Peace At Last

It's a gorgeous autumn afternoon, the birds are chirping, and the fountain by my back porch provides a soothing tinkle. The noise decibel reading on the back porch has dropped from 52 to 39 since the fans were turned off several days ago. (Since a 3 db increase means a doubling of sound energy, that suggests that the golf course fans and neighborhood heat pumps have been providing more than 90% of the ambient noise for the past few months.) Let's enjoy the quiet ambience of MacGregor Downs during the period between now and May. Fan season will be here again soon enough. We've had advice from a number of folks about strategies to pursue next spring, so look for things to heat up again when the weather does and when fan season approaches.

Traffic vs. Golf Course Fans

The feature story on the front page of the News & Observer in a recent Sunday edition (Sept. 9, 2007) detailed growth, congestion, and noise issues along the recently opened I-540 section north of Raleigh. One down side of the freeway is found in the caption to a series of photos that reads:

Clarence and Kathy Cox used to hear bird calls outside their home in Knightdale. But with I-540 nearby traffic noise prevails... Kathy Cox gets a reading of 65.6 decibels.

Hey! 65.6 decibels! That's almost as loud as the MacGregor Downs Golf Course Fans.