Cassi Creek:
Today was predicted to be a rainy day with a chance of thunderstorms and possibly some gusty winds. They nailed that.
I was standing in the kitchen at 0828, coffee made, first cup poured, and my breakfast ready to eat. The computers were up and operational. The dog and I had hiked out to retrieve the newspaper and managed to return to the house before the first spatters of rain hit the deck.
“There's a tingling recognition
Like the sound of distant thunder”
Loki joined me in the kitchen, pacing uneasily. The wind was heavy enough to cause our Northern Wind Bells to sound but had not clocked any gusts higher than 11 mph overnight. We sit in a slight depression with major winds normally deflected over us; something we’ve become comfortable with since moving in.
I began to hear some distant rumbles of deep-toned thunder, distant and echo-filled. At this point the only real concern was to worry about whether or not Mike and I would get our morning walk in between rain falls.
With no other warning a seemingly solid wall of rain smashed into the house. Looking out the kitchen window I was unable to see the rails around the deck. We’ve had rain like this before. Still not too worrying. Then the power went.
When the power went, the overhead lights went with it. So did the forest of LED indicators that announce the power on/off status and other information about a constellation of chargers, hubs, routers, extenders, and bases that feed from power cables plugged into our computers, cell phones and land lines/fax/copiers/printers, and terminate in one of three UPS units that protect our computers from the rather dirty power everything else ingest happily. With the loss of lights came the beeps of announcement as the UPSs each announced that they were now powering the network and its remoras from their internal batteries; and demanding that the load be lifted from their shoulders.
Lifting that load, and subsequently stilling the annoying little cries for attention, involves crawling around in the dark to reach one unit that lives behind and below Gloria’s desk. Two others live on my desk but still require contortions to reach. With silence predominant, the next task is to find the hard-wired land line, unplug the cordless base unit’s phone cable from the single land line jack, and replace it with the hard-wired phone. This, of course, involves more crawling on the floor and more contortions in the dark. Then I can read the number for the power company’s automated help desk from the hand set and dial in the dark. After the auto-system answers, I get to respond by entering numbers that identify me and our home as in need of a visit from hard-working men with bucket trucks to restore our power line.
By now it is light enough outside that I can see our driveway is filled with tulip-poplar branches and that the power line is sagging dangerously close to Gloria’s car. It takes another half hour to contact customer service at the power company and tell them that we have a downed line, have no access to water, and have meds that require refrigeration. The storm that brushed us and left us without power did much more damage in Johnson City.
While we had some minor damage here to our trees, nothing else was damaged. Johnson City lost power to four schools. ETSU had power lines down on campus and canceled classes for the day. Towns to our west, north, and east all report lots of tree and power line damage. We were lucky.
A power company truck arrived at about 1015. We had power restored at 1105. The crewman assigned to this area looked at his call sheets and realized that we were the only remaining house on our road without power and moved us from near the end of his schedule to the top, bringing us back on line several hours earlier than we otherwise would have been.
We need to find someone affordable to do some tree trimming. The three tulip-poplars in front are going to continue to shed branches. They’ve been doing so this summer and autumn. The Bradford pear in back is split near the ground level. It needs to be removed as it is far too close to the house anyway. Affordable is the operative word.
Gloria is making a wild mushroom-beef soup for dinner. I’m looking forward to it!
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