Ark Valley News - Out of the office

Out of the office
By Chris Strunk
Last Updated: December 14, 2017

Packed the day with activities

I knew it was going to be a busy day.

On Dec. 9, my plan was to climb on top of a couple of downtown buildings, ride a tractor, watch a ballgame, tour a castle, eat from a food truck and watch a classic movie.

At the end of the day, I accomplished all but one activity. I settled for a few episodes of a British crime drama on Netflix before falling asleep.

The weather was perfect to get some work done outside. My oldest son, Ray, and I went downtown to repair a couple of strings of lights on downtown buildings.

As part of Main Street Valley Center, we installed the lights last year and try to keep them going year-round. One set lining the top edges of the buildings on the north side of the 200 block of West Main had been out since early September.

I diagnosed the problem as an outlet with no power on the light pole at Main and Park. So instead of waiting for Westar to repair the outlet, which we have been doing for the past several weeks, I decided to run a couple of extension cords to another exterior outlet down the block.

It's the holiday season. The lights needed to be on.

We ran the cord and then turned our attention to the south side of Main Street, where the lights on top of the Edward Jones building weren't working. Ray climbed the ladder and discovered that they had been unplugged, probably by the company repairing the roof there a couple of weeks ago. Easy fix, except that we noticed a few light clips had worked loose, so I handed Ray the glue and a tossed up a few new clips.

Then we went to the Tom Harris and GS Memorymaker building at the corner of Ash and Main, where a string of lights toward the back had not worked for several weeks. We put up a new string and they look great.

We loaded up the ladder and went to the Pathway Church building at Main and Park, where a few lights had apparently worked loose from the clips. A couple of clips also were broken, so we replaced those.

All done, everything was going to look as good as the day we first put them up, we thought.

Of course, that wasn't the case. Later that night, when it was dark and all the lights were supposed to be on, I noticed two sections — one on the north side of Main over the Sew Much More building and one on Ash — weren't working. Shucks.

I guess I'll be spending another few minutes on rooftops soon.

After eating some lunch at home, my next chore was to finish picking up leaves from the yard and getting some of the other stuff outside ready for the cold temperatures.

No problems there, but I didn't have enough time to take the leaves over to the city's mulch pile, so now I have a full truck bed.

A few minutes before 3, I cleaned up and went downstairs to watch the Wichita State basketball game. I only made it to halftime before we had to leave.

My wife and I went on a self-guided tour of the Campbell Castle in Wichita's Riverside neighborhood. I had never been inside the castle. Lisa was in an interior design class several years ago that took a field trip there once.

It was awesome.

Next on the to-do list was dinner at some of our favorite food trucks — Flying Stove, Funky Monkey Munchies and Lolo's Crepes — that were set up outside of the Orpheum Theater in downtown Wichita.

We also planned to see the movie “Christmas Vacation," which was showing at the Orpheum.

We struck out with one and nearly both. The food truck lines were crazy by the time we got there, and the movie was sold out “two days ago," we were told.

We toyed with the idea of going somewhere else to eat, but decided to stick it out. I honestly got the last burger the Flying Stove had, and Lisa had a crepe. The kids came down and joined us for some food before they went to a concert.

It was a busy day.

†††

Dick Bartel had a busy day Dec. 11.

Bartel turned 90 years old and to celebrate, he delivered cookies to local businesses, including The News office.

He said he's “two times 45."

We asked if he had a day of golf lined up to celebrate his birthday. He didn't. The Lions Club was putting him to work sorting out donations for Valley Center Christmas Kids.

“There will be more days to golf," he said as he headed out the door.

Chris Strunk is publisher of The Ark Valley News. Reach him at 755-0821 or news@arkvalleynews.com, or find him on Facebook.