Today I hosed up the horse feeding. Blaze got what baby Godric gets, Blondie only got hay, Desi darned near didn't get anything and finally got breffast as a hurried after thought. Why? Because I got to my desk, double-clicked my Internet icon and got the dreaded "Internet Explorer cannot display the web page" message.
I rebooted computer. I unplugged everything and let it all sit for 20 minutes then plugged everything back in. After 30 minutes of trying to figure out what was wrong on my end, which entails a great deal of crawling around in the cat hair under office furniture, William called. What the heck is William calling me about? He hardly ever calls me. He emails me.
"Are you awake?" He asked.
"Oh god yes, I'm awake. I'm just unplugging everything in the office trying to figure out why I don't have Google News to go with my coffee."
"Umm well, that's what I was calling about." He paused.
I waited for the other shoe to drop. Many things were running through my brain at that moment, ie. unpaid bill, cat sabotage, dog sabotage, size 14 shoe thrown at cat that somehow destroyed the DSL box, cat murder by electrocution that took out our Internet service, and, at best, some fool with a tractor plowed up the phone lines. I at least knew that the horses weren't involved in whatever disaster had befallen our connectivity. Their barn is an acre away from the phone lines. The most they can do is sabotage their own water and fencing.
"Okay. What happened?" I asked, with my eyes squinched shut as if not seeing would make hearing easier.
"Someone must have taken the corner too fast onto Lone Mountain, spun out and literally crashed and burned into the telephone pole. I mean the whole pole is blackened and the wires have been melted into a ball of black spaghetti. Must have been a big fire, all the brush on the corner is burned and the car is burned down to a nickle."
"WHOA dang!!! Well alrighty then I'll cease the search for chewed wires here."
"Yeah, I think this time we can safely assume the problem is on their end. You really should jump in the truck and go see. It is a most impressive wreck."
My morning was momentarily saved. This was much better than Google News for getting the brain in gear. I fed the horses, hurriedly and ineptly, grabbed the digital camera, and headed up the road. Not much excitement happens in Wittmann, AZ. When it does, it attracts spectators. Some savvy entrepreneur, with more guts than ethics, could make serious money charging admission to highway stops, fender benders and brush fires out here.
By golly the wreckage was indeed as bad as William described on the phone. In the words of a friend who watched his first bull riding event last weekend "I hope he's okay. I hope he's okay. I hope he's okay." Even as I was sending positive thoughts to the driver, I was staring at the 4 closed doors, caved in roof, obliterated front end, evaporated interior and a 20 foot, black ring of charred brush surrounding the car, the telephone pole and our wiring. I thought "If someone walked away from this wreck he needs to stand like Ho Ti and let people line up to rub his belly for good luck, because no mere mortal could have survived."
I don't know if the tape on the telephone pole is to hold the pole together, which would not surprise me, or if it's there to mark which pole needs to be replaced, which also would not surprise me. For one thing, QWorst is known for shoddy fixes and, for another, the people that perpetrate those shoddy fixes may well not be able to distinguish a giant stick of smoldering charcoal from any other telephone pole.
Just in case anyone has forgotten, or there's anyone alive I didn't whine to, it took the phone company FOUR MONTHS to run a phone line 5 acres down the road from the nearest house, to our house when we first moved in. I'm sitting here, gloomily checking for Internet every hour or so, knowing that phone company history has a tendency to repeat itself. It's any one's guess how long it will take them to replace the pole and the melted line.
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OOOh update! As of 9:00 this morning there were no vehicles on the corner other than the burned out car. By 11:30am, when John and I went by to take pictures, there were about 15 other vehicles, mostly QWorst along with one Sheriff's Office car, and an APS truck. They'd managed to get a new pole up already. The stick of charcoal was still there, as was the charred car. Who knows? Maybe they'll get every one's phone and Internet restored today? We can hope.
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Update 2: Well, some of us lucky folks have phone and Internet tonight. My friends the next street over are still incommunicado. A ridiculous number of official vehicles are still camped out on the corner. It would not surprise me a bit to learn in the morning that several other wrecks have prolonged the repairs. Because of all the large camper-like QWorst trucks parked all over the intersection, it's impossible to see oncoming cars until you're t-boned.
Ayup. A busy day in Wittmann.
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