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Today, I am a hero
Jun. 6th, 2006 07:00 pmOh, a very minor sort of a hero, but still ....
So there I was, bicycling home from work. And when I'm about a block shy of the sidestreet my gym is on, I smell smoke. A rather nice woodsy smoke aroma, but it's an odd place for someone to be barbequing ... and then I notice that the smoke is coming from a pile of burlap sacks sitting outside a loading door. I bike over. Sure enough, burlap sacks filled with organic matter and there's a hand-sized charred spot on one from which smoke is oozing. "How lucky," I think, "that the other half of this block is occupied by Emeryville Fire Station No. 2!" So I bike around the corner only to find that this is one of station #2's "off days" (they're saving money by having rotating staffing of stations) and the only people there are some maintenance guys who don't do fires. Ok, so back I go in the opposite direction to the offices of Leapfrog software, where an employee taking a cig break let me in with his card key so I could borrow a fire extinguisher. Then back I go to the burlap sacks which are still merrily smoking away. I will note that in the mean time all manner of cars, pedestrians, and a couple other bicyclists are passing right by the smoking sacks. I pull the pin and pump a bunch of extinguishment in through the charred hole, then dump out the contents and continue breaking up smoldering clumps and extinguishing until it's dead. The associated business, as it happens, was the McLaughlin Coffee Roastery, and the organic matter in the sacks looked like it might be coffee bean husks (so no wonder it smelled good). So now I go back to Leapfrog and spend about 5 minutes accosting people trying to find someone interested in having me report to them that I had requisitioned one of their extinguishers and to take delivery of the now used equipment. Then it's back to the McLaughlin building to see if I can find any sort of contact information posted (since they're closed for the day) to no avail. So I wrote out a note explaining the whole thing and slipped it through the mail slot. One more check on the sacks to make sure nothing has started up again. (I did wonder if I should call 911 to report it anyway, but the thing looked thoroughly out, and in a worst case scenario, it's on a concrete pavement with no nearby landscaping, ouside a brick building with metal access doors.) Then on to the gym. I don't usually like tooting my own horn, but today I'm feeling smugly proud of myself. Yay me.
So there I was, bicycling home from work. And when I'm about a block shy of the sidestreet my gym is on, I smell smoke. A rather nice woodsy smoke aroma, but it's an odd place for someone to be barbequing ... and then I notice that the smoke is coming from a pile of burlap sacks sitting outside a loading door. I bike over. Sure enough, burlap sacks filled with organic matter and there's a hand-sized charred spot on one from which smoke is oozing. "How lucky," I think, "that the other half of this block is occupied by Emeryville Fire Station No. 2!" So I bike around the corner only to find that this is one of station #2's "off days" (they're saving money by having rotating staffing of stations) and the only people there are some maintenance guys who don't do fires. Ok, so back I go in the opposite direction to the offices of Leapfrog software, where an employee taking a cig break let me in with his card key so I could borrow a fire extinguisher. Then back I go to the burlap sacks which are still merrily smoking away. I will note that in the mean time all manner of cars, pedestrians, and a couple other bicyclists are passing right by the smoking sacks. I pull the pin and pump a bunch of extinguishment in through the charred hole, then dump out the contents and continue breaking up smoldering clumps and extinguishing until it's dead. The associated business, as it happens, was the McLaughlin Coffee Roastery, and the organic matter in the sacks looked like it might be coffee bean husks (so no wonder it smelled good). So now I go back to Leapfrog and spend about 5 minutes accosting people trying to find someone interested in having me report to them that I had requisitioned one of their extinguishers and to take delivery of the now used equipment. Then it's back to the McLaughlin building to see if I can find any sort of contact information posted (since they're closed for the day) to no avail. So I wrote out a note explaining the whole thing and slipped it through the mail slot. One more check on the sacks to make sure nothing has started up again. (I did wonder if I should call 911 to report it anyway, but the thing looked thoroughly out, and in a worst case scenario, it's on a concrete pavement with no nearby landscaping, ouside a brick building with metal access doors.) Then on to the gym. I don't usually like tooting my own horn, but today I'm feeling smugly proud of myself. Yay me.
