The Adventures of
David
Elizabeth
and Leif

Asbestos

Part of the conversation I had with the owner of the house behind me was about the Asbestos siding on the house. He said they had an approved plan for dealing with the asbestos shingles. They were going to cover it with siding and leave it undisturbed.

I did a bunch of research on this. Bob Vila sums my research up pretty well: "Asbestos siding presents no health hazard as long as it is left in
place on the building. Any hazard would come only if it were being
broken, scraped or sanded, which would release some asbestos fibers." Great — if the owner (and his contractors) follow through with their committment, there will be no problem. Unfortunately, this owner’s track record with me was not that great. I was a little nervous about whether we’d be exposed to asbestos and we kept a close watch on the progress of the renovation.

A couple of weeks ago, they re-sided the house. It looked like they might have broken a shingle or two, but I figured that was inevitable and probably not too hazardous. I went on a trip and when I came back I took a closer look at the debris that had been left from putting on the siding.

That looked like a lot more than a couple of broken shingles. With all these crushed and broken shingles littered about, I was a lot more concerned with the possibility that we’d been exposed to asbestos.

The Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry says that effects of asbestos exposure take 15-30 years to appear. The effects can be lung cancer or damage to lung tissue that restricts breathing and respiration. So, the worst-case "Puddleglum" situation: "I shouldn’t wonder if.." in 15-30 years one or both of us could be unable to work or die of cancer.

So here’s my question for those of you who put up with this blog: What should I do? I feel like the owner of the house should be held accoutable for his total disregard for his neighbors. I also feel like he needs to purchase a life / disability policy that will cover me, Elizabeth and Desiree until we die at a ripe old age of 99 years. If I were to get something because of this in 15 years, the most productive years of my flying career would be gone. If Elizabeth were to get sick because of this … no amount of money could compensate for that.

So, friends, should I retain a lawyer? Or am I just being too doom-and-gloom-y?

Taking Liberties

Last fall, I came home one day and some people were measuring and staking and stuff at the house behind my house. I had a little chat and they said they were going to add a room to the back of the house. The supervisor told the guy who was going to pour the foundation to get permission from my next door neighbor to drive a Bobcat through his yard.

The foundation guy rang the doorbell and Joseph, my neighbor, didn’t answer. He said to me, "I’m just going to drive through his yard, ok?" I told him it wasn’t my property and I couldn’t give him permission. He asked me if my neighbor was black. I said yes, but why does that matter? He said something like, "He’s black, he’ll be cool…" I emphatically repeated that he needed to ask permission of the owner. He then yelled across the street to our neighbor Ralph who was sitting on his front porch and said, "I’m going to drive a bobcat over here, ok?" Ralph said ok, not knowing what the heck the guy was talking about.

I guess the guy considered that "permission" because the next night when I got home from work, our neighbor’s grass was all chewed up, the guy’s truck was in his driveway, and they had poured a foundation at the house behind ours.

Nice bobcat track:

I guess he felt free to drive over Joseph’s bushes …

I ran into Joseph later and he was quite upset.

The following morning I saw the guy who chewed up my neighbor’s yard out working. I told him that my neighbor was quite upset. He didn’t care. I asked the worker for the house owner’s phone number. He wouldn’t give it to me. Then I noticed this (I went up on Joseph’s deck to photograph it):

I guess the foundation guy thought that since Joseph was so "generous" with his yard and driveway, that he wouldn’t mind "sharing" some of his electricity too. That was all I could take. I called the city and they gave me the name on the building permit for the site. I spend a couple of hours online before I finally was able to leave a mesage with Tim Pritts, the owner of the house.

Since I couldn’t get in touch with the owner, and there was no "Issuance of Building Permit" sign up, I called the city inspector and the police. The police made the foundation guy stop work and leave. The city inspector then put up a "STOP WORK" sign on the property. If you work after this sign is up, you’re subject to serious fines and possibly jail time.

That got the owner’s attention.

Later that evening, I got a call from Mr. Pritts. He profusely apologised and said that he’d never worked with that guy before and would never do it again. He said that that guy was off the job. He had also called Joseph and offered to make it right. Joseph is a nice guy and the apology was enough for him.

The guy wasn’t really off the job … I guess he’d already been paid because he was there a couple more times finishing up his foundation work.

February 17th was our 9th anniversary. We celebrated by taking a semi-surprise trip to Montreal, Quebec. Montreal is about 85% French-speaking (actually, their dialect is called quebecois but it’s all french to me). We had a fun time trying to communicate. I got good enough at saying excuse me in french that Elizabeth finally stopped laughing at my poor pronunciation of that infernally challenging but beautiful language.

We arrived on Wed the 16th to a snowy, 30 deg F environment. I pricelined a 4-star hotel in downtown for $65/night and got the Hilton. Our room was looking out onto the rooftop pool/garden and some buildings downtown.

On our anniversary, it was a beautiful, sunny day. We started off the day by getting on the Metro and going to a breakfast in Old Montreal. Yum

Next we went to Basilique Notre Dame, a very beautiful and old (for North America) church. Like most old cathedrals, this one is also a national symbol.

Inside, it was completely beautiful.

In the front of this church is an amazing altar.

On the 15 minute tour, our guide described the scenes visible on the altar. At the top left is
Melchizedek, who brought out bread and wine when Abraham offered him the spoils of a battle.

At the top right is Aaron, the first high priest, offering a lamb.

As the tour guide described all these biblical scenes and the ones on the bottom row, with the cross in the middle, the beauty and conneciton to the gospel themes in the scriptures was incredible.

Until she described the principle scene in the altar.

Over every amazing biblical story, the image of Jesus crowning Mary queen of the world was elevated. I felt like the wind was taken from my spiritual sails … as my heart was swelling with worship of the work of the Lord throughout the scriptures, the highest thing in this wonderful building was a story made up my humans, not found or alluded to in scripture. I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised, since the name of the church is Notre Dame — "Our Lady" in french.

After visiting the church, we headed down to the waterfront, the St. Lawrence River. On the way we admired the architecture.

We saw some ice skaters.

I got some beautiful pictures of Ellie inside the warming house for the skating rink.

Next we walked up to the nearest Metro, past the "sailors’ Notre Dame" … an old church with a giant statue of Mary welcoming the sailors coming up the St. Lawrence home.

The Subways in Montreal have rubber tires! I thought that was cool.

We took the trains and walked a bunch till we found a nice bagel place in the Jewish quarter of Montreal. Then we headed back to our hotel, got dressed and went to see the Mad Shak dance company perform on the opening night of the Montreal Lights Festival. It was a good trip.

A couple of weeks ago, I was headed up to Toronto. While waiting for the employee bus, I got to see this nice convergence of B767s.

It was a nice flight up to Toronto. As we landed, the visibility was about 3 miles, not great but not bad. We were on the ground for 30 minutes. Just after we got pushed back from the gate and started taxiing to the runway, a major fog bank rolled in. By the time we got to the point short of the runway where you normally stop and await takeoff clearance, I could hardly see the sides of the taxiway. I called the control tower and asked them for a visibility report because I was pretty sure we were below our legal takeoff "minimums." The tower called back and said, "Visibility 2400 feet [about 1/2 mile] … now it’s down to 1000 feet … now it’s down to 700 feet …" I looked on our charts and saw that the required visibility for takeoff at that airport for our company was 600 feet, but only on a runway on the other side of the airport, and only in the "wrong" direction on that runway, ie they were landing to the southwest and had to takeoff to the northeast.

So … we got clearance to taxi to the other side of the airport. When you can only see about 300 feet in front of you, taxiing is very slow and careful. The first officer read off each taxiway intersection from his airport map and I confirmed we were in the right place. Because it was below freezing and the fog was so dense, we had to get deiced. On the way to the deice pad, there was a B767 in front of us. The 767 put out so much heat from its engines that it created pockets of clear air behind it. Here’s a photo of the 767 about 400 feet in front of us. We can only see it because it had cleared the fog in the immediate area.

Most of our taxiing was done only being able to see about 4 taxiway lights in front of us.

Finally, we were deiced and taxiied slowly to our runway. The visibility was 700 feet, so we were cleared for takeoff. It’s a really funny feeling only seeing 700 feet ahead when you’re going 240 feet per second (~140 knots) at takeoff speed! Just after liftoff, we were out of the fog. It was only about 30 feet deep, and only about half of the airport was under it.