After the storm

Things that need electricity to work: Traffic signals, cell-phone towers, gas pumps, water pumps, non-line-driven phones, oil furnaces, grocery store scanners, ATMs.

Two solid days without power for some folks here. Me, I am a member of the new aristocracy -- People With Power. A mile south of me, it is still dark. The funny thing is if you go even further, to the lakeside homes of millionaires, they are dark too (unless they are really really rich and have their own generator stations like B*ll G*tes). Everywhere stores have electricity they are packed with refugees from the dark areas. Gas stations have lines.

Speaking of lines, one of the little-known functions of power lines apparently is to hold up fallen trees that would otherwise block the road. I went out to one of the more outlying areas this morning and was quite perturbed to see THREE rather large--and mostly horizontal--trees being held up by electrical lines. Not to worry, there's no danger of electrocution since the main feeder lines are down too. I would have taken a picture to share but there were enough hazards on the road without adding me to them. Yeah, they've been like that for two days. They probably will stay that way for a while longer, since further up this impromptu system didn't work so well--the power poles snapped. They won't be doing anything until they can get replacement poles in place.

I got off lucky, just have a lot of branches and about a billion 6" pinecones all over the yard. Just so you know, they sound real interesting when they hit your house at 60 mph.