Power Restored, Posts To Resume

When the power came on, I was playing my cheap electric piano, and I had hit the wrong key. Which I hit more wrong than right ones, so that wasn’t unusual, but this was an egregious mistake, an E for a C, so I thought I had broke the world. Because the power came on with an audible crack.

Incidentally, that piano I got off eBay for a hundred bucks, a Donner, full sized, merely for something to learn on. This is no solicited endorsement, but the little thing kept it’s charge for a full week, even with me playing every day for about 45 minutes (with headphones). I was amazed.

Power was off three hours shy of one full week. An intelligent person would not have let this bother him, having his generator in hand, well oiled, gassed, and hooked up. Mine arrives next Friday.

For the first day or so dark, last Saturday 29 March, there was still cellphone service, so I was able to get last Monday’s post out. But then the cellphone tower died, too, and the rest of the week was quiet. The computer went to sleep. I was able to charge the cellphone in the truck. An intelligent person would have had a car power inverter ready to go, so things like computers could get recharged, too. Mine arrives Friday. An intelligent person would have at least had one of those battery packs. Mine is coming.

I was cautious with the truck charging anyway, since although by luck I had a full tank of gas, all the gas stations within 45 minutes were also without power. And when some stations got power back, they were quickly out of gas. The Mackinaw Bridge closed for a record-length time and many in the eastern UP had no chance at gas.

The Red Cross worked with the Fire Station and opened that up with beds, food, electricity and wifi. An intelligent person would have checked this early in the week. When I checked on Friday, it was still open. The men running it were absolute sweethearts. Insisted on making us coffee. There were snacks from Buc-ees, though nobody had any idea where they came from (there isn’t one within a thousand miles).

This really is a small town. Everybody knew everybody, and if they didn’t, they knew who knew everybody. Some were better off, some worse. Neighbors were, well, neighborly. Nobody was sour, everybody I met was in good humor, including several tired crews of linesmen and tree removal crews.

I kept the house warm with a fire in the stove, but a low fire, because the chimney gave troubling signs. An intelligent person would have had a chimney sweep take care of this well before the storm. And mine was to come over a month ago, but then he had to have knee surgery. He was scheduled to come on the last day of the storm. His town, smaller than mine, was even harder hit.

It’s Sunday morning as I write this, and at least 10% of the north is still without power. Last Saturday, nearly everybody was out; not only individuals, whole towns. Everything. It was an astonishing storm. But not violent. Just a steady, even quiet, accumulation of ice. Some power lines and branches had an inch-thick coating of ice. It was the weight of all the ice that did the damage.

One man’s front yard, maybe half an acre, looked like the Great Oak Of Heaven snowed on him. There was not one inch left uncovered by thick branches. Many yards looked like a flood had subsided and left a blanket of tree and bush. The main expressway north, I-75, had to be closed for a long stretch. A major electric tower was whacked. Roads everywhere were blocked with trees and power lines. Poles everywhere snapped. The clean up will take a month.

I went for a walk on the second day of the storm, on Sunday, and as I got back home, the top of a neighbor’s red pine exploded off. Sounded like a 12-gauge. You could hear shots going off for days. A cedar collapsed on my shack, but the damage to the roof was smaller than you’d think, since cedars don’t snap, but sigh as they die. There are other trees and branches down, including four cedars that are listing badly in the direction of the garage roof.

All of which means that not only am I a week behind on all work, I have a lot to do to put things back in order. Plus we’re supposed to get 2, 3 inches Monday. So I might have to drop to a two-post, plus class, schedule for a week or so.

Good news is that I got a lot of reading done. Mostly by staying off the interwebs. I did have a peek at Twitter today and see everybody is losing their minds, this time over tariffs. Panic kills, my friends. It may be best to limit exposure to easily outraged voices for a while.

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