Like a good neighbor...

I can still remember this day six years ago. @mrsbozz called me at work and said "a tree just fell on the deck". She started sending me photos and telling me about how our dog Jovi had just been out on the deck before a massive storm rolled through and did the damage you see above. Thanks to some great friends and an insurance company that actually came through for once, we were able to recover, but it was still a pretty dismal day for us amidst the chaos of covid.

It seems the universe has a sense of humor since last night right around the same day that this happened, another massive storm rolled through the area. The tree is long gone, so we didn't have to worry about that, but we did lose power around 8:30 last night.

I waited for a it to see if the power was going to come back on, but when I realized it wasn't I went out to the garage to get the generator started. I moved it out into the back patio area and went through the process of starting it up. Or so I thought.

It has an electric start, but the battery for that died a long time ago and like the moron I am, I just kind of ignored it. After an hour of fighting with the generator to pull start it, I realized I had the settings wrong. Choke needs to be closed and duh, the switch needs to be in the run position. To be fair, I thought that was only if you were using the electric start, but I guess not.

See the problem is, I don't use the generator enough to remember all the steps to make it run when I do need it.

Once I finally got it running I ran power cords to our refrigerator and chest freezer and settled in for what I knew would be a long night. I wasn't too worried about our sump pump because shortly after our basement flooded I had a secondary pump installed that runs off the water pressure from our sprinkler system line. Once I verified that was working correctly, I was a little more at ease.

It was about 10:30 at night when I got a text from our neighbor next door. He asked how we were doing and then proceeded to talk about how he never got around to buying a generator and that he was hand bailing water from his sump to keep it from flooding.

I knew what he wanted, so I talked to him a bit more and then I hesitantly offered for him to run a line to our generator to keep his sump running through the night. Ten hours later he seems to still be dry and he has assured me he is going to go out and buy his own generator today. Him and everyone else in the area that doesn't already have one I expect...

It's now 8 AM the next morning. Our generator has been running all night and it appears to have only used about a half tank of gas. I still need to get more so I have some on hand. The power company told us that they don't expect power to be restored until tomorrow morning, but I have a feeling they will have it on before then. Under promise and over deliver right?

We are supposed to leave on a camping trip today, but I can't really see us being able to go if things are still in this state.

We got a message from our power company a while ago about how they are starting to bury lines underground to help keep the grid more consistent, but I know given our area, we are very low on that priority list. It sure would be nice though when stuff like this happens...