A Visit

Just as I arrived home, Liz comes running around the corner. Did you see him?  Who?  The bear!!

Well, we have pictures that the patented bear proof bird feeder works!! No seed was lost, he could not get to it.

They also came to visit

 

 

Harricane Wrapup

Hello all,

This will be the final hurricane update because it is blue skys and going to be 80° here in New York today.

In the end, here at the broadcast center all we had was a number of roof leaks and all the sandbags we put out in the end were not necessary. We never lost electricity in the winds were not all that high.

The rest of New Jersey and on the NY shore were not so lucky.  There are more than a million people without power in the tri state area. This morning's commute took an extra 30 minutes as most of the streets I drive along between home and the office have flooding. There is even a section of Interstate 287 that has collapsed because a nearby stream undermined the road. The guard rails, the breakdown, lane and part of one lane is just gone. God knows how long it will take them to repair that damage.

At the house always had was one 40 min. power outage and no tree damage which was our greatest fear.

For those of you on the East Coast hopefully you had no more damage than we did. Tomorrow, I'm off to Los Angeles and hopefully the flooding will be all gone and cleaned up by the time I return.

Bob & Liz

My driveway this morning 

This was the traffic going to work on Saturday

Morning

My one bedroom studio apartment....  Well, it sure looks like my office.

8 pm update

The city is EMPTY - well...  no one is moving around

Broadcast Center door on 57th

Looking South down 11th Ave

Diner on 11th

Looking East up West 57th Street

The deck - now cleared

Saturday Evening Update

Hello everyone and welcome to hurricane prep central.

Sand Bags in the basement

56th Street

The rain is of and on as bands of it swing in off the coast. I arrived around 1 PM and we had our 1st meeting of the day. As I said in a previous post we are not that far above sea level so in the basement areas we have laid in a whole bunch of sand bags and plastic.

57th Street

Outside on both 57th St. and 56th St. we also place sandbags because when the rain is very very heavy the water runs down 57th St. and jumps the curb and tends to flow into the building. This is the 1st time we tried this technique for heavy rain will see if it works.

Everyone has seen large satellite dishes and we have our share of the them on the roof. The pointing angle for most of the satellites are about 45° above the horizon but in heavy winds you take the satellite dishes and you try to point them straight up in the air looking like a very large soup bowl. The wind survivability of the dish pointed like that is in excess of 120 mph which thank God we are not expecting here in New York.

The rear dish is still pointed at a satellite, the front is ready for the wind

One of our uplinks

The deck update

This is what it looks like when you take all the stuff off the deck and move it into the house!!

Saturday Morning at Home

Liz, Joseph and I are running around moving and tying down everything loose around the house.  I never thought about all the plants on the deck!!

This morning it's 75 degrees with some fog and not a breath of wind.  We had a little rain last night, nothing todo with Irene.  The ground is SOAKED, over the last week or so any rain causes puddles not only on the driveway but in the middles of the lawn - it can not take in any more water.

Irene will hit as a weak cat 1 or a tropical storm, that's fine with me.  For work thou it's the storm piling lots of water into the Hudson river at high tide.

I'm off to work at noon or so - more posts later

Bob

Friday Hurricane Work

Hello all,

Well is 4:45 PM on Friday afternoon the sun is out it's about 80°, and the weather is actually very very nice. And yes it will all go to crap in less than 24 hours.

The CBS broadcast Center is a large building, approximately 750,000 ft.², on the west side of Midtown Manhattan. We are between 11th Ave. and 10th Ave., 57th St. and 56 Street so we do occupy all but one small portion of an entire city block. Is the home for various distribution and production entities, including CBS News CBS Sports the local television station WCBS Channel 2. We also do productions for BET, Inside Edition, and several syndicated talk shows. On any day there are somewhere between 2000 and 2500 people working in the complex. Across the street is the home of several of our productions, mostly production offices, and there's another 200,000 ft.² of space there. We also do the distribution for the CBS television networks from the building.

Shot today from the West corner of 11th Ave and 57th street

Looking further up the block, 57th street

Closeup of more of the dishes

We have lots of generator capacity and a very large uninterruptible power supply so from a power standpoint were pretty self-sufficient. But, as you can see from the pictures we have a lot of junk bolted to the roof 30 some satellite dishes along with very large air-conditioning equipment.

The one thing that has kept us very busy today if you see any of the news, as are expecting a storm surge to come up the Hudson River. The Hudson is a small block away from our 11th Ave. and of the building. We are only approximately 14 feet above sea level. Therein lies our most interesting set of problems for the hurricane. I intend on shooting of number of pictures of which I will post some here over the next day and a half. I will be spending the weekend living here at the broadcast center while I conduct various meetings to ensure the viability of the broadcast center for all of our customers who work out of the building.

The best comment was from the CFO for the news division yesterday “does anybody remember the last time we had an earthquake and a hurricane in the same week in New York City?”

That pretty well sums up the fun I think we're going to have.

Bob

Hilton Head Wrap Up

Hi All,

We have now been back for a week, Hmmm did we go on vacation?  Other than the pictures it's hard to remember that we were!

The drive home was very nice.  There was very little traffic compared to what we expected for an Easter Sunday.  On day one we made it to Suffolk, VA.  To avoid traffic we drove off of 95 some of the way  through some of the tornado damage in NC.

On Sunday we drove across the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel, the last time Liz and I drove across it was in the 70's, then through DE.  Lots of trees and farms.

All in all, driving was better than flying, we got to bring LOTS of stuff.  My new Subaru Outback ran great and we got 29.4 MPG over the trip.

Bob & Liz

The store was normal size, but it was attached to a HUGE warehouse 

South of the Border

Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel

Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel

Tornado Dammage

The Osprey's

Over the last few days I spent time hanging out in a soccer field.  The Osprey built a huge nest in one of the light poles.  Here are a couple of Pix.

What Did Wed Bring

It was another lazy day.  We ended the day at Paul and Muffy's - just a quater mile away.   We had a great dinner, and it was not Italian!!

We ran the pool temp up to the mid 90's - Hmmmm Good

Jim and I went out to do a little Ham Radio - away from the power line noises of the house.  We set up in a local park working out of the back of the car.  While I was sitting there I spotted a HUGE bird.  It turns out it was a Osprey, at least we think so.  I will go back today to see if I can catch him/her flying.

It was another great day, with great weather.

Bob & Liz

Radio setup in the back of the car.

The operator at the back of the car.

The Plane and the Bird.

Look at that beak - take your eyes right out

Me using the LONG lens.

This one showed up in the back yard

Crap it's Wednesday already

Good morning All,

It is now Wednesday, but I wish it was still Monday, because half of the vacation is now over.

Yesterday morning Paul and I got up early to shoot pictures of the sunrise, which I posted yesterday. The rest of the day brought a trip to the beach to sit around and do some kite flying.

Last night we had dinner at the Crazy Crab, which is located right on the backwater. There were two shrimp boats parked, and as sunset approached it made for some very nice pictures.

Then Liz and Janet had fun with a statue, see the pictures below.

Bob and Liz

Me on another conference call

Where is that spreader?

Enough said

Sunset

What did the boat on the left run into? 

Hmmmm

I'm not going there

PIctures from Yesterday - and this morning

This morning I got up early and met Paul to take a few pictures of sunrise which was 6:49 AM. It was 70 degrees with a light breeze, you could not ask for a better morning.

No one drowned!

I have no idea

Me playing ham radio. 

The reminder of the day will be beach time.

Bob & LIz