Saturday, January 23, 2010

SkyWatch Friday- Electricity is Wonderful!

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This photo was taken just this morning. They said no more storms until Monday but it's been drizzly all morning and obviously this is a storm coming in. There are creeks and ponds where there never was before. For a dry and arid climate, the ponds, streams, creeks and waterfalls are cool to see.

We take electricity for granted. It's always there. Except when it's not.

We were out of electricity for four days!

Four days of a cold house (it snowed Thursday night), no hot water so no shower, no cooking meals uh, no cooking at all. And the worry of losing all the food in the refrigerator and freezer. It was quite frankly, unbearable and I handled it badly. I whined a lot!

A pole went down in high winds from days and days of storms coming through central California and up into the Sierra foothills. The pole was in an area with no roads and apparently it was in an area that was unobtainable until the storms quit. Which they didn't but I guess yesterday there was enough of a break that PG&E was able to access the area via helicopter and make the repair. I heard (not on the news because no TV) from others that there were 16,000 people out of electricity.

My dad came up yesterday and got a propane heater going so I finally had heat and a generator that worked for a few hours gave me a hot shower and a chance for the refrigerator and freezer to cool down.

I like to camp and we used to really rough it when we camped but it was always in good weather and we went prepared. This was not like camping because I was totally unprepared to be without lights, heat, hot water and any way of cooking. I couldn't even get the BBQ to work.

I was so relieved to have electricity this morning. I had my first cup of coffee since Thursday, started a meal in the crock-pot and started a load of clothes in the washing machine.

I appreciate electricity now. It's good to have and totally miserable when you don't.

1 comment:

Judy said...

So glad you are back in the land of the powered! Ten or 15 years ago, we had the great Ice Storm, and there were people with no electricity of a couple of weeks! I am so thankful we only lost power for 4 hours! Hundreds of cattle died because there was no water for them. Funny what you remember.