Out Playing in the Yard

Yesterday the City of Torrance held an open house in their city yard where children of all ages could wander around a maze of bulldozers, police cars, fire trucks and city buses. I was feeling a little under the weather, but thought that the kids would get a big kick out of it, so we took off and tried to get there as early as possible.

Running amok in Torrance city sewers?

It turned out to be a lot of fun and I particularly was impressed by the enthusiasm of the city workers out to talk about their vehicles and equipment. I spent 15 - 20 minutes talking with one guy about his little robo-cam sewer pipe inspector - a little Mars-rover-like gizmo with a camera that they feed into the sewer pipes and remote control up and down the length to pin-point the obstructions. They had a demo set up where the rover moved down a simulated length of pipe where they uncovered
1) a rather large alligator, and
2) a rather small doll of Johnny Depp dressed up in Capt. Jack Sparrow garb. (I never knew there were pirates in our sewers!)
The kids squirmed and Stacy was standing there with one of her accommodating little smirks as Daddy geeked out at length with the city guy on the wonders of modern technology; by the time we were done talking we were both a little misty-eyed with pride at the advances in waste treatment systems.



About then my Actifed^® started to wear off, so the rest of the morning became an increasingly blurry series of emergency response vehicles and stalwart bastions of public transport. L and N got to drive a firmly parked Torrance bus (blasting the horn at a severely headache-oppressed Daddy whenever he would step in front of the bus for a picture). They also climbed into, over and under every back-hoe and fire truck left lying around - and there were a lot of them.

Prophetic foreshadowing?

N, like his Dad, was intrigued by the torch-cutter used to punch out metal plates to cover road construction digs. Stacy was not so accommodating this time and wouldn't let N go anywhere near it.




Since we've returned from our city yard adventure my flu has continued to degrade. I'm regretting now we didn't spend more time investigating the options available in new ambulances; we may be calling upon them soon.

<cough>