I'm not sure if that is the correct use of sesquicentennial but it is post 250. I find it amusing that electronic post 250 is about the power being off.
Friday at 5:13 am I woke up and looked out to the garage. The lights were out. I always forget and leave them on but now they were out. I immediately knew—“Heidi—we lost power!” This was the beginning of the ice storm of 2008 for us. Eventually we would find that ½ of NH lost power—five times as many as in the big ice storm of 1998, but first, our little bit of the tale.
At 5:13 I still didn’t know if I would have to go to work or not. After some frantic discussion and the daily search for my glasses where I ask Heidi, “Where are my glasses?” and she responds, “I don’t know, where did you leave them?” and then I eventually find them, I decided to drive down to where I had cell phone reception and check our messages.
Near the general store I saw the owner trying to pull start the generator to his store—bad sign. On the drive there (1 mile) I had driven over 3 small birch trees.[1] When I reached the hot spot I called our voice mail. First a message from Vanya, Heidi’s cousin, funny but not what I was hoping for. Second was the message I was hoping for—no school.
Back at home I saw that the house was at 56 F so I began to start the fires. The big one had coals and went quickly and the little one caught after a bit. I was worried about Amelia but for once she was sleeping in a bit.[2]
A few hours later everyone was up and the house was warm but we couldn’t contact anyone. Not knowing what to do we decided to drive to Heidi’s Mom’s house thinking that a much nicer house might have power or at least be more comfortable. But first more problems.
On the way home I had noticed that I didn’t have much gas in the tank but I had really wanted to get home. So we began our icy morning trip with the needle on empty. I figured there would be a place on relatively large Rt. 28 that would be open. First we passed the local general store. The manager had gotten the generator running and there were about 10 people waiting in line for gas. I confidently told Heidi that there would be gas at the spot on 28 just down the road. But there was not. Again, less confidently this time, I told her that there might be gas at the big traffic circle down the road.
As we drove past ice covered trees that were bent to the ground and noticed houses without lights and roads blocked with orange cones I began to worry. We reached the traffic circle and unbelievably none of the gas stations were working. “Heidi, what do we do?” “Just keep driving, it’s better to break down closer to Concord.”
There was one more chance to get gas before Concord and it too was out of power. At this point we were one mile from our friends Frank and Wendy’s house so in a spur of the moment decision we decided to head down to see if they had gas. Frank is a landscaper in the summer so I figured that he would. We headed down the dirt road to their house and had to cross/drive over several downed trees on the way to their house. Making it to their drive we pulled up to the house. “Should I honk,” I said, “No, just go up,” Heidi said.
I walked up to the door and Wendy, Frank’s wife, opened the door. She apologized for not having taken a shower but we obviously we made her laugh that off. She invited us in and told us that she would find the key for the shed. The following conversation ensued…
“Drew,” her son, “Where did Dad leave the key?”
“Umm, he left the key in the place where he left it, I know where it is.”
“Yes, but where exactly?”
“You know, in the place”
Following this mom got serious and shortly we had located the actual location of the key. I went and filled the car, we exchanged thank yous and IOU promises and we were on the road. I had added about 3 gallons to the tank and the needle rose to empty when we turned on the car—we really were running on fumes.
This entire time Heidi was awesome—very encouraging and supportive and great at calming Amelia. We drove on toward Concord and Grammie’s house. As we neared her house we noticed that the ice on the sides of the road and on the trees was getting worse. Then we ran into a spot where a huge cable was down over the road. People were out in their yards staring at it and police sirens were blaring. We turned around and decided to try another route. We drove a bit in that direction and again ran into lights and downed lines.
Eventually we realized that we couldn’t make it and we turned around and headed for home. This entire time Amelia was in the back and being relatively good. But we needed supplies—damn this is boring let’s skip ahead.
Groceries, Amelia crying, hardware store, Amelia crying, battery stop, Amelia crying—back home.
With 2 fires going we had a fun night. The quiet of a house without power is relaxing. We put Amelia to bed and played Trivial Pursuit and some cribbage. Then we watched the movie Swingers on Heidi’s computer and went to bed.
I hoped to awake to power in the morning but there still wasn’t any. We went to Concord again to pick up some more supplies and were back home by noon or so. I hadn’t wanted to buy water to wash dishes so when we got home I went down to the river and chopped through the thin ice and got a few buckets of water. I heated them in our lobster pot and was able to wash the dishes quite easily.
I then went took Amelia from Heidi so she could have a break and began to play with her in the family room. Warm house, clean dishes, happy baby and wife—this really wasn’t so bad. I could easily do this for a day or 2 more. This is the exact thought I was having as I was on my back holding Amelia and I heard a sound. I moved Amelia to the left and saw the light on behind her. The noise was the furnace coming back on. Well, I know that Heidi will be happy about that.
[1] Because of their flexibility birches are always the ones to suffer in ice storms. There are still many that are tipped over into permanent arches from the 1998 storm.
[2] Maybe she is like me and needs it to be cold to sleep—make a note to investigate this further.
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