At the corner of Noisy and Loud - just a bit of a Rant

When we moved into this house approximately 23 years ago, it was a nice quiet neighborhood - you could have called it bucolic.

Slowly that has changed - just a little bit at a time As the crow flies, we are about half to 3/4 of a mile from the train tracks.  They have been adding another train here and there (where it used to be one or two trains a day, now it is one every couple of hours! - and most of them are coal or oil transport trains - long, loud and heavy) Add to that the three crossing gates that are in our area and the trains seem to blow their whistle about 5 times for each crossing.  I've come to decide that train engineers are sadists.  I mean, come on, it's the middle of the night, there is a drop down crossing gate that's got flashing red lights and bells  - do they really need to blow their whistle 5 times? 

And then there is the airport.  The crow has to fly about 2.5 miles to get to the airport from our house with our close proximity to Vancouver BC, and the horrible traffic to get to Sea-Tac airport, Bellingham International Airport has really taken a step up in the past 20 years with many planes coming and going every day.  And, dare I mention Interstate 5?. 


This map is a snip from a map put out by the US Bureau of Transportation that was printed in the Bellingham Herald a few weeks ago.  Do you see the dark red "ground zero" spot that I've circled - yup, that's just about where we live - at the corner of Noisy and Loud.