I’m sitting here writing this powering my Imac computer by gasoline powered Onan Electrical generator with a 100 foot extension cord from my motor home so I’m writing this on Word and will transfer it later. Mostly I just got smart finally from power outages in past years when I had the motor home but didn’t want to annoy neighbors. This year most neighbors have generators too. In this power outage it not only knocked out my area in which power lines often go down in heavy wind storms when tall pine trees fall on them but it also knocked out power to most surrounding coastal towns as well. So when we thought about renting a hotel room none had power within about 25 miles of us. So needless to say, this has been a very unusual storm especially this early in the year in October. But then again, this IS a full El Nino year and in 1995 during a big El Nino storm the flooding river picked up a football field sized cement bridge on highway 1 and transported it out into the ocean a mile away. That’s not something people who live in that area will soon forget.
The power went out first about 6:30 am which is about 24 hours ago because I’m writing this at about 8:10 am the next day, Wednesday October 14, 2009. It came back on within a few hours or so after it first went off only to stay dark for almost 24 hours now. Since my TV cable is out I probably should go buy a newspaper or listen to news radio on a battery powered radio. I asked my wife if she wanted to go to a movie but she said she thought the power was still off to the Mall where the movie theater is. Being without electrical power doesn’t bother me as much as it would most people simply because I chose several times for months at a time to live completely off the grid 10 miles from the nearest small town and over a block walking or a mile driving to the nearest neighbor. So being without electricity as long as it doesn’t interfere too much with what I’m trying to accomplish is okay by me. It also usually makes me think of getting back up batteries and solar cells so we always have back up power. However, some years we never lose power at all so I find I can’t justify the expense unless we would use mobile solar cells and batteries year around. We live in an affluent area which doesn’t as of yet allow permanent solar cells on roofs which I’m finding is quite a common thing even in California where I live.
note: 3:35 pm Wednesday the power finally came on. I think I'll use the generator trick every 4 hours for one hour from 8 AM to 9 PM in the future when power goes out in this area because of severe rain and wind storms here along the Northern California coast. The generator saved us about 400 to 500 dollars in food that didn't spoil this time in the refrigerator and freezer. So as you can see one or two power outages can pay for a small gasoline powered generator so you don't lose all the food in your refrigerator. To say nothing of having to spend the time and money to go out and replace it all. Our neighbors said their refrigerator was smelling bad and they were going to have to throw out most all their food. We are grateful for this new generator idea because we don't leave the generator on long enough to annoy the neighbors but it still allows us to keep our refrigerator and freezer working, charge cell phone batteries and run our computers even though the internet was down all over the area as well for about 36 or more hours unless you had a blackberry or something like it or had an unlimited texting service on your phone like I use.
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