Today was “National Take a Hike Day” ...

... so I did just that!

I added six more miles onto my 2018 tally, leaving me only 41 more miles to go before I reach my goal of 1,051 miles.

You’re saying to yourself “well why was Linda worried about making her goal - that’s a piece of cake, a walk in the Park, no problem” ... maybe so, but a few sleety and snowy mornings this week left me taking just a short hop in the ‘hood. The weatherman WAS predicting a dry upcoming week, but then he said maybe snow Tuesday morning. The weather folks in the Midwest and East Coast grossly underestimated the snow event the other day. Just as I started to wonder whether our promised El Nino/mild Winter this year might have been an “oops” ... yesterday, my favorite weatherman, Paul Gross, made this bold statement on Twitter – gulp!

Today was a little topsy-turvy for me and I didn’t make it down to Council Point Park until almost mid-day. About a dozen of my peanut pals did scurry over for peanuts which surprised me, given my late arrival. One must be the lookout squirrel in a nest high in the trees and alerted the others.

I was tardy because of an electrical problem. Here’s the backstory: I’ve been dealing with flickering lights at my house for several months. Because of working from home, and sitting right by a light fixture, I couldn’t help but notice the light show going on in the colonial-style swag light that hangs right over my head. I was worried at first there was a problem with my electricity, but after polling a few neighbors, I discovered that they, too, had the same issue, so that put my mind at ease. While it wasn’t as bad as strobe lights, the constant flickering in your peripheral vision is a bit annoying.

After dealing with it long enough, on Wednesday I contacted DTE, my energy provider, and told them five houses in a row had this flickering light dilemma and I was going to be the one to take action. The customer service rep was very nice and said I shouldn’t have waited so long and they’d send someone out the next day.

They arrived in the middle of my typing a letter for work ... I knew they were there as they killed my power for about ten minutes, and I heard someone rumbling around at the back of the house where the meter is. The tech left me a card that read “voltage is good; trees need to be trimmed as they are touching the wires” and they followed up by sending a guy from Davey Tree Service to talk to me about the trees. He checked out the trees and said don’t worry – DTE will trim them next time they are trimming in the neighborhood. Then he left.

But the flickering continued.

This morning I left on my walk a little later than usual. I decided just to walk to Council Point Park as snow and rain were predicted by mid-day. I rounded the cross-street then disappeared half a block down the street when I heard the noise of a big truck rumbling along the cross street. I turned around and saw a DTE truck on the cross street, pulling to the curb. I was curious and double-backed to see what they were doing. By the time I got there, a whole convoy of DTE trucks was parked along the cross street and simultaneously linemen were scrambling out of each truck. So, I beat a path back to check it out and because I’m bold, as well as nosy, I went over to investigate. A neighbor on the corner had also called about flickering lights and as the lineman filed into his yard, he joined our conversation. I hung around while they killed the power, climbed up the pole and replaced a few old and worn out pieces connected to the transformer. I was visiting with this neighbor, whom I’ve never really met before, though I wave to him every morning when I pass the house enroute to the Park.

So, the power was turned on again – we waited. More flickering. The linemen headed back up the pole. After more than an hour, and me still hanging around for the outcome, and learning about the news in the ‘hood, the problem was fixed. No more flickering in the house either - yeah, no more light show! The lineman collected their gizmos and gadgets and got into their trucks and I decided I should get going as well.

I kept glancing up at the sky which had some brooding clouds and looked like something was about to fall from there any minute. Besides a very bleak-looking sky, the Park now looks very desolate, with most of the brightly colored foliage gone and the bare trees and reeds waving in the wind. I took these pictures on Wednesday. Here is the ice covering the Creek that I told you about in an earlier post. I thought this weed gone to seed was rather unusual and these are other scenes along the Ecorse Creek.

Today I saw only one other walker who arrived just as I was leaving. The snow started a’flyin’ while I was at the Park but never stayed on the ground – my kind of snow!

When I neared home I saw two DTE trucks parked down the street, but I saw no linemen to ask what was up but I heard them calling back and forth to one another. I was almost afraid to go into my house, but opened the door, turned on the cellarway light – all was good. I had been out in the cold four hours and was looking forward to a hot cup of coffee and something to eat. I went downstairs to hang up my coat, and on the way up the stairs – the power went off. Of course, I had no flashlight on me and it was black as night. The power came back about 35 minutes later, the furnace fired up, and I soon was toasty warm and now there are no light flashes to match each peck on the keyboard.

You can catch up on my blog posts before I started blogging at Patch in August 2013 by going here: http://lindaschaubblog.net