Repairing the Electric Lines

You may remember my photograph of the road along my bike route, blocked by the fallen tree last Saturday.  What I had not noticed was that when the tree came down, it also broke the power pole and took it down as well.  So about three days ago, on my ride, I turned into the street and it was clear!  The tree was gone and the power lines had been repaired and attached to a new pole.  Here's the funny thing - The main electric wire that was down was a 4,000 volt line that is on an insulator on the very top of the power pole, and a ground wire that is about 3 feet below it.  So the electric repair crew has put the power lines back on top of the pole.  However, also on the pole are the telephone lines, and any fiber optic lines or coax lines used for internet.  So the electric crew took care of THEIR lines, but what they did was cut the fallen pole in pieces, and then took the portion of the old pole, and tied it to the new pole, AT GROUND LEVEL!  So it will be up to a telephone repair crew to come and lift all these lines back up to the correct hight on the new pole - these telephone lines are usually 10 feet below the high-voltage line.  I mean that is only fair, but still it is funny to see these telephone lines down so low.

Here is the machine that pulled the tree stump out of the ground and has it in it's "jaws."

This is a more detailed photo of the remains of the old pole with its lines attached.

And this is my "Wait!  What?" photo.  These are the telephone lines and probably a FIOS internet cable underneath.  but look at how low it is right above the driveway of this house!  Maybe it is going uphill just enough to get a car under it on the right hand side, out of the picture.  I don't think the electric repair crew did this family any favors leaving these wires down so low!

Heavy Rain

We had some heavy rain today which was good because it has been so dry for so long.  Everything got a good watering.  I happened to go out on the front porch to watch the rain, and I saw this scene.  All the colors of the bush and the scene were more pastel because of all the rain coming down.  If you click on the photograph to enlarge it, you can see the detail in the rain. 

The Last of the Repairs, We Hope...

I thought that all our neighborhood had power.  How wrong I was.  On my way back from my bike ride I saw these crews from Texas setting up trucks on a smaller street down the block.  One of the workers said a number of houses at the end of the street had not had power for a week!  Yikes!  The politicians and residents all over Long Island are furious with the power company for how long it has taken to restore power.  The power company arranged for 1600 crews from out of state to be in place before the storm hit.  They had tried to get 2500 crews.  Crews have been arriving every day from all over the country.  They are saying that the number of power outages were way more than first estimated.  So maybe the power company has been doing a good job.  The thing that they are guilty of is having a phone and texting reporting system that completely collapsed under the onslaught of calls.  One story in the paper mentioned a man who tried to call in because a broken 4000 volt line was down in his back yard, and was setting fire to the grass.  The fire department came and said they couldn't do a thing because the line was still live, but even the firemen couldn't call the power company!  Man, that is messed up!  Supposedly, all the repairs were supposed to be finished by Wednesday night.

No Dunkin' Donuts - Week 22

Twenty-Two weeks of sheltering in place.  Twenty-Two weeks of having Dunkin' Donuts at the beach!  Something new every week.  This week it was an empty beach, for the most part.  It was over 80 degrees at 10 AM when we arrived with our donuts and coffee and tea.  I understand people not wanting to sun themselves when it is sunny and 80 degrees out.  I think there were a couple of people sitting in chairs down by the water, but other than that, we owned the place, sitting at "our" picnic bench...   :-)

Trying to Grab The Planets

Lets be honest here, these are TERRIBLE photographs of the planets!  I went out and set up one of my telescopes, a 106mm refractor on an equatorial mount which will track objects in the sky.  Then I made my first attempt to get a photograph of both Jupiter, above, and Saturn, below.  It was very frustrating, operating the telescope and all the extra equipment - the special astronomy camera, and a laptop and the new software.  What I really wanted to do, and was successful at, was that I wanted short movies, perhaps a minute long of each planet, so beginners could see how much planets "bounce around" from the turbulence in the atmosphere.  And I got that, but then I tried to extract some still photographs from the video, and this is the result. Some members of our club are experts in taking those videos, and then "stacking" the best images to make one still photograph, and those images almost look like they were from the Hubble Space Telescope.  There is no risk you will fine excellent photographs like that here!

 

Florescent Light Store?

Look!  An empty florescent light store!  See all the tubes on display on the walls?  Well, not really...  It is in fact a Sprint store which sells cell phones.  It used to be a Radio Shack store for years and years and I bought so many electronic parts for projects over the years.  Radio Shack went under and Sprint bought some of their stores, and turned them in to boring cell phone stores.  So what's going on?  Well, T-Mobile has just bought Sprint, so they are cleaning out their stores and making them T-Mobil stores.  The florescent tubes are "light boxes" to hold large color transparencies displaying phones.  When they want to change a picture, they take down the old transparency, and put up a new one!  What boggles my mind is that it was night, the store was closed, and yet they have all these freaking florescent tubes lit up - for what?  For nothing.  I will have to come back some night (this store is right next to a MacDonalds where we get our ice cream cones, so I WILL be back) and I will take another photograph to show you the beautiful color displays when they put them up.

Obstacles

My bike ride has gotten a bit more interesting since the hurricane passed through.  There are trees down everywhere, most of which have been moved to the side of the road, or which stick out blocking one lane and that's no problem at all.  But this, now this was a problem!  I was determined to continue on my normal route though.  So I went over by the power pole to the left, and walked over the curb on to the grass that you can see, and found a way around the uprooted tree roots.  There were no wires over on that side, so that made it easier.  This is what the roots looked like.  I was surprised about how thin the roots were.  It also looked like the soil is very sandy, which would not be unusual for Long Island.  It is surprising how these thin roots could hold up this tree.  Wait!  They didn't!  It is hard to tell how high the roots and the earth are, but they were over my head!  I continued to the left around the roots, and into someone's driveway, and then back out to the street, and I was on my way!