On behalf of Thunderbird Broadband I must appologize to our customers for a very bad week up on the tower. We haven't had to fix anything up there in months but in this last week we had two of our three main radios just stop working and then on Sunday, all our radios were unplugged by a contractor doing some sheet metal work for the tower company. We were able to restart the two radios that quit earlier in the week and have ordered replacements for them. Sunday's outage is totally inexcusable and we're having communications with the tower company about the contractor deciding on his own to unplug all our equipment to get it out of his way so that he could fix a leak on the roof. From our customers' perspective, it really doesn't matter why they've lost internet access. All that matters is that the service is down.

As soon as we hear that there's a problem we throw tower climbing gear, a generator and chain saw into the van and head up to Gunsite Ridge and do what's necessary to get things running again. Unfortunately, it's a long, slow, rough drive over logging roads. In the winter there can be a couple feet of snow on the road and they don't ever plow it. Several times this last year we had to cut away fallen trees with the chain saw to get up to the top and one time a tree fell after we got up there blocking our retreat. Without the chain saw we'd have been stuck up there. Sunday we had our first truck failure on the way up the hill when our tire went flat after getting our onto Menzel Lake Road. Luckily Trish, our bookkeeper, was nearby and threw a snow tire into the pickup and brought it out to us. I would not like to venture up those roads on one of those go-kart spares that comes with the van. We'll have to do something about that before we have another flat. A couple days earlier we were kidding one of our backhaul providers about losing a tire going up the hill. I guess we jinxed ourselves.

So, as always, we've learned a little more from our bad experiences this last week and will try to do better. Let's hope this week is better than last.