During this dumb pandemic, everything has gotten more local, right? That includes friends! I have made and enhanced so many of my local friendships from just being forced by imposed idleness to work in my front yard! So many people walking their dogs and kids on the street – and at first you say Hi and they say Hi and then you know all the dogs’s names, and then even the kids’s names, and finally the parents’s names and where they live and how hideous their last zoom call was and AREN’T WE LUCKY TO BE LIVING ON THE HILL!!!
So I got really lucky to become good friends with John Carnes and Adela Morris, who I had only barely known before. I also got to be friends with a charming new addition to the neighborhood, Chelsea Taylor. She was loving being in the redwoods and really wanted to help the neighborhood so when John was mentioning that he was looking for people to run for the ever revolving door of members for the Skylonda Mutual Water Board, Chelsea volunteered! Good for her! I was really impressed! She actually inspired (shamed?) me, for when I looked at myself, and my 27 years of living up on the hill, I had merrily been using the water all that time and done absolutely nothing to help support the non-profit – primarily volunteer-run organization. And it sounded like John was really struggling to get people to help, so why not? I volunteered to run for Skylonda Mutual Water Company board as well. Eventually he got 6 people to volunteer to run for the 4 slots so that was good. I assumed that I would lose which was fine. And in a situation of utter the-universe-is-tricky karmic turnabout, I was elected! That was shocking. I didn’t even vote for myself! And Chelsea, in an absolutely karmic slight of hand, inspired the addition of a dedicated Water Board member, but ended up not being actually on the hook! My hat is off to you, Chelsea!
Of course the main reason to be on the water board is to be able to use the gerund form of the words “Water Board”
Friend: “Sheila, do you want to come to dinner on Tuesday?”
Sheila; “I can’t, Tuesday I’ll be waterboarding.”
Friend: “Didn’t they make that illegal?”
The Sky-l’onda Mutual Water Company (That is the way the name is written in many official documents – though why they should make such a big punctuation deal out of removing an “a H” I do not know.) has one part-time employee to do the billing and a contractor to read the meters monthly. That is it. The SMWC hires Bracewell Engineering to be at the end of the emergency 24-hour phone line. But basically everything else that the water company needs to do is done by the volunteer board members of the SMWC. We have been in the process of attempting to sell ourselves to Cal Water for about 6 years now. The rules and regulations for one utility company selling itself to another utility company are evidently labyrinthian. But we are in the home stretch now! Maybe only one more year!!!
I’ve been helping John (who is the long-serving and long-suffering board president) research the legal text to complete the forms for the easements for Cal Water. Yes, it is as boring as it sounds.
But then I got some BIG FUN!
One mellow Friday, John sent a sort of frantic (for him) email out to all the water board members saying that Bracewell Engineering had called to say that a branch had fallen on the water main on ElkTree and water was running down the street. John was down on the flatlands, and it would be 1/2 hour before he could get up there. Could any water board member please go see what was going on?
So I drove up there and while there had been a pretty significant hunk of tree dropped on a water meter and water was bubbling down the street, it was a broken one inch plastic feeder line, NOT the 4″ cement water main.
And in fact, shortly, Jeff Beaman showed up with a clamp for the plastic pipe and squeezed it off!
I brought a bunch of shovels over from my house which Jim and I used to dig up the smashed cement box, and make room to set a new box, and do a better job of burying the line.
John and Jeff went back to the water company to scavenge for parts kept for such emergencies, and soon returned with everything needed, including a replacement cement box!
Then they did the hard work of replacing all the bits and pieces, setting the box and unclamping the feeder line, and seeing that the meter worked again.
From the time the branch fell to the time the repair was complete, and water was running to the house again, it was a matter of about 2.5 hours!
Impressive!
Hooray for the Noble Skylonda Mutual Water Board!
penworthy 