Solstice lights

Facebook gallery is here.

Well, don't tell me don't live in interesting times.

Just like hearing the band last night I saw flashing lights go by while doing my last post.  Strangely there were no sirens to be heard, just the muted roar of the engine, fading to silence.

It was this last that got me off the couch (quite an accomplishment in this weather) and over to the bow window - which, also like last night, revealed a flotilla of emergency vehicles, from police cars through pumpers to a ladder truck.  

All were congregated in front of the hotel.

Needless to say I suited up again, grabbed the camera again and headed out into the snow - again.

It has warmed up - earlier today it was 8 degrees - now it's 14.  Downright tropical.

Horizontal snow, too.

And there they were - five or six trucks, with a police car blocking the Congress Street intersection.  I suspect it was an unfortunate false alarm at the Eastland Hotel.

It was fairy obvious because I saw the guys on my right here putting the caps back on the hydrant.  Probies, probably.  They had a big bag of tools and were pulling out no-shit wrenches to dog down the caps.

I'm sure both they and their colleagues (whom I assume were in the trucks) were glad to see the caps back on the hydrants.  The idea of muling 120-pound hoses across the street in this weather wasn't pleasant - though it might be the kind of heat-generating labor you'd find most useful for keeping warm.

The trucks were starting to pull out even as I climbed into an overlooking garden to get more pictures.  The police car drove by, I waved.  Thence I went round the block, stopping in at Geno's to see that they had a small crowd on storm watch.  A little too crowded for me so I came back through Bosnia.

That's when I noticed a big SUV-type Chevy Mastodon - or some such similar beast - trying to work it's way away from the curb to respond to tonight's parking ban.

It was right by the neighbor house and there was a lady in cowboy boots trying to move out.  Sadly she was quickly getting nowhere.

So, with typical Cherokee gallantry - and nothing else to do except pop some corn and do a new blog entry - I grabbed a shovel from our foyer and tried to help dig her out.

Needless to say her rear-wheel drive and the bald tires on it didn't help a great deal.  Kept using standard techniques to get someone out - rocking the car, breaking up the snow, clearing the wheel wells - but the snow was so thick, even in the middle of the street, that I had to take over driving to get the car out.

With the eventual help of half-a-dozen people - most of whom were in cars blocked by our efforts - we got the thing out and away.  I was afraid of being frostbitten - the diabetes I suffer from doesn't cope well with cold skin these days - but it all seemed to work out.

I'm especially impressed with the firemen.  The implication that they would come to help people out, even on such a night, is very inspiring.  

They don't call them "Portland's Finest" for nothing.