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Posted on 12/01/2006 12:55:15 PM PST by ecurbh
Welcome to The Hobbit Hole!
Sing hey! for the bath at close of day
That washes the weary mud away!
A loon is he that will not sing:
O! Water Hot is anoble thing!
O! Sweet is the sound of falling rain.
and the brook that leaps from hill to plain;
but better than rain or rippling streams
is Water Hot that smokes and steams.
O! Water cold we may pour at need
down a thirsty throat and be glad indeed;
but better is Beer, if drink we lack,
and Water Hot poured down the back.
O! Water is fair that leaps on high
in a fountain white beneath the sky;
but never did fountain sound so sweet
as splashing Hot Water with my feet!
Wow... that's scary. I'm glad you came through ok. Those pictures are amazing.
Yep - that was something else! I'll have to write my own version of the whole saga, but when I went out in an attempt to go to work on Friday, that was one thing I noticed - it smelled like Christmas everywhere because of all the fir branches down.
Yep...I was very glad of Tam the first night! And Cisco, though he was all nervous because he doesn't usually sleep on the bed.
Halvah was in too bad a mood to come near anyone.
Chapter 3 :~) - The horse.
This is a short chapter, a sub-story within the story, a post-storm horse management issue. As we were still walkin' around assessing and inspecting things, this woman comes trotting down the road past the pasture on this grey horse, a line of cars behind her.
She goes to the store next door...
It was just a real unusual thing for us to see, and a cool thing to do, I guess, except it really caused a ruckus with our horses. Bay started snorting around and running the fence line and the thing that pissed me off was that after I took this picture, I went back home and was nervously watching the situation, and she went over even closer to the horses, into the weedy area between the store and the pasture and was just hanging around for awhile, watching my horses go.
I went back out there and said "Lady, you have got to get out of here. Those are my horses, and our power is out to that fence and you are creating a problem. I've had a hard night and I don't need my horses to run the fence." She seemed quite unalarmed, and got down off her horse and started trying to kick a poo pile off the pavement and said "Well I have to get rid of this, or the store might get mad" I said "Don't worry about the poop. Just GO. I'll clean it up for you" "I don't want them to get mad about it" "I'll handle it. Go. Please! You can't hang out here!" "Well I have to go by them again on the road to get by" I said "I know... just DO IT." I could believe how dense she was about what I was trying to say. I finally just ran and caught Bay and put them in the back forty where they had a lot more distance and would have to run two fence lines to get to her. No telling what she got at the store... My own theory with all the downed trees, she maybe couldn't get out on her road and was out of cigarettes. Heh... People will go to extreme lengths when they are out of cigarettes, like riding their horse down the road. It was just such an unusual event. No one ever rides down that road on a horse, and Bay found it to be really exciting.
I'm glad you got some sleep ... you needed it.
I'll bet the store is doing a land-office business, what with cigarettes, toilet paper, diapers, milk, and bread being the essentials they are ...!
Bay will now expect you to ride him to the store, rather than you just walking over there.
From the picture, it's a nice-looking horse. Too bad the owner is such a butt-head.
The owner's probably not intentionally a butt-head, she was just doing her thing, till I ran out and started yelling at her. I was just surprised that as a horse owner, she wasn't more tuned in to a potential problem with the horses getting too riled up inside a wire fence that we only hoped they would believe was still working. She seemed oblivious, but I can tell you, she'd have recognized she had a problem if Bay had decided to blow through the fence issuing all kinds of studly challenges to her grey horse. I will say she has one heck of a road horse, he was cool as a cucumber.
My report...pretty much meshes with Hair's after the first night. But I'll do a few chapters. ;-)
That night, they were here from about six until I decided to go to bed. It didn't seem all that bad out there at that point. I think we were kind of wondering if the whole deal had been exaggerated. It was very breezy, but no worse than some of the other wind storms we've had this year. Kind of neat standing out there watching it...especially as it was incredibly warm at that point - balmy, almost. We had seen transformers going all around, though. Almost felt a little left out in that our power was still fine.
So I went to bed, and then the wind started picking up. And picking up. I've never heard wind like that, as I mentioned. Started hearing branches crack and small things battering the sides of the house. The siding didn't go until more like one o'clock, after it was completely dark out. A piece came off on the wall that's right behind my bedroom. At first it just came loose and was banging - I was cringing every time a gust came up and yanked at it. When it finally came off, it was quieter, but I could hear the rain and wind a lot louder in that corner. Ended up standing in my closet with a flashlight, trying to see if water was getting in, because I could hear it so loud.
We had radios, but they weren't fully charged. I could see Hair and Ecurbh's headlights, and thought about radioing them to see if they could point the lights towards the house and see what was up with the siding, since I was afraid to go out in the storm; but when I finally tried to radio, it had run out of power. So I had to wait until morning.
The wind died down not too long after that.
When it started getting light, I took a flashlight and went over to see if Hair and Ecurbh had come through all right. The house was OK, but as you saw from the pictures, branches were everywhere! It was just amazing - couldn't see the drive, couldn't see the lawn - just branches. We'll have to get some pictures of the pile o' branches once it's completely stacked up. The piles are already pretty impressive, and really only the driveway is clear.
We made coffee on the burner on their gas grill. I'd gotten a few pages from my boss, but they were garbled. I got something about a tree being across the main drive of the building, but I figured since they're right by the hospital, they probably had power back. Figured I'd better go in.
Power was only on in a few places along the way. Lots of traffic lights becoming multi-way stops. When I got to the building, there was a tree across the drive still, and the power was still out, so I paged my boss and said I'd try again later, maybe. I thought I'd try to pick up breakfast sandwiches or something on my way home, but nowhere had power. The one place I found that *did* have power didn't have the ability to do debit cards, and of course I'd stupidly not thought to get cash before the storm. One for the preparedness list, I guess.
That was when Rose called - I was just coming to an intersection of two four-lane roads plus turn lanes, all without a traffic light. Stuff like that gets reallllly interesting. It was very nice to leave *town*.
More after I get back from church...
Chapter 4 :~) - Ramius to the rescue!
We shifted into camping mode, and started the routine of off-line life, which mostly revolved around filling water buckets from our emergency supply barrel for the horses and for the toilet and for us, continuing to clear branches, and dealing with food. Also talked to everyone on the cell phone, called parents, called Ramius, Rose called here and found out we were OK. We were eager for news of what was happening elsewhere, wondering what the weather was going to do, wondering how bad it was around town and when we might get power back. Reports were that it might be days. It probably will be days to get out to the very rural places, even like the beach house that is down a small private road. Back here, we are on a fairly major road, so we were higher on the list, probably.
But we learned that the temperatures were expected to drop into the freezing zone, and there was a potential for snow, and having only electric heat, we had no source of heat except the barbecue, and I've read enough headlines about that to know we can't use that. I'd been talking to dad about needing to find an emergency heat source because with all the crap weather we'd been having, none of them so far had been during critical cold times. A power outage isn't a huge emergency when the temps are in the forties or higher, it starts becoming a real problem if it's bitter cold.
Dad had suggested maybe we could use a Kerosene heater he has, it was not too bad for fumes, and as long as we kept a window open, maybe it'd be safe enough, but we'd go back and forth on whether it was safe to have any kind of flammable fuel heater inside. I was already thinking we might end up with me, ecurbh, Rosie, and all the dogs and cats huddled in our bed under every blanket we own for the duration.
Well, I talked to Ramius about the cold night to come and the potential for snow showers, and sortof begged him to come down with that kerosene heater. "It'll be an adventure" I said. "Bring us that heater and come camp with us!" The amazing thing is, he said he would! He'd come down and bring the kerosene heater!
It was funny when Ramius arrived, because he pulls this electric heater with a cord on it out of the back of his rig, and ecurbh was standing there staring at him, wondering whether Ramius was that much of a moron. That was all part of the joke, of course, because the surprise was that he had another present with him, a generator Ramius and dad had already purchased as a Christmas present and decided we'd probably appreciate getting it early! WOO HOO! How exciting!
We set it up on the front porch, put up some tarps to keep it protected from any blow-in rain or snow. While the guys assembled the generator, Rosie and I headed to town to fill gas cans, which was a considerable challenge. Most all of town was dark, and some of those who had power were already out of gas. It took us quite a while to find a station that was open, and it had a long line. Never had to wait in line like that for gas before. Nearly everyone was also filling cans for generators. I wished I'd taken the camera to show damage from around town, but I didn't. There were trees down everywhere, even on the freeway.
Upon our return back home, we fired up the generator. We were camping in style now!
Here's ecurbh making some stew from meat and veggies we had in the fridge...
That stew was really good. And heat was really good! We consider Ramius, and dad, to be quite the heroes. Give these guys a problem, like me complaining about not having heat if the power goes out, and they solve it the right way. I was thinking of a propane or kerosene heater, they decided to get a generator to keep me from getting something that was unsafe. Deep thanks to them, they really saved us this time, and better yet, have given us some long term preparedness.
We were able to warm up, and even more decadent, watch DVD movies on TV! This is actually a bigger heater Ramius went into town to get after the little one didn't seem to put out very much heat. I guess electric heaters were on sale at Home Depot ;~)
These were taken the next morning, during first coffee. ecurbh in particular looks like he's been run over. We're still behind on sleep :~)
We could power the heater, a light, the TV and DVD, and even the electric fence for the horses. It was really nice. I gave the horses all the hay they could eat. They did really well for having had a pretty rough week of bad weather where they were, for the first time, put outside to deal with it best they can. Bay looked really tired and a little stiff on Friday (before the lady with the horse rode up anyway) and I Buted him, but they were otherwise fine. And the fences were fine. That's the remarkable thing, even the back forty only had small limbs on it that we could easily clear.
Once we had all our basic needs met, we went over to get Rosie's siding put back up. Her landlord said he'd do it, but he was pretty busy over at the store with his own issues, so we decided to get it done, just in case it rained or snowed before he could get to it.
So there we are! Ramius went home, and we got ourselves bathed with water heated on the barbecue, powered the generator up and settled in for yet another night camping... We didn't quite know how to handle it when the lights came back on. It's change that's hard to bear, once a person has become adapted to new realities. We didn't shut the generator down right away, we didn't trust that the electricity would really stay on :~)
And that closes our story, we still have a lot of cleanup to do, but no emergencies. We'll go up on the roof today, there's a lot of branches up there too, but we don't ~think~ any damage.
I hope, the end, except for a few pictures from the beach house and surrounding areas I'll post in a bit... I don't want to write any more storm stories for awhile.
Thanks for that tip. $50 in small bills and coins is going into my bailout bag, right next to the Colt M1917.
Another thing that people should do, and I try, but not too faithfully to do, is back up critical financial and personal data on dirt-cheap 1GB USB drives, and keep in my bailout bag. Backup data from Quicken and my Palm Pilot is already encrypted, so it's safe enough to keep on a simple USB drive. I might lose my computers, but I want to keep the most critical data safe, and in my possession, if I ever have to do a quick egress.
I've seen generic 1GB thumb drives for $12, so nobody has any excuse for keeping their most sensitive, and sentimental, data safe, even if it's just to throw it in a safe deposit box (which might also be hard to access in an emergency). Duplication and dispersal is your friend, and could make starting over a whole lot easier.
yup, the small bills and change is 'vey' handy to have; during our ice storm to handi mart up the hill was selling, but no cash register, he'd round up (of course) if he didn't have the change. Still, folks were glad he was sorta open.
Excellent Chapter 3 and 4. A real adventure for our NW hobbits.
Ramius: two thumbs up on that most appropriate present.
This is maybe not the best place to park ;~) This is quite near the beach house... this is probably their power line.
And this is the little private road into the beach house.. only about 12 houses down this road, it may be awhile till they get around to this.
And just how cute is Rosie in that hat!!
Welcome to a NC ice storm. Glad y'all are ok!
...only trees aren't still breaking and falling 3 days after...
Very true OT... these have pretty much done what they're going to do :~)
We have the potential for ice storms here too, I was at the beach house for one bad one. We lost power for 8 days then with a foot of snow on the ground. It can always be worse... :~)
~sip~ *reliving memories*
I was out of power for 10 days - they had to replace two poles on my street and I had to have the electrician (bless his heart!) replace my box before the power people got their part done. I wasn't kidding about the kitty and the blankets. It was so toasty under there that she bailed on me!
Anyway, it's a better adventure when you have to do without power for only a day.
One day, a ways down the road when you can talk about stormy weather again, you'll have to tell that tale. I've never been stuck anywhere for eight days due to the weather.
Sounds like an excellent NaNo bagatelle ...!
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