Valve

Get out. We have bikes to peddle, walks to take, birds to view. There's wood to stack, boats to winterize, blinds to scout. It's supposed to be a pretty day in the middle of what is, for some, a long holiday weekend (Or at least that's what the weather-guesser said Friday). You get the idea. It's been two months since the attacks on New York City and the Pentagon, and folks are still trying to find a rhythm. A fellow outdoors writer pointed out that foliage season came and went last month with scarcely a mention.

We've had our first cool days and cold nights of the season, and soon it will be time to turn on the heat. If you have a circulating hot-water heating system - typically radiator or baseboard heat - it's a good time to bleed the air out of the system. Air trapped in the radiators and pipes keeps the hot water from reaching parts of the system, reducing heat output. If you've noticed that a radiator doesn't get hot, or its top half doesn't warm properly, it probably has air trapped inside that is keeping it from filling with water.

City public works officials believe a downtown water main burst after a fire raging in a rail tunnel below it heated the 90-year-old cast-iron pipe beyond the breaking point, turning nearby streets into rivers a foot deep. As crews labored yesterday to stanch the flow of water so they could patch the break, investigators linked the train derailment Wednesday under Howard Street with the rupture of a 40-inch water main above it on Lombard Street. Because the main sits atop the rail tunnel, it was suspected from the start that the broken pipe and rail fire were related.

There were a couple of drops, a couple of missed connections. Other than a 56-yard completion when Pro Bowl safety Blaine Bishop lost track of Shannon Sharpe, Trent Dilfer had little success downfield when he attempted to make the Tennessee Titans pay for their pressure Sunday. "There were some opportunities to hit some players," Ravens coach Brian Billick said. "There was a lot of pressure. It's kind of a hit-or-miss thing against that defense. It can be big play, big play, or it can be miss, miss.

If there is one player who personifies what Navy football is supposed to be about this year, it has to be Jamie Doffermyre.He is light but speedy. He was a virtual unknown who was recruited by the academy to play lacrosse, but wound up becoming the leading tackler and a major inspiration for the football team at safety. He is almost always out-weighed but never out-spirited."I'm kind of used to it," said the graduate of Arundel High. "I go 180 to 185 and last year against Notre Dame I gave away 40 pounds to the quarterback and 60 pounds to the fullback.

Since 1984, Dick LeBeau has been the NFL version of the mad scientist, a coach in search of a solution.The problem? Prolific passing games.The solution? Zone-blitz pressure.It's as much a solution as anyone has uncovered in recent years, anyway. More than a passing fad -- it already has outlived the "46 defense" popularized by the Chicago Bears in the mid-1980s -- it has become one of the most menacing tools of defensive coordinators around the league.And according to LeBeau, defensive coordinator for the Cincinnati Bengals, it's here to stay.

MY FATHER HAS always had enormous energy. If he ever felt ill, you didn't know it. Twenty-five years after ending his career as a foreign service officer, he was enjoying vigorous retirement, a pillar of the Florida community where he lives.Then a bad infection -- one he might have avoided if he'd received an adequate warning from his doctor -- dramatically changed all that.It's a problem that affects scores of people annually -- those who, like my father, have had a joint or heart-valve replacement.

The most studied highway proposal in Maryland history has become the road not taken.First mentioned by state officials 50 years ago, the Intercounty Connector (ICC) was envisioned as part of the outer Washington Beltway, an 18-mile blacktop escape valve for commuters traveling through the suburbs between Laurel and Rockville.Now, the ICC is a symbol of the friction that almost inevitably develops among transportation planners, environmentalists, politicians, business leaders and residents throughout the country when it comes to roads.

The flight engineer of a World Airways plane that dumped jet fuel onto a Glen Burnie woman and her son this year knew well before landing that a fuel valve was stuck but foresaw no threat that warranted alerting the airport.Airline officials met with U.S. Rep. Wayne T. Gilchrest yesterday to go over the events of Jan. 20. Gilchrest, a Republican who represents areas near Baltimore-Washington International Airport, met the representatives as part of his investigation on whether congressional hearings on midair jet fuel dumpings are necessary.

Vandals opened a valve at an outdoor pump house in Harford County on Wednesday night, spilling home heating oil onto an oil company's property and into a stream, police said yesterday.Investigators said it could take up to two days to clean the site at Heaps Oil Co. in the 4600 block of Green Marble Road in Whiteford.Police said they did not know how much oil from the 6,500-gallon tank had spilled into the stream. They said an unknown amount had been stolen. The oil company's owner found the spill about 9 LTC a.m. yesterday and notified the county Sheriff's Department and the Maryland Department of the Environment, police said.