A Black Eye

Sometimes the truth is actually the best policy but it never sounds as entertaining as a well thought out story.

I like working with wood and doing home repairs. It makes me feel like I am making a positive contribution around the house and I save on labor costs since my time is practically free - so begins the story. I was working in the garage and hanging a new steel door on the side of the garage and there were alot of modifications that I had to do to get a standard door to fit in a non-standard hole in the wall. The old door had been badly damaged during the Witch Creek Fire when the firement who saved our house kicked it in. Because it was severely damaged, and I didn't want to pay a handyman to do something that I could mess up just as easily, I hung the new door. After I got the frame modified and cut to the right size, the door easily went into place. I secured it and decided to shut it and see how well it sealed. The only problem was that I had left an extension cord in the doorway. I gave it a yank but it was attached to a table saw. I gave it anoher yank with a flick too and it came loose very easily. In fact, too easily, it flew at my face and smacked me in my safety goggles (good thing I was wearing some). It still hurt like crazy but I didn't put any eyes out. During the course of the next couple of days a nice purple color developed and it looked like I had gotten my eye dotted.

The black eye was no big deal and Krista thought it great fun to tell her friends that I had gotten a little mouthy and so she clocked me in the eye. It's all fun and games until you go to a health care professional... The Dentist saw it and commented that it looked like Krista was definitely coming out ahead (she had seen Krista the previous week). She laughed and decided to refer me to the oral surgeon to take care of a pair of pesky wisdom teeth that were pushing the other teeth around in my mouth.

I went to the oral surgeon and in the first interview he asked me abut the adema under my left eye. I told him what Krista liked to say and he asked me politely but firmly how it really happened. I told him the straight story but he looked a little concerned. I think he probably has to report domestic violence and was trying to make up his mind whether it fit the bill or not. I could just imagine the police coming and arresting Krista for domestic violence - not a good thing. Apparently, I was convincing enough because he finished up the interview and scheduled an appointlent to extract my wisdom teeth. After the appointment was scheduled, he gave me a fairly long list of do-s and don'ts. As I was walking out of his office he also threw in the comment, "looks like she does have a good right hook". I guess he finally decided to play along but I was sweating it for a minute or two, earlier.

Riding My Bike

I have been riding my bike to and from work for several years and consequently have gotten in pretty good shape for riding. My ride can go through the canyon on my mountain bike or beside the highway on the bike path on my road bike. I could say lots about how I am not competetive on my bike and the ride is for exercise and cardio fitness or simply to work off tension that might result from work but I'd be lying. I am competetive when I ride. I ride with several friends who also ride frequently and have ridden for years and are in similar shape so we ride fairly fast and we have real biking gear so we look like serious riders. Now, passing someone on a bike is alot like passing someone in a car but more personal - there are those who don't care and those that do. I belong to the latter group. I don't like to be passed and most other serious riders don't like to be passed either. In fact, when someone passes me and/or my riding buddies on the trail, we usually bump up our pace to match regardless of how far we have ridden or how fresh the other guy might be. If the other guy was showing off, we might tail for a while until we see him tiring and then return the favor. Yes, it is doubly-sweet to pass the passer.

Last week, I rode to work and in the last couple of miles before work I caught up to a guy on his bike. He was in pretty good shape but I was interested in passing him and took the opportunity on a fairly long hill. I got past him and still had a little wind left so I tried to pile it on, continue accelerating and leave him behind as I climbed the hill. Obviously, he had dignity but not speed and tried to match my velocity to draft behind me but I was able to pull away towards to top of the hill. When I got to work, I put another notch on my bike seat post to represent the latest victim of my biking prowess.

The day was long and I had a lot to do so I didn't get done with work until almost 8:00 pm. I have a head lamp and a blinky tail light so I am visible and can see the road so I don't worry about riding at night. I pedaled my route and made really good time since I was feeling good about the latest conquest and I was timing a different route to figure out the fastest way home. As I was nearing the last really long hill (~1 mile climb) , I noticed a light behind me on the bike lane but coming on strong. Not wanting to be a notch on someone else's seat post, I got on my A-Game and starting playing pedal stomp. I was going a couple of miles per hour faster than I normally did and figured no one but Lance Armstrong would catch me tonight. As I reached the midway point on the hill, I realized that the other person's light was right behind me. I told Scotty I needed warp drive and started pedaling at a clearly unsustainable rate. Unimpressed, the other biker passed me like I was standing still. When she passed me, I realized two things: 1) My competition was a cheery, teen-aged girl who wasn't breaking a sweat and 2) The motor on her scooter/moped was doing all the work. By this time, my legs were burning from anaerobic excess and I *HAD* to slow down. I barely made it up the rest of the hill and as I neared the top, a couple of old ladies with walkers passed me. I think that they were probably pretty fast - after they passed me, one of them stopped and I think she scratched a notch on her handle bar - Oh well...

Lost in Atlanta

Question: What would you do if your child got lost in the largest airport in the United States? Would you panic? How would you get your child back? For a parent, this would be one of those worst case scenarios.
When I was returning home on my recent trip, I had a 2-hour layover in Atlanta. While I was in the airport, a very disturbing event happened. I was taking the subway tram from concourse D to Concourse A and had just gotten on the tram and turned around when I saw a mother and her 2 sons getting ready to board. As they approached the open doors, the mother paused to check on the child that was behind her and the younger one kept walking. Her delay put about 10 feet between her and her younger son. She looked up about the time the automated voice said the doors were closing and she made a mad dash to the doors but it was too late as the doors shut and her youngest son was separated from her. Seeing her fear, I motioned for her to stay there and I decided to return him back to her. Eric was 7 and in second grade but he was very brave in the presence of a tram full of strangers. It was my first time in Atlanta and it took me a stop to figure out how to go back the way we came. Eric and I got off the tram at concourse B and we got on the tram going the other way. When we got to the Concourse D stop we got off and went looking for the mom. She thought that he would get off elsewhere and had apparently taken the following tram to find him. We waited at the concourse D tram stop for about 5 minutes and no mother came and no one was visible at any of the other tram stops so Eric and I went upstairs.
We found a security guard who directed us to an airline kiosk on the concourse. I explained the situation and the attendant asked me my name. I thought that it might be comforting to the mom if she knew that the person taking care of her son was a doctor (Ph.D.), so I told the airline guy that I was Dr. Garrett. Eric also had a laminated card on his backpack zipper that detailed his address and phone number. The attendant called the number but no one was at his home to take the call. Eric didn't know his mom's cell phone number so the attendant decided to use the airport paging system. He called in the data and about 2 minutes later, a voice announced over the com system for Susan M. to please call 911.
Now, if you are a parent and you have lost your child, and a voice comes over the intercom asking you to call 911, are you going to be relieved or do you get more worried? When you make the call and find out that a doctor (Me) is currently with your child are your fears escalated even more? Maybe I should have used just plain Jim. In any case, we got a call from the intercom operator within 60 seconds of the announcement that his mom had called and was on the way.
Susan was easy enough to identify, she was the frantic looking lady with a single child in tow. I motioned to her and she looked really relieved. She came over and thanked me and began hugging Eric and telling him how worried she had been and how glad she was that she had found him. I left and went to my gate since I had used up almost all of my residual layover time. Thinking back, I still get a little disturbed when I consider how easy it would be to have that same scenario play out with our family. It's hard to keep them all corraled and you don't always have a free hand or a leash to make sure all are present and with the program. I think we'll be laminating cards with their name and address and our cell-phone numbers on them before we take a family airline trip.

Darwinism at work

I had a business trip recently and flew to Louisianna for a few days to consult and troubleshoot with another branch of our company. When I was on the plane, the stewardesses gave the whole demonstration of what to do with air masks and the like and there was a video going at the same time. The video was of passengers on a mocked up 747 or some larger airplane. They had a mock emergency in which the oxygen masks fell down and the passengers were supposed to put them on. Something didn't look right to me and I realized that for each row of 3 people, only 2 masks fell down. Either the video was only supposed to have 2 seats or one of their props didn't work the way it should have. In any case, I thought what would I do if the same scenario played out on my row? The guys sitting on either side of me looked pretty tough and I found out they were friends during the flight. Being the 3rd wheel, I realized that when the two masks fell down, I was the odd man out. All I know is that I needed to secure air for myself and I doubt that buddy breathing was going to get it done. This caused me to panic just a little bit until little Johnny (or whatever his name was behind me) started kicking my seat. His constant kicking disturbed me until I realized that it was just his way of trying to get my attention so he could voluteer his air mask. At that point, I relaxed, leaned back a bit and smiled - when life gives you lemons, make lemonade.

Running in Airports

When you get to the airport late, don't show any fear and don't run. People are disturbed when they see other people running and they don't know why the stranger is running. I also think the general mentality of people has changed over the years. Now, people see a running person and assume that they must have committed a crime or are fleeing from an accident.

My Story:
I was in the airport and I had to get from one gate to another in limited time. Running seemed good to me but apparently the airport officials don't like it. As I was going from one half of the airport to the others I had to pass the check-in point and some chemical sensors. I am a scientist and at some point must have spilled some nitrates (chemicals used to make explosives) on myself in the lab. Anyway, when I passed the chemical detectors, they went off and alerted the staff that a bomb was nearby. It must have taken them a few seconds to realize who was "carrying the explosives" because they didn't react when I went by. When the commotion started I didn't realize that it was at me they were after, I was only hurrying to my gate. I didn't even turn around to look because I was intent on making my flight. Anyway, several guards came through the gate doors further on down the corridor and they had sniffer dogs to find the nitrates. Apparently, someone thought that unleashing the dogs was a more efficient way to find the problem and identify the source. All I know is that the dogs were on me in no time and it was like Cerberus with all the white teeth and snapping in my face. I was caught off guard and had to try to defend myself. I swung at the first dog and whacked him hard with my bag and that backed the other dogs off just a little. I reached in my bag for anything I could get and grabbed my Listerine mouthwash out of my bag and improvised. The Listerine worked like mace and gave the dogs a nice, minty-fresh smell in addition to a painful eye experience. The guards didn't like me smacking their dogs around and put me in cuffs and detained me. It wasn't too bad until I got to the interrogation room and they taped me to the chair. I could not move at all and I knew that I was going to miss my flight began to panic. It was about this time that I woke up and realized that I had gotten tangled up in my covers. There were no dogs, guards or tape, just some sheets that had gotten wrapped up with me. I got out of bed and looked at the clock - I still had a few minutes before I *had* to get up but I wasn't about to go back to sleep at that point. I could already tell that it was going to be a long flight...

Smokin' the BBQ

When the Witch Creek Fire took out our yard and neighbors house, our grill was too close to the action and the plastic wheels on the side facing the fire melted flat. I called the Webber Grill service dept and inquired about getting another set of wheels. They were kind and shipped them to me free-of-charge (gotta love good customer service).
On Saturday, I received the package and decided to install them. The front wheel just slid into a slot but the old rear wheel had to be cut off and the new one hammered on. I put the grill on its side to do the surgery and stuff tumbled around inside. After the work, I stood it up and I opened the lid to rearrange the burners and the grate and realized that I had not cleaned it after the last use. So, I turned the gas on, lit the fire and turned the burners on high. After about 10 minutes, the grill was really hot and beginning to smoke. I lifted the lid and got a really big puff of smoke in my face so I lowered the lid. I heard the stuff start hissing and realized that I had a grease fire. I lifted the lid again and got another large puff of smoke but was able to clean the grill surface with my metal brush. The grill was still smoking in a mighty fashion, so I turned off the burners and gas and let the grease burn itself out. It obliged me in about 5 minutes.
During this time, a small civilian helicopter came around began circling our block and house. The grill had stopped smoking but I imagine someone in my neighborhood had seen smoke and assumed the worst. People are still on edge about smoke and fire. The helicopter circled for about 5 minutes and then went away. I thought that was all. I was wrong. The little one must have called his big brother because within 5 minutes of his leaving, this massive Coast Guard Mobile air tanker was flying in the area and looking for the smoking offender. He flew around our house for about 15 minutes and then came in for a strafing run. The helicopter could not have been more than 100 feet off the ground and they just started hovering over my back yard. A Search and Rescue guy in orange was leaning out the window looking at me. He did not look too happy about it either. I think that he knew exactly who the offender was because they continued to make low passes over me and the house. The last pass, the guy shook his finger at me and mouthed the words "You're dead meat, dude!" and the helicopter flew off. Those coast guard guys can get pretty bent out of shape when they see a little smoke. Its probably just as likely that the neighbors ratted me out. Ok, so I didn't actually see the helicopter guy mouth words at me or shake his finger at me but he did stare at me with an expression that said "Don't make me have to drop my red fire suppression dust on you". I don't think that the neighborhood could handle anyone, let alone me, grilling until 2008. You'll know when I grill again. It will probably make the evening news.

Realizations in Life

Excerpt from Washington Post Newspaper Article:
"Krista Garrett dabbed at tears as her four small children thanked the crew for saving their corner house, which stood unscathed, even though the house next door was reduced to ash.
"Make sure you tell your husband I'm sorry I yelled at him," Captain Jeff Mitchell said. The Garretts had just pulled out in their green minivan that morning, flames surrounding the house, when Jim Garrett ran back in to rescue their two cats.
"Get your family out! We'll save your house!" he remembers Mitchell shouting over the roar of wind and fire.
Now Garrett strode across his scorched lawn, hand extended to Mitchell. "You did it," he said. "When we drove out, next door was a wall of flames, our oleander bush was burning, our fence was burning. We were sure our house was toast. Thank you so much."

Krista and I were talking about the fire and the news article in which we were described. I liked the fact that I strode across the lawn. In my opinion, it beats pranced, crept, skulked, and meandered by a margin of at least 100 to 1. Striding across a scorched lawn is even better - you can practically see the testosterone on the page. To stride is a manly thing to do, like John Wayne - he strode everywhere he went except when he was swaggering. If I'd had a couple of pistols, I could have swaggered. Of course the firemen might not have been so glad to see us if I had come to the meeting armed...

Krista was trying to communicate how she was described by the article and I substituted lots of fun words into her stream of thought before she was able to clarify that she was a Human Interest Story. A tearful mom and 4 small kids thanking a fireman for saving their home is a real emotional tug. Krista admitted that she was glad that there wasn't any video or pictures since tears really mess up her mascara.

Rancho Bernardo Named

This last week was very interesting at work. It seems that I was the only one who was seriously affected by the fires. Most others were simply inconvenienced by the fire and smoke. There were no others at my company who had any serious damage other than SoCal snow (ash) in their backyards.

Some of my coworkers suggested renaming Rancho Bernardo to something more exciting, like Rancho Burn-hard-o or Rancho Inferno. Cute, but now no one wants to take us up on our hospitality and come for a visit. It's hard enough to get people to come without the perceived threat of being awakened early in the morning to flee a firey residence.

Witch Creek Fire

The Witch Creek fire is apply named for more than one reason. It started in the Witch Creek area right before Halloween and gave lots of people a serious fright. I decided to blog my account so that I can remember exactly what I saw when I reflect. Our family made it through the fire safe and sound. It is truly amazing to me that there were so few injuries and deaths from the fire. It was the biggest fire in So Cal's history. We had a harrowing experience that was absolutely surreal. There was a triple threat which made for the perfect fire storm. The humidity was near zero, it had not rained for a long time and we were behind on rainfall, and we had strong Santa Ana winds which gusted and kept the fire hopping and aircraft out of the sky.

The fire must have started some time on Sunday (10/11/07) because the smoke first appeared that day. We didn't have too much in our neighborhood but it was quite thick the to south of us a few miles. We stayed up late Sunday night and watched the news to see what was happening and decided that we should stay awake in shifts to make sure that we had time to make decisions. The wind was blowing so hard that my wife had a hard time going to sleep so she stayed up the first half of the night. I woke up at 3:00 am but the the newscasters were not indicating that there were problems or that the wildfires were moving so rapidly, so I went back to sleep. The wind was howling around our house anywhere from 40 to 60 mph and the smoke was continuous.

At 4:30 am another family (the Johnsons) that lived a couple of miles away called us and let us know that their neighborhood was on fire and that their area was burning. They pleaded with us to pray for them and we told them to come to see us. The woman was upset and their baby was wailing in the background. Krista and I got up immediately and prayed for them, alerted the prayer chain at our church (RBBC), and got on the phone to our parents in TX and AR for more prayer support. We packed our clothes and I disconnected our computer and we moved them all to the front hallway of our house. I went outside and the air was choking thick with smoke but I didn't see any other problems. I had a bandana over my face and a pair of safety glasses that I had borrowed from work. We watched the news again and nothing was being said about the fires in our area or the San Pasqual Valley which is to our NNE. We made a decision to started packing our kid's stuff "just in case".

By 5:00 am, the smoke was thicker and hot and I decided that we needed to get the kids up and get everyone dressed. I went back outside and a house a block away and up the hill from us was igniting and beginning to throw sparks our direction. There was an eerie reddish-orange glow in the smoke on that side of the hill. I realized that we were going to have to get out and that the fire was in our neighborhood. While I was assessing the situation, debris from one of the failing houses were launched into the air and embers started falling all around us. A 40 foot palm tree in a neighbors yard across the street (and upwind of us) caught fire when one of the embers landed in the turtleneck of material that surrounded its trunk. As the collars of dead limbs burned and fell, the 60 mph wind literally caused fire to rain down on our house, our yard, and specifically me. I ran into my house and wet the bandana that I had across my face and returned to start packing our minivan. While I was outside, I began hearing a series of explosions that I thought might be power tranformers exploding. It sounded like dynamite was being used in our neighborhood, we officially lived in a warzone. The embers and ash from the palm tree were smashing against our house and larger embers from other houses on fire were falling on our yard as well. Krista could hear the material from inside the house and thought pinecones were hitting the windows and roof. I started loading our minivan and singed my hair and saturated my clothes with smoke. I took another load out to the minivan and saw that our side yard was catching fire and I went over and stomped out the fire. I ran into our house and told Krista to get everyone ready to go and that we were out of time. I got all our stuff packed in our minivan and our side yard was fully ignited. I moved our Saturn out of the driveway because the fire and heat from our shrubs was making the car smoke - the heat was intense.

5:30 am: When the kids came out they were frightened by the fires and blinded by the ash and embers in the air. The side yard was on fire next to our driveway and Krista could not buckle Elizabeth because of the intense heat so she sent her to the back seat and told her brothers to hold on to their sister. We got all the family loaded into the minivan and pulled out and were down the street when Krista realized that she had left the family cats in pillow cases in the living room. We turned back and I went back in to get them since I was the only one that could see in the ash and fire that was swirling around our house. Krista took the opportunity to put Elizabeth in her carseat and buckle her in. While she was doing that, the neighbors to our west who live across the street opened their garage door and their 14-year old daughter started screaming since all the houses in her line of site were engulfed in the firestorm. When I came out of our house, the whole East side of our house appeared to be on fire and the trees between my house and the neighbors house to the east were on fire. As I was locking the front door, a firetruck drove up and told me to "get out and take care of your family, we'll save your house"- I didn't see how they could make that claim. As we drove away, everything on the East side of our house was on fire, the oleander bushes on the west side of our house were engulfed in fire, our wooden fence was burning on all sides, and the trees around our house were igniting. I figured we had lost the house. I did not need headlights as I left our street because the orange glow was so intense. As we drove away, we were wonding where we should go and what we should do. The flames were peaking over our garage and the house was totally lit up. I started honking my horn to warn others - there was no advanced warning for our neighborhood other than neighbors looking out for neighbors.

We went to a friend's house who lived about 8 miles away and I dropped the family off and went and filled the minivan up with gas. When I got back, Krista told me that my Friend's wife had gone out to pick up some food and fuel their vehicle. Evi got back shortly with food but a mandatory evacuation notice was broadcast for their whole community and we had to leave. We found out that Rancho Bernardo was an uncontrollable fire. The fires were jumping around and hopscotching fire units faster than the firemen could drive. We evacuated their house and started driving towards my work and I realized that I had left my keycard at home. Krista called another of our friends and they said that they had just finished praying for us and their area was safe for the time and that we should come stay there. When we got there, we were able calm down, the kids got to eat and they told us that the husbands company had already made arrangements for their family and one more at a hotel 20 miles away "just-in-case". Within a couple of hours, their community received a voluntary evacuation notice and we left for the hotel. We ended up staying at the hotel for the rest of the day and the husband's company provided food and lodging for us. They ordered in pizza and then BBQ for the 2 meals that we were there. We checked out Tuesday afternoon.

I went to a city government site later Tuesday and saw that our house was not on the "destroyed-by-the-fire" list though our neighbor's house to the east was on it. I owe the firefighters who snuffed the fire at our house a huge debt. A total of about 70 families lost their houses within about acouple of blocks of ours. There was wholesale destruction of property in a way that I could not imagine.

The Aftermath: On Wednesday, I was allowed to go to our house for ~15 minutes with a police escort to assess our situation and pick up needed medicines, toys, etc. The Westwood subdivision was still under mandatory evacuation orders due to the possibility of gas fires and electrical fires. The police were also patrolling the neighborhood to discourage looters. The fire took out our neighbors house completely, burned all our side yard between the houses and torched most of our fence around the house. It destroyed 1/2 the oleander on the west side of our yard and burned our fence to a crisp. The majority of the kid's toys in the side yard were destroyed. The firefighters had removed all the pictures from our walls in the house and dumped them in the front yard to preserve them. I boxed them up and started getting stuff out of our refrigerator to redistribute to friends with electricity. The cable box/pillar beside our driveway was missing and had been burned into the ground. Our cable had died Monday morning about 15 minutes before we had leftand the power had been out since Monday. On the bright side, the phone still worked. Some of our neighbors still have both power and phone.

I had hoped to be able to go back to the house Thursday to save what I could out of our deep freeze. We were not able to though we did get a loaner generator on Friday. Our freezer and refrigerators both thawed and we lost almost all our food in them. The fact that the firemen moved our family pictures outside indicates to me that the loss of our house was closer than we can imagine. It was truly a miracle that our house was not lost. I believe that our prayer support was the only explanation.

Update: On Saturday the firecompanies who had fought the fire in our area came around to view the houses that they had saved and meet families. In talking with the crew of engine 22A, it became apparent that they did not want to lose any more houses to the fire and drew a line in the sand at our house. They fought the fire with a curtain of water to protect our property and the other properties that were behind our house. Engine 22A out of Point Loma and Engine 40 out of Rancho Penasquitos were the ones who drew the line at out house. Krista and I actually made National news when we met the Firemen on Engine 40.

You can see the stories at:

The Boston Globe
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2007/10/27/progress_reported_in_calif_fire_battles/
The Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/26/AR2007102600911.html?nav=rss_nation
The San Francisco Chronicle
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2007/10/27/MN7VT22A7.DTL

It was very cool to meet the firefighters who worked so hard to save our neighborhood.