Took out a bunch of huge branches from another tree 60ft. away. Bet that was a neat sound and sight! For you Portlanders, check it out at Couch park on NW 19th and Glisan before they clear it up.

I was up further north today and saw lots of branches and stuff all over the roads....

Is it truely old growth, IE a tree that has been alive longer than man has been in that region.

or is it
2nd growth, IE a tree that started growing after the first logging of the area,

or Older growth, a tree over 100 years old



I digress,

everywhere, and a branch fell on the Touareg last night and left a nice dent in the right rear quarter panel. Dam*it!

and the several others that are there.

Historical Information

These blocks were some of the original park properties in the city. Captain John Couch dedicated the blocks to the City in 1869. City plats show the park blocks continuing to Front Street, but Tanner Creek and poor drainage were obstacles to development and land north of Glisan remained vacant. The original design concept for the North Park Blocks was for a continuation of the South Park Blocks promenade. However, the linking was impeded early on by Benjamin Stark's reluctance to give the city the two blocks between Ankeny and Stark. The six blocks between Salmon and Stark donated by Daniel Lownsdale became part of a legal battle with his second wife's heirs. The court ruled in their favor and the property was eventually sold and developed. On the remaining blocks, trees were planted in rows like those in the South Park Blocks, using Big leaf maples and Black locusts with American elms at the street edge.<ul><li><a href="http://www.portlandonline.com/parks/finder/index.cfm?action=ViewPark&amp;PropertyID=447">http://www.portlandonline.com/parks/finder/index.cfm?action=ViewPark&amp;PropertyID=447</a></li></ul>

Couple flickers here and there but back to normal for the most part now.

We have a fire place but we don't know how to use it especially since it has a plug for an outlet. Right now we are at my work taking a shower. We tried calling local hotels but everyone was books. Linus has been doing well though all of this. He is one tuff little weenie dog. Overall, Ignacio and I are doing okay. Just hope the power comes on soon, everyone around us has power except our street for some reason. We live in Renton and since all this happened I haven't seen one PSE truck in the area. Oh well, things could be worse.

Had to chainsaw my way out of my driveway Friday morning. Invigorating in the 30 degree air, before 6 am.

Now we are back to our normal, soft lazy ways.

There are a few trees in the area that went down.

We are still out of power in unicorporated King County (border between Redmond and Woodinville) along SR202. I have been running the house with a propane-powered generator setup with a wall-mounted manual transfer switch wired to our circuit breaker. We got it about seven years ago. Thankfully it is still operational, but propane tanks do not like the cold nights. As they are evacuated, the temperature drops and they get way cold. The stuff turns to slush inside the tank. I've spent the past 4 days basically running all over hell and gone chasing around for propane. There is a close in refueling station that got power back yesterday, so it should be easier to stay powered. Luckily, I have enough tanks to keep the house running. My next door neighbor has an auto-start/self testing generator running on natural gas. I'm looking into one of those as a future preventive measure.

Today, I'm connected for the first time since Thursday p.m. via a dial-in tool to my company's VPN system. Comcast cable and Internet are down and we do not have the optional dial service.

Aside: Two 100-120-foot Douglas firs fell and nailed my next door neighbor's house (same house that was hit in 2003). I'll post some pictures when my Internet access comes back.