From Sandy to Snowy

We had a sizable snowstorm here over the weekend.  Started out as rain on Friday morning and turned to snow by afternoon.  Kept on coming down all night long Friday night, and this is what I saw out my front door at 7am Saturday:

Looking straight out the door, to Rockland Court.  That's an unplowed cul-de-sac road between the trees.  It remained unplowed until the following day, since priority was given to plowing the thru-streets first.

My big pine tree, and my 'buried' car:

Later that day. . .  the backyard.  (Just so you can judge the depth of the snow, I'll tell ya that's a 6 foot stockade fence at the back end of the property.)

The shed. . .

Another way to get some idea of how deep the snow was. . . .  This is my picnic table.  Seems it has a pretty big "dome" of snow on it.

Looking across the front of my house, towards neighbors' Pete and Suzanne's.  I had forgotten that they were away for the week. . . .  in Las Vegas.   . . .and just got home late yesterday.  Suz told me they were stuck at the airport there until 3am. . . .  not only because the NY airports were closed, but because the plane they were supposed to board had one of it's engines "flame out."  A mess of a trip and a mess of a sight to come home to. . . .

Pete and Suz's - before they got home:

Looking from street in front of Pete and Suz's towards my place:

After the dig-out.  The gray car is my 95-year-old neighbor Rocky's.  He wanted to keep his driveway clear of it so that his Lizbeth's car - in their garage - would more easily be able to get out of the garage and down their driveway. 

Didn't lose any power during this storm.  Not many outages were reported at all.  L.I. Power Authority must have learned a few things from SANDY about how to handle big storms.  The worst that happened was that a lot of folks driving home from work on Friday afternoon got stuck in it. . . . REALLY stuck in it.  Cars were abandoned on roads all over the place.  I stayed at home all weekend until just this afternoon (Monday), when the roads were finally starting to be passable.  Just HAD to get out for awhile, do some shopping, and see what the mountains of snow piled up along the roads and in the parking lots looked like.

Putting the Gift Shop "Back Together" at Fire Island Lighthouse

Had a good day at the lighthouse today.  We got all new display cases and some new shelving units for the gift shop.  Only thing was, we had to assemble the furniture.  My pal Dave and I were assigned the job of putting together the Cashier's Stand. . . .  no easy task.  The instructions were diagrams, in the mode of IKEA-type assembly instructions.  Here we are coping:

We were all rewarded with a little "Pre-Super-Bowl Party" afterwards:

THAT, and the Mudslides provided by Linda, made it all worthwhile!

Fire Island Lighthouse Shines On

Spent the morning thru mid-afternoon at the lighthouse along with my fellow Sunday vols.  She's gonna need some rehab.  No really bad structural damage to any of the buildings, but things look awfully messy, the dunes out in front of her have been completely flattened, and just about all of our boardwalks leading to and from the parking lots have been destroyed.

She is still standing straight

Bambi and Faline have been romping around her. . .

Some of the crew: Doris, Sue, Dave, George, Flo and Lorraine

Terry and George are our January birthday celebrants

I am (ahem) tastefully omitting a photo I took of Dave holding up a certain handknitted object that Wes had gotten as a gift from a girlfriend(?)  If you want to know what it was, send me a personal request note!
 

The "grounds crew" (aka "the chain gang") filling the ruts and potholes in our driveway. Others among us stayed in the keeper's house, vacuuming and re-arranging things there (it was in need of a lot of work indoors, too!)

Our driveway out to Burma Road.  There used to be 10 to 15 foot dunes between Burma Road and the ocean.  None remain.  The dunes all up and down the coastline are gone, nothing left but FLAT sand.  Also gone is the newly-installed (only this past summer) boardwalk that led from in front of our driveway thru the dunes.  That boardwalk will not be replaced, only the ones that ran east-to-west will eventually (we can only hope) be rebuilt.

Looking eastward, towards the Ranger Station.  No dunes as far as the eye can see.

The grounds crew's return to home base. . .

What's left of the Ranger Station's Bay-side dock

That same bay-side dock as seen from the tower top. . .

Remnants of the bay-side dock's lead-up boardwalk

The Ranger Station.  The pathway to it used to be a boardwalk, the only portion of which remains is that small gray section at the bottom-center of this photo.

From ground-level, the path (onetime boardwalk) as you walk from the Ranger Station to the lighthouse.  That's George and Dave up ahead.

The eastern end of that path is to the lower-left of this photo.  The earth-movers were used to get the sand off the Ranger Station's parking lot. I was told that the stacks of lumber and Trex planking along the back of the parking lot are salvaged from the boardwalk and will eventually be re-used when a new boardwalk is built.

A closer shot of the earthmovers and salvaged planks

Wes and my Lens Building.  The boardwalks to it - which used to be in the upper left corner of this photo - are gone; only sand pathways remain.  So there is no access to the lighthouse from the Robert Moses State Park's parking fields any more.  Until they are re-built we will likely be accepting only visitors who come to us via bus - like schoolkids on Field Trips.

A long-range shot looking eastward - towards hamlet of Kismet - from the tower top.

Many, if not most, of today's helpers.  What a happy bunch!

One last long-range shot, looking westward from the tower top.  All of those sand pathways, other than the wide one (Burma Road) were once boardwalks. And the pathways remaining on the ocean-side of Burma Road leading all the way to the visitor parking lot - in the far upper-right corner of the photo - are hard to see at all, too.

St. Augustine Lighthouse (Sat. Dec. 22nd) and Mikey's (Sun. Dec. 23rd)

It is Saturday, December 29th as I write this.  On the morning of last Saturday, the 22nd I was still in St. Augustine Florida.  I went to the lighthouse there before leaving for Michael's in South Carolina at noon.

At the entrance to the tower:

The tower and entrance (onetime fuel storage building):

A nice shot from outside the gift shop:

The lightkeeper's house:

Inside the base of the tower (their Christmas tree is set up on top of what was once the "weight well" for the clockwork's weights):

It says that the weight, similar to those in a grandfather clock, was about 270 lbs.  I have told visitors to Fire Island Lighthouse that I estimated the weights that used to be in our lighthouse weighed somewhere between 200 and 300 lbs.  Not a bad guess, eh?

They had at least four of these 'fuel buckets' at various places in the tower and keeper's house.  Tho many Fire Island lighthouse visitors ask me how the fuel - back in the days when the light was a lantern - was brought to the top of the tower, we don't have any of these buckets to show them.  It'd be nice if we could "borrow" one of their four, wouldn't it?

Their spiral, looking upward.  Nice that they have several wide landings along the way, and that some of the landings even have benches, so that you can take a rest if you want to.

I swear that some of the broken glass in our Fresnel Lens looks like it could have been broken by gunshots.  St. Augustine's definitely was.  This is one of the lenses that was broken by "a vandal" according to the newspaper article.  The bullets - 4 of them - were retrieved and are in the lower left corner of the display.  No mention of whether or not the perpetrator was ever caught.

The story of Smoky, the lightkeeper's daughter's cat.  Seems his son did an experiment. . . .  Made a parachute out of bedsheets and sent Smoky down from the tower top one day.  Smoky survived, but went missing in the nearby woods for a full month after his flight.  Understandable. . . .

At the top.  John, the vol on duty there, took this shot as we chatted:

Looking east:

I thought this was interesting in the lightkeeper's house.  The lightkeeper had a portable bookcase.  It is a narrow trunk - just the right width for books.

And on last Sunday, the 23rd, I was at son Michael's in Lexington, South Carolina.  Here's some photos of his backyard 'boatyard.'

On his van:

Car, van, 4 trailers, one raft, a lot of kayaks and "Freedom Hawk" kayaks. . .

 

 Mikey tonight tells me that one more boat was picked up by him from a fella in Duluth, Georgia who sold it to him just yesterday and it now sits atop the trailer in foreground.  He plans to buy an outboard motor for the new boat soon, too.

The existing raft, on its trailer:

Millie, namesake of the millstream near where Mikey found her last year:

She was beaten up and had a few battlescars for a kitten of only a few weeks' age.  She has recovered very well and is now fully in control of Mikey. . . .  but not of Max!

If you want to see how Mikey captured her, check this out:  

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ue1XiEZDU3w

Don't worry, he didn't use a hook in the lure and the action took place on a rarely-used 'service road' near the river.

One more photo of the kayaks and trailers, from back part of the backyard.  The Freedom Hawk kayaks are on the left.  They have 'outriggers' that flip outward when you are positioned where you want to be on the river, and a 'lean bar' that you can stand up next-to so that you can fish standing-up in midstream!

This has been a long posting.  I didn't think of that when I started.  But since it is a snowy night here in New York, I've hunkered down and decided to catch up on the blog while I've had the time.  Been back here at home now for 2 days.  Snow and cold weather seem so unreal based on my trip of this past 5 and a half weeks!