An Interesting Weekend
When we left the house Saturday night we knew high wind warnings had been issued, but they'd expired before we left and though we saw the storm clouds we didn't think anything of it. Then we hit an open area on the highway and it quickly became clear that the weather wasn't listening. Still, other than the unending dance lines of tumbling tumbleweed, the dust flying so thick and heavy it was like night had fallen early, the signs folded back on themselves, and one odd little explosion in the middle distance, our drive was uneventful. Upon arrival at the studio we found the locks changed. Bad news was that the operations director was laid off unexpectedly Friday and when they changed the locks no one thought to get us a key (sorry 'bout the dead air; we were there and lookin' forward to chattin' with ya but thought it best not to break in :D). Good news was that apparently at least some of our state's commissioners enjoy and call the show. *That*, affording an opportunity for *anyone* to state their case and be heard by those who might not otherwise have the time to listen (how often does a guy who dropped out in eighth grade get an audience with policy-makers?), is the point of public access for us.
Leaving the studio we started seeing emergency vehicles in full siren going every which way. Dude chuckled that he hoped he hadn't set off the alarms and we wondered to one another what might be up, but it would be some time before we'd learn the full scope of the issue. The wind was still whipping as we did our grocery shopping and went home, but still we were happily oblivious to what was happening in the wider world. We did surmise aloud that we might end up without power (which for us would also mean without water if the creek weren't so clean at this end) but things looked promising on the drive up our road. Lights were on and people were going about their business, and we didn't hear any generators running so all seemed right with the world.
When we got here our power was indeed out, not surprising and not the end of the world. We've gone up to twenty-one hours without power here, but that was after a winter storm when crews had a horrible time getting to all the downed lines. Surely this couldn't be worse; the weather's great, roads are fine, no problem, right? We grabbed the flashlights and the Dudes brought in groceries while I called Idaho Power to report our outage. For the first time ever, the first several times I dialed I got a busy signal, and I started to get a sense while I waited on hold for half an hour that maybe this was bigger than we knew. While I was waiting and just after the Dudes made their last trip from the car, we heard the ominous sounds of cracking and crashing that mean somewhere nearby a very big tree is falling. When it hit the ground (we could feel it shake) but not the house we breathed a sigh of relief and the Dudes went to see what they could see. They were back inside by the time the poor lady who mans the phones weekend nights answered, so we were able to tell her that a tree had fallen on the line across the road from us but that our power had already been out and she put us on her (by that time already very long) list. We got some shots of the line where it was hung up (fortunately, as it kept it up off the road far enough for traffic to get through) over a nub where a limb had been removed from one of our trees, lit some candles, and enjoyed the quiet a while before going to bed. Despite the fact that when I called in for an update a couple hours after my first report I learned that IP had 40,000 customers out of power from Mountain Home to Placerville, we were confident that light and water would be restored in short order.
When I woke up just before 6AM and the power still wasn't on I called for another update. At that point they were down to 18,000 customers out and the storm was over. There was some lightning and almost no rain associated with the system and with our wet spring the area has an awful lot of now-dry brush just waiting to burn, so fires seemed likely and we felt fortunate not to be dealing with that. I went out to get a look at things as the light came up and other than a couple big branches and the neighbors' tree being down all was essentially well so I went back to sleep for a couple hours and hoped a crew could get to us with some haste. A friend called around 9:30; they had power on the other side of the highway but she'd just talked to a friend from up our way who was also out and wondered if it was affecting us, too. IP's message at that time said there were still 10,000 outages, so they were making good progress and we... well, we kept waiting. :) A neighbor called to see if we had any news she didn't. (I didn't.) I used up all the space on my still camera and Dude thought about startin' up the generator to run our computers. (The refrigerator and boost pump would be more practical but we need an electrician to get it set up properly to run things that draw that kind of power.) We decided against the generator and another friend called to say she might be over later. A new update from IP informed me that they were dealing with several transformers and poles on fire and back up to 11,500 outages.
The next time I tried to call for an update the phone line was finally dead. I settled in on the couch and drifted off until Kaylee and Keeziah showed up, and chatting with them gave us more insight as to the scope of Saturday night's storm. Kaylee told us about the devastation at the State Fair, where 70 were injured when booths and rides blew over. Thankfully none of the injuries appear to have been life-threatening according to reports I read later. Keeziah said her brother, who just started working as an EMT, went to his first DOA scene when several campers in the Grimes Creek area were caught in a microburst that downed trees, including one that fell on the man who died. We were really missing our electricity by that time - little Dude gave quite an amusing discourse at one point on what it means to be without it - but obviously there were more pressing matters for the crews at Idaho Power to deal with. After visiting a while the girls took off for grander adventures and we continued waiting.
Finally, around 6:30PM a crew showed up and got started on Robie Creek's outage. After a couple hours' repair work up and down the road they got started getting the tree off the wire across the way. The IP guy had a chainsaw that was designed for limbs and city-sized trees, woefully inadequate for cutting through pretty much anything but kindling up here. Dude tried to help but hadn't sharpened our chainsaw since last winter so they ended up disconnecting the line and pulling it through from underneath, which was pretty cool to see. Little Dude was thoroughly enjoying himself, not only because this meant we'd soon have power again but also because he found the process fascinating. They got the line, undamaged, back up where it belonged, replaced the fuse on our transformer, and we were good to go, minutes shy of twenty-four hours without electricity. Many thanks to the men and women who worked so hard, and safely, getting everyone back up and running. For us at least the whole experience meant nothing more than some minor hitches and a little inconvenience. Our thoughts and prayers are with those who suffered loss.
One thing I find interesting is this eerie feeling of disconnectedness I experience every time the power's out long enough for that last bit of juice to run out of the phone line. It makes me think of how it was back in the day when the only way to communicate over long distances was via an overland postal service of whatever sort was available in a given era, or smoke signals. Radios and telecommunications have given us increasingly greater abilities to communicate quickly, and now even instantly, and to be without information from that global network has become, for me at least, akin to a certain sense of blindness. I love nature, spend a fair amount of time out in it enjoying all it has to offer, but I also love technology. I believe the 'sixth sense', what we call intuition or ESP, is nothing more than common sense, the sense which is common to the universe and all people, places, things, and ideas within it, what we know coupled with what we feel to become our idea of what is likely to be. The more we share what each of us knows on an individual level, the more people take it in and use or discard it as they will, as it applies to them and their experience, the greater the pool of sense that is common to all. I believe that ultimately technology is not necessary to tap into that sense, but that it is useful for many in doing so. When we build the ultimate cybernetic being we'll find it's almost exactly like us. It will be better than us where it's been built and used well and less functional where it's been built and used poorly, and it will be up to us to decide whether we'll rejoice in and appreciate it's success or try to denigrate it for it's failures. I hope we choose the former, as I do not want to go to war with the robots. I think we'll lose if we try to fight them, and I think if we combine our abilities with theirs we'll all win. What if people could willingly choose life in the Matrix? Or what if it were something one could do with one's down time, occupy an avatar or robot with the mind and enjoy adventures unavailable to any human being while providing power to the grid for those living and working in the 'real' world with one's temporarily abandoned physical body? Must it be 'us or them', or can it be 'we all'?
So anyway, it was an interesting weekend, enjoyable in it's novelty but not something I hope humanity has to experience on a widespread long-term scale in order to appreciate what we've got. I hope y'all enjoyed your weekends too, or at least got through them unscathed. We missed ya, Boise, and we expect barring unforeseen circumstances to be back next week.
Love,
Peace
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