Wednesday, July 4, 2012

Adventures Without Power

The last three days have been pretty crazy.  It all started Friday evening.  I had just finished some things with the 4th of July float.  The radio was on and had been beeping constantly saying severe thunderstorms were headed our way.  I normally just ignore those because so often severe just means lighting and hard rain.  I saw the clouds getting nasty though so I went ahead and closed the garage doors and then I heard the pups crying at the walk-in door.  So, I let them in and kept working.  Out of nowhere though, the wind went from nothing to crazy.  I was thinking the worst and thought there was a tornado so I snatched up the dogs and ran inside.  Kim and I went to the front room and watched the mayhem.  It was the most powerful sustained wind I had ever seen.  When it was over, we knew the power was out obviously, but nothing looked too terrible in our yard other than a few small tree limbs.

I was still really nasty from having been working in the garage all day so I took a shower with a flashlight.  Finally, after everything had calmed down, Kim and I loaded up Elise and the pups and we took a ride to look around.  Oh my.  We didn't realize how bad things were.  Trees were down everywhere.  Smashed vehicles.  Smashed roofs.  Downed power poles.  It was pretty intense.

For the next three days, from Friday evening until Monday evening, we were without power.  I have never gone more than a day without power so it was a new thing for me.  Sleeping was downright terrible.  It was so muggy in the house.  We had a cooler and some waters so we were fine in that area.  Then, on Sunday afternoon, we went into Columbus to get a generator.  We had called Lowes and Home Depots all the way up to Cleveland and as far as Morgantown, WV to find one.  Finally, someone told us the East Columbus Lowes got a shipment in.  So, we ran up there only to get caught in another awful storm when we got there.  But, we survived everything.

Through all of it we had some good times though.  When the storm had just finished its crazy spell but wasn't finished raining, I mentioned to Kim that when the storm passes over we should go look at stuff.  Immediately, we both started in on, "Til the storm passes over, til the thunder sounds no more, til the clouds roll forever from the skyyyyyyy..."  Then, we busted out laughing at ourselves.  When we went to Columbus, we took the pups with us and that was an experience in itself.  When we got caught in the storm in Columbus, we saw a tent, yes, a camping tent (fully assembled) fly out in the road in front of us.  It kind of reminded me of the movie Twister when they were between the two tornadoes on the bridge.  The woman was on the phone when cows were flying by and she said, "I'm gonna have to let you go--we got cows."  All in all, it was horrible without power, but we had fun times every now and then.  Next time we'll be prepared with our generator though!

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