Monday, August 29, 2022

Power Outages

I was in Goshen today when Cameron called to tell me that he thought that the tennis match against Elkhart would be cancelled tonight.  There was a storm on the way and the radar looked ominous.  I had heard the same thing, but thought that it would come through later in the evening.  Since I was already in Goshen, I decided to stay and run to Kohl's to return an item.  That way if the storm did pass through quickly I wouldn't have to drive back from Syracuse.

It wasn't even 3:30 when I realized from the return line at Kohl's that Cameron was 100% correct.  There was a storm on the way and the black skies looked pretty intense.  I hurried through the return line, postponed my trip to Menards and started for home.  I called Cameron several times on the way to tell him to head home as well, but he didn't answer.  I was getting a little nervous on county road 17 as the winds had really picked up.  By the time I got to Kercher's Road, Cameron had returned my call and said he was on his way to Syracuse.  I was relieved to hear that.  

As I started down county road 29 I was worried about all of the trees.  The storm that we had had in June had brought down multiple trees along that path and I definitely didn't want one to fall on Cameron or I while we were driving.  About a mile or two down the road, I realized that the storm had pretty much peaked.  It hadn't rained much and the winds were manageable.  I was even bummed that the weather had postponed the match as it really wasn't that bad and only last fifteen minutes or so.

I got home just as Cameron did.  I tried to open the garage door and nothing happened.  At first I didn't think much about it, but soon I realized that the power was out.  I was shocked as I didn't think it was that bad out.  I then became super mad as I HATE being without power.  I called my mom to see if they had electricity, but they didn't either.  Thus, Cameron and I hung out at home for the rest of the afternoon.  He did homework and I read my book.  

Doug called after 5 to say that he was on his way home.  I was so engrossed in my book that I had actually forgotten that the power was out.  His call reminded me, however, that it had been almost an hour without electricity.  Of course, I then crabbed about it some more.  The worst part for us was that the water didn't run when the power was out as the pump needed electricity to run.  Doug listened to me for awhile and then reminded me that we needed to drop the Pilot off at Jake's Auto in Milford.  I headed out the door soon afterward to meet him.  

On the way there I realized that no one had power anywhere around us including the town of Milford.  I was really worried then as I knew that it would be a bigger job than normal to restore it to so many people.  Once we got home, Doug drove around town to see if anything was open to get dinner.  He walked in to let us know that everywhere was out when all of a sudden the power popped back on.  I was extremely thankful.  Doug started on dinner and I called my parents to see if they wanted to play "Oh Hell" tonight.  They were still without power and glad for a break from the dark.

I talked to my parents before we went to bed tonight at 10:30.  It had been six hours and their electricity was still out.  None of us were really that shocked.  It always seemed to work that way.  NIPSCO took forever to restore power and our carrier, Kosciusko REMC, solved the problem relatively quickly.  Thankfully, they did still have water as their pipes were connected to the city.  Even with that, it was still very frustrating and I felt bad that they had to endure another summer outage.  Hopefully, it will be on by the time they wake up tomorrow morning.

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