Everyday Randomness

Ok so I said I’d tell you what happened at my best friend’s last night. This will be a long post, so don’t forget to click on more to read the rest.

When she got home from work she chilled out for a few minutes with some Rock Band, then she decided to clean up. She headed to her basement with a load of laundry, and as soon as she was downstairs she was hit by a horrible gas smell.

The smell was staying downstairs so her first thought was that it was her natural gas. She’s didn’t know what it should smell like if she had a leak, so she called us to see if we could ride over.

Hubby wanted to take the bike since the rain had stopped, and when we got there another friend had arrived, and he called the natural gas company to be on the safe side. Our other friend had already turned off the gas outside.

I started down her stairs, but I only had to take about 2 steps before I smelled it. It wasn’t a natural gas smell. It smelled the kerosene, but there was no kerosene in her house anywhere. We called the natural gas people back, and they said they’d still send their guy to be on the safe side. His equipment would detect any gas leaks of any kind.

Now right now she has 6 bikes sitting in her basement. Two belong to her, 2 are Anna’s, and 2 belong to our friend Rodney. She did an oil change on hr R6 yesterday and had cranked it in the garage, but we all agreed that when she does that the exhaust smell is out of the house within a couple hours. There’s no way it should have been there last night. On top of that she had went downstairs before work to grab something out of the dryer, and there wasn’t a smell then.

OK next step, check all the bikes for gas leaks. It didn’t smell like gasoline, but we checked them all to be on the safe side. Nothing was leaking. We checked her gas can, and that was completely empty and dry as well. She hasn’t used it since her last race months and months ago.

Being April 1st we all started freaking out wondering if maybe psycho boy had decided to play some cruel joke on her by getting into her house and spraying kerosene on stuff. I know it’s far fetched, but psycho boy was psycho enough to mess with the brake lines on her GSXR 750, so we wouldn’t put it past him. Besides when she sent him the letter telling him he had 30 days to get his stuff out of her house, his dad called back saying he’d talk to his lawyer, and we haven’t heard from him since. He’s got 15 more days to contact her and arrange something.

All of his stuff is still tossed in a corner in her basement, so we started searching around the foot lockers and trash bags of clothes making sure nothing was wet or smelling like any type of gas. Nada. I was still claiming it smelled more like Kerosene or Diesel fuel, but we all agreed it was better to be safe than sorry.

We were all getting pretty lightheaded by this point, so we decided to stay outside until the gas company man arrived. I know you’re probably thinking why didn’t they open the windows and garage door? The gas company said not to so the smell didn’t dissipate. Alli took her carbon monoxide detector downstairs, and we went outside. As soon as she put the detector downstairs it started going off like crazy. Nobody wanted to go back inside to check it, so we waited on the gas guy.

It took him 2 hours to get there. They sent someone from Toccoa, GA to check it out, so when she called the guy was almost home. He went home, ate dinner, then drove all the way back to SC to check it out.

By the time he got there the smell had finally drifted upstairs. When he walked in the house he said “Mam, that’s kerosene.” We went through the whole story with him again, telling him how we’d checked everything already, no kerosene had ever been in that house, etc. He asked about the beeping, we explained the carbon monoxide detector, but I noticed it just didn’t sound right. It was a low beep more like a dead battery although I’d just watched Alli put a fresh battery in it earlier.

The gas guy put a meter on the line outside to check for leaks anyway, and when nothing showed up he grabbed his little machine that tests all types of gas fumes. We all kind of single filed down the stairs behind him, and as soon as he hit the bottom of the stairs his meter thing went crazy, then stopped. I checked the carbon monoxide detector, and as I suspected it was busted. It was steadily beeping away with no lights going. I took it outside, and it kept right on beeping. Time to get her a new one.

The gas man claimed the bikes were the problem. He said that even if they weren’t being cranked indoors, having that many bikes in a 2 car garage was building up deadly fumes. I didn’t buy it. Those bikes have been in that garage for a good 6 months, and his little machine didn’t go off around any of them. Heck only 2 of the bikes have any gas in them.

The gas man was as clueless as we were at that point. We were all getting ready to walk back upstairs, and I just happened to look up. She’s got these make shift shelves built up on one side of her garage doors. When the gas man flashed his flashlight upwards I noticed something out of the corner of my eye. Sitting up there on the top shelf was a little red gas can…my little red 1/2 gallon gas can. Last time I saw it, it had been sitting in her back yard with just a little bit of diesel in it.

So I said “Hey Alli, where’s my little red gas can? It’s got diesel in it.” She replied that it was sitting out behind the house. I smiled and pointed towards it. Hubby pulled it off the shelf, and there it was glistening from where it had expanded yesterday spilling out fuel. The shelf it was on was right next to a window, and yesterday was warmer than most days have been. The sun was shining through the window and hitting it just right to cause it to expand.

Our other friend carried it outside, and you could hear the pressure as he opened the can to release the fumes. She called her dad, and he admitted he had seen the can sitting outside and moved it into the basement, but he’d forgotten about it, too.

Gas fiasco solved. It only took 2 hours and $50 to get the gas man out there (sigh) to find out we were all freaking out over nothing…oh and that she needs a new carbon monoxide detector.

Unfortunately for us, the night only got worse. About the time we left her house, the rain hit again, so we had to ride all the way home on the bike in the rain. That’s the first time I’ve ridden with hubby in the rain since his wreck, and I could feel how tense he was. Luckily, we made it home safely.

Tags: carbon monoxide, carbon monoxide detector, diesel, gas expanding, gas fumes, kerosene, natural gas

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