On the Road is a weekday feature spotlighting reader photo submissions.
From the exotic to the familiar, whether you’re traveling or in your own backyard, we would love to see the world through your eyes.
Good Morning All,
This weekday feature is for Juicers who are are on the road, traveling, or just want to share a little bit of their world via stories and pictures. So many of us rise each morning, eager for something beautiful, inspiring, amazing, subtle, of note, and our community delivers – a view into their world, whether they’re far away or close to home – pictures with a story, with context, with meaning, sometimes just beauty. By concentrating travel updates and tips here, it’s easier for all of us to keep up or find them later.
So please, speak up and share some of your adventures and travel news here, and submit your pictures using our speedy, secure form. You can submit up to 7 pictures at a time, with an overall description and one for each picture.
You can, of course, send an email with pictures if the form gives you trouble, or if you are trying to submit something special, like a zipped archive or a movie. If your pictures are already hosted online, then please email the links with your descriptions.
For each picture, it’s best to provide your commenter screenname, description, where it was taken, and date. It’s tough to keep everyone’s email address and screenname straight, so don’t assume that I remember it “from last time”. More and more, the first photo before the fold will be from a commenter, so making it easy to locate the screenname when I’ve found a compelling photo is crucial.
Have a wonderful day, and enjoy the pictures!
Today, pictures from valued commenter FlyingToaster.
After last week’s row-o-poles coming down on Arsenal Street, Watertown during a nor’easter, I’d hoped we were done. Instead, I was making the obligatory French Toast when this happened….
Taken on 2018-03-08
My front door.
My next door neighbor’s tree lost two branches, which took down the wires for my street, which broke the pole in front of my house. The upper half of the pole hit my porch roof post and took it out.
Taken on 2018-03-08
My front door.
This is what it looks like down my front steps. No, I don’t expect I’ll be getting that shovel back anytime soon. Those are live wires across the front landing.
Taken on 2018-03-08
My front door.
Oh, there’s the porch post… and the bannister… and the — oh fuck, the fire department says that it’s structurally unsafe to use the front steps…
Our power comes from the other side, and my driveway’s over there. So we’re okay, powered, and mobile. But holy moley, this sucks!
Thank you so much FlyingToaster, do send us more when you can.
Travel safely everybody, and do share some stories in the comments, even if you’re joining the conversation late. Many folks confide that they go back and read old threads, one reason these are available on the Quick Links menu.
One again, to submit pictures: Use the Form or Send an Email
JPL
Flying Toaster, I hope that today’s storm doesn’t cause additional damage.
raven
You didn’t really need anyone to tell you that wasn’t safe did you?
Schlemazel
Yowswers! I guess our storms out here on the tundra could be worse. Stay safe FLying toaster
OzarkHillbilly
Sounds like an electrifying experience.
satby
It’s been days, have they removed the live wires yet? At least insurance should cover repairs I hope. Stay safe Toaster family!
debbie
Yikes!
MomSense
Damn. I’m so glad I removed the giant, diseased pine that was towering over my house.
I don’t understand why we haven’t moved our electrical underground.
Hope they remove those wires soon so you can do the repairs to the porch and stairs because there is a lot more snow on the way.
rikyrah
Oh my. Dangerous pictures
Aimai
We are near you flying toaster! Just over the border in cambridge! So we are staring out the window at the same blizzard! Stay toasty!
FlyingToaster
The live wires were removed Sunday night — I tweet-shamed Eversource (electric utility) into removing them.
The pole is owned by Verizon (may they be broken into municpal phone companies forthwith), who replaced the broken pole base on Friday afternoon. But they didn’t move any wires, all of which were live, even to a temp site on the pole.
On Saturday the treecutters came and took down the limbs, so the pole dropped and rested on my bannister. The lines were then resting on my pine, and remaining branches on my neighbor’s tree.
Eversource went above and beyond. As soon as power was restored to everyone in Watertown, they showed up with 3 cherry pickers and worked from 6-9 untangling the wires and moving the pole down to my hellstrip (which will be a greenstrip again someday), surrouned by cones. Their wires are permanently in place up top; the other wires will need restringing as their in a temporary strap inside of the pole. But given the visible damage we can see, I think we’re in to see all of those replaced come May.
FlyingToaster
@raven: Fire Department was there in 10 minutes. They examined everything and gave the following instructions:
* Do Not put weight on that structure. Have it inspected before you do. (It won’t pass; the under supports are skewed out from vertical on both sides)
* Do Not pass the dogwood; all of the wires are down beyond that and your front yard will not be accessible until they’re gone.
* Do Not pass the dogwood for the sidewalk; the sidewalk is directly below that very unstable pole, which will eventually slip.
The block was coned and caution taped through Sunday evening.
FlyingToaster
@OzarkHillbilly: Slightly more fun than watching for funnel clouds as a kid in Kansas City. But only slightly.
Restraining WarriorGirl from going out and taking closeups of everything to share with her friends was the real challenge.
FlyingToaster
@satby: The adjuster will be here Saturday; I’ m contacting the people who we usually use for home improvements to get and estimate on replacing the front steps. Tomorrow — yesterday we were trying to get all the photos squared away, and then I dropped my laptop and had to go get a new one, so I’ve been dragging files over to be able to operate.
Thoroughly craptastic week. thus far. And we’re slated for 8-14 inches of snow today.
WaterGirl
@FlyingToaster: Boy, your laptop is the cherry on top. No, wait, all the extra snow was the cherry on top. What’s the word for the cherry on top of the cherry?
I would say you are having really bad luck, but no one was hurt and that’s what really matters. So maybe you were kind of lucky after all. Definitely not making light of all the suck, just having the same perspective I had when the tree crashed on my house. There were oh so many ways that could have been much worse. I was safe, my guys were safe. Grateful that all of you are safe, too.
Citizen_X
Wow. Stay, uh, frosty, as they say!
FlyingToaster
@WaterGirl: The nor’easter before (5 days earlier) took out the middle of Arsenal Street (main drag from Boston’s Brighton neighborhood to Watertown Square, two malls and oodles of commerce) when 8 poles in one block of storefronts broke. The one right now is likely to see any remaining infrastructure problems come out. So far it’s tree limbs on private property taking out individual home lines, rather than whole blocks like we’ve seen in the past two. But the day is young.
@Citizen_X: Very little else I can do; I’m headed out at noon to do the first round of snowblowing the patio, driveway and sidewalk (other side of the house). Hopefully I can roust WarriorGirl out to knock the snow off the tops of the cars while I snowblow, or vice versa.