Dunno if Elizabeth ran out of word count but there's far more to sump-caused basement flood mitigation than "test and maintain your sump pump."

I had what proved to be a totally ineffective redundancy scheme: a 2nd AC pump plugged into a briefcase-sized computer system power backup unit. We came within 4" of flooding for most of a rainy-again Sunday. I spent a month researching, acquiring, and pondering an adequate sump pit protection scheme. There are four essential stages. The first is your typical standard AC pump. Here’s what I learned about stages 2–4:

1a. Minimum safety requires a 12v secondary pump system with deep cycle battery Two are possibly better than one depending upon a range of operational givens. A decent 12v system with controller (where “decent” means a strong enough pump, not a “junior”) will cost $1000 and you can spend up to about $3500. My dual battery system can run 15 hours continuously with the likelihood of 2-4 days service without recharging depleting batteries.

1b. For short-term power outages a gasoline generator is required (and not just for sump pump power). Best values are at Costco; add another $1000-1300 for the generator and a batch of related stuff if you want to stage it safely. Ambient temps allowing, run it only half time to conserve on the high cost of gasoline.

2. For longer power outages or for a much smaller effective cost potential, install a water-powered backup pump. Based on the venturi principle, this class of pump offers reasonable capacity. It’s powered by the municipal water and must be hard-plumbed into the home system. $400 DIY or $1000 professionally installed. There’s a lot to know and consider about this class of device and its proper installation.

3. Last ditch short term alternative to bucket bailing: manual bilge pumps, $150 for pump plus 25’ outlet hose. The Whale brand seems to be well-considered in the boating world. If all else fails this could keep your basement dry, assuming the manpower to staff it.

Anyone wanting to know in an hour or two what it took me months to research and assess google me to find my contact info to discuss.

Not to mention that my patient-family's experience of each our parents' demise (that includes my mom and dad) would have been immeasurably more peaceful had they unfolded under mom and dad's own direction (self-direction, not necessarily self-deliverance). Those 6 weeks hospitalized were brutal and for many more reasons than their ailments. That's the point, really.

In mom's case her track (respiratory collapse) gave us all no choice; we essentially mismanaged it. In Dad's case he had a range of choices we were all too disoriented to consider or enact both before he crashed and after. It takes a long time to parse the influences that living in a technological world exerts on how we die.

Except for some accidents and for homicides, dying takes time, unfolding over weeks or months. Those weeks may be spent fighting via curative medicine or under palliative treatment and hospice care. The dying themselves get, or ought, to choose which pathway to take. It's impossible to convey, let alone discuss, the many aspects of dying in a 750 word column. Yes, dying will consist of physical pain.

I don't understand the notion of wishing to die peacefully as hypocritical. The idea of a peaceful death (or demise, more properly, where "demise" means the process, not the moment) is certainly one worth parsing.

The real hypocrisy is around self-directed dying, where palliative sedation (what you've suggested) under the principle of double effect is legal and socially acceptable (sometimes gratefully), whereas self-deliverance (which is not suicide when one is already terminal) is of course illegal and, to some, unacceptable except of course in states with Death With Dignity or similar laws.

The devil is always in the details. There are a zillion variables including patient-family dynamics. Similar circumstances may be dark or light depending upon the spirit in which a family manifests itself.

And this is another testimony to what I and others assert: inherent in the fat tire sport is a hunger for trail miles that will not be assuaged. Here's a 13 mile system with killer views. System #4 in the near-town SW region, right? No infringement on neighborhoods. Easily reachable by existing biking roadways. Any complaints? Course not. It works. Why aren't tracts like these and their connector roadways that road bikers use (and so forget 93's shoulders, use the Marshall town roads, etc) enough?

"Lower" Greenbriar from Broadway to Longwood at Fairview High's west end is a wide road with, in each direction, a full parking lane, a wide bike lane (with which I elevate my heart rate), and a vehicle lane. "Upper" Greenbriar is a different road entirely. As is known.

I see here and on the BMA site repeated references to successful trail sharing and construction. This is a sincere request to obtain descriptive information about both. Please cite references and documentation, I'd like to read it.

bldbldr: So, if Marshall isn't a decent mtn ride (understood), neither would a Greenbriar-Eldo connector be. I just walked it and Marshall, for whatever it isn't, is a more difficult ride than GE S2 alignment (and no one can claim that a Greenbriar descent is gonna get mtn riders' rocks off). Your comment underscores what I've been saying: mtn bike riders want convenient dirt connectors between far-flung tracts. BMAs original 2 NS alignments up near Mesa and through Shanahan would have been fun rides. The latter would cream all other users due to intersections and the former, the alignment of which I'm unfamiliar, personally this budding geezer who doesn't get up that high wouldn't care if you guys rode up there. I suppose it was an expensive proposition. Bottom line: WTSA is not a mtn bike playground. I can't windsurf through a swim beach or marina; if I want the *convenience* of an in-town sail, I gotta honor that. If I want uber sailing I gotta go 1250 miles NW or SE to the gorge or TX coast. Likewise: if you want real mtn biking you gotta get there. If you want the convenience of an in-town jaunt, you gotta accept some limits. Grow up about it.

The objections are myriad and the trails very different. The EW Chapman/Eldo-Walker trails, which many otherwise bike-averse users support, get mtn bikers from the plains to the mts via bike. This is a good and even great thing, and personally I hope they're built sooner rather than later. The Shanahan subarea is heavily used, ecologically fragile. Biking is fundamentally incompatible with walking, as experiences on both paved and dirt trails in and around town have shown. Lastly, a Greenbriar terminus/access suggests rolling the dice with a neighborhoods' peace, where it's under-the-Flatirons location combined with the pent up desires of a social sport plus legacy use at Doudy suggest that the neighborhood might well be overwhelmed. Finally, a Greenbriar-Eldo connector would in fact be segment one of a greater NS beltway, which I call B470, that would replicate a Greenbriar interchange at other neighborhoods as it winds north over time. These are the differences between segregated EW and integrated NS alignments.