!

So, Monday night, we made sure to turn all the faucets on to a small drip.

Well.  another lesson learned, a small drip is not sufficient.  Woke up the next morning, to do my "bidness". Got 'er done, reached up and hit the lever to remove the evidence as my sainted Mother taught me to do long ago.  There was a flushing sound, followed by that Simon and Garfunkel song "The Sounds of Silence".

Inserted just for a little nostalgia for Sarge.  After all when this song came out in 1965, Sarge was 20 something.

JUST KIDDING! Back to the post.

Now the Old Wive's Rule in this situation is "If it's Brown, flush it down, if it's yellow, let it mellow." Which is a pretty good  Rule of Thumb, usually.  Unfortunately in this case, it wasn't the former, rather the latter.  So....

Well, my lack of SA (situational awareness) led to my being restricted to using our outside property for dispensing "yellow", if you get my gist.  OK, it was a very effective learning point.  Never knew that organ could get that cold.  

In any case, went throughout the house and looked at all the faucets that we'd turned on to drip.  Nada!  And stayed that way until Thursday.  Woke up that morning to the sound of running water in the toilets and faucets.  Thank You Lord!

Now while the water was out,  it wasn't pleasant, but we didn't screw this up by the numbers.  First, we had two 5 gallon jugs of water that we had in the closet (sealed when we bought them) and used them to water the horses.  We also had 3 or 4 one gallon jugs of water, for cooking and watering the dogs and cat as well as Mrs J and I.   

That got us through the first day, no problem.  The next day, in order to keep us from going insane from boredom, we went down to the old house to continue the prepping it to turn it into a BnB.  Happened to bump the kitchen sink faucet.

Low and behold, water comes running out.  A quick run to the house and picked up the water jugs and refilled them.  

Why did this happen?  Well, that house and our current guest houses are on a separate well, which, obviously hadn't frozen.  "I'd rather be lucky than good" has always been a mantra of mine.  That seems to have been the case this time. Especially, since my Brother lives in one of the cottages and we were expecting paying guests in the other that weekend.  No water would have been "Bad" in either case.

But, at least, we've got a source of potable water close by. So...We got that going for us! 

One of my favorite movies and favorite quotes.  Hard to believe it came out 45 years ago!

ANYHOW!...Back to the story.

The following afternoon as I start to prep for dinner at the current house and am reaching for a jug of water to start heating it to cook when I hear a splashing noise in the sink.  I turn around and, lo and behold, water is flowing.  Not only had the well unfrozen, but the pipes hadn't broken.

Thank You, Lord!

Oh...By the way... I'm writing this on Sunday,  out of curiousity I checked to see what the temp outside is:

 Gotta love, Texas!  If you don't like the weather, wait an hour (or a couple of days), it'll change!

Peace out, y'ALL!  Oh, and keep water on hand, you never know when you'll need it. Ask me how I know.

 Well ain’t that special! Had to put down a Dog this afternoon. He’d been having problems walking and this afternoon, he couldn’t stand up. Rest in peace, Bentley, put in a good word with the Big Guy about us, please!