On a Sunday that's beginning to feel like winter has settled in

On a cold afternoon, I went walking with the north country woman. It was exercise and a trip to the drug store for something or another. I've been noticing the paint jobs of fire hydrants and wondering if they might mean something. NCW had inquired of the Grand Rapids Fire Chief as to what the colors might mean. As it turns out there is a color coding so that fire fighters get critical information when they arrive to hook up their hoses to a hydrant. Hydrant caps are painted to indicate the flow rate of the hydrant: blue is very good flow (1500 gallon per minute or more), green is good for residential areas (1000-1499 gallons per minute, and orange (and yellow?) is marginally adequate (500-999 gallons per minute). Outlet caps are similarly marked for amount of hydrant pressure. Orange (yellow?) is normal range (50-120 psi). There's a fire hydrant color site. Who knew? It's apparently a national standard.

As we walked we noticed a few with green outlet caps, mostly on the busier and perhaps more commercial streets like Grand Avenue, indicating higher hydrant pressure.

An update on the condition of NCW's ankle, in the form of a quiz. Try to guess which ankle was recently the subject of a surgeon's scalpel. The question is made a little more difficult by housing the ankles in socks designed to look like what PP termed psychedelic giraffe skin.

Another pair of socks for scale. Different socks, different ankles. Different psychedelic animal skin.

Today started out as a cold Sunday at about 9º F. and topped out at 28º F. The lakes are pretty much frozen over in the Saintly City and they are snowless, so they look like a shimmering layer of glass. They're pretty attractive and I'll try to get some photos before the first snow spoils the effect.