It began at about Five-Thirty PM on Monday, while I was driving back
from the grocery store with the vegetables my XYL asked me to pick up,
and an extra five gallons of gas that I had decided to add to my
reserves. The grocery store and the gas station were both almost deserted.

I had to stop at a "Detour" sign that hadn't been there a half-hour
before, where a tree was down in the road. As I turned onto the side
street, I saw an arc flash off to my right, so bright that it looked
like God's own welding rod turning the twilight into day. It burned out
after about thirty seconds, so I took the detour and proceeded down the
road: as I got up by the flashpoint, I noticed smoke coming across the
street, and I figured it was the remains of the tree that had caused the
arc, but as I drove by it, checking again and again that there were no
wires in my path, I realized that the the high-tension line was lying
across someone's lawn, burning the grass and the tar in their driveway.

I reached for the two-meter rig, but the fire truck was coming over the
hill as I did so, and I went on down the road. Less than two blocks
later, just around the corner, there was another tree down, bending
electric wires at a thirty degree angle, with two telephone poles
cracking jokes about how sparks fly when they get close. For that one, I
actually used the autopatch, and reassured the dispatcher that I was
reporting a separate incident.

I got home, and explained the reasons that the power was now off, and
went out to the shed and turned over the generator. I threw the switch,
and told the XYL that she could use the top burners on the stove, but
only two at a time, and we had spaghetti for dinner.

The only alarming event was when I heard a "tic-tic-tic-tic" sound that
made me think my roof was leaking: after inspecting the ceiling in my
wife's study, I realized that the sound was coming from her UPS unit,
switching itself into and out of backup mode with every change in the
generator's speed. I had, of course, shutdown the computers when the
wind speed picked up.

After that, I told the XYL that I would turn off the generator to save
gas as soon as the dishwasher was finished, but she persuaded me to
leave it on while she watched some show about Ernest Hemingway on PBS. I
spent the extra time writing emails, telling my telecom-digest.org
readers that the mail queue might be slow for a couple of days. After
that, I broke out the reserve "strike anywhere" matches, and put one
pack next to each of the candles that adorn our tables and bathroom sink.

Then, after placing the flashlights just-so and checking the fuel level
in the Coleman lantern, I powered down and threw the switch back to the
commercial mains, just in case the restoration took less time than I
thought it would. Our emergancy light, which comes on automatically when
power fails, was enough for my wife to sit in bed and read: everything
was back to normal when I woke up the next morning.

I had set everything up in advance, and since I had bought a 5KW genset
that would actually power most of my house, I didn't have to switch any
wires around or worrying about tripping breakers if the heat came on at
the same time as the stove. The generator cost $567.00, since it was a
closeout model and Home Depot wanted it off their inventory: that was
back in May. The 220V plug and "motor" cable had run about $70, but I
didn't mind because it meant I wouldn't have to run extension cords or
keep a window open. I was lucky to have a ten-gauge feeder already in
place, going to an old "pool" shed that's no longer needed for the pool,
but I had to sink two ground rods to keep the electrical inspector
happy, each worth another sixty bucks. The chain, padlock, and extra
alarm wires had added maybe fifty dollars more.

There's no moral to this story, except that it took a lot more work and
expense and aggravation than I had expected: it left me wondering if it
wouldn't have been easier to do without. I decided that I should just
enjoy being dry and well fed and free of worries about Carbon Monoxide:
UHT Milk on the shelf, a five pound bag of rice and cans of soup beside
it just in case, and about twenty gallons of gasoline on hand that I
will be pouring into our cars in the next few days. I was so prepared
that I /wanted/ the power to fail.

My wife noticed my sense of self-satisfaction, and commented on it, but
I reminded her that we had talked about the tradeoffs back in May: that
the generator wasn't just to make me feel good, and that this had been
an easy storm, and that the power had failed in warm weather, and that
losing the food in the freezer or trying to flush a hot-water heating
system or dealing with frozen pipes in Winter would have been a much
more severe event.

I don't think she understood my explanation. Some things, you just have
to live with.

73,

Bill, W1AC


--
Bill Horne
(Remove QRM from my address to write to me directly)