The Storm

Damn, weather can suck! You know I have lived on the Oregon coast nearly all my life, and have seen many storms come and go. But I have never seen one take down as many trees as this one did. Even today nearly 3 weeks later, the sides of the road on both Highway 30 and Highway 26 are littered with literally hundreds if not thousands of downed trees. For a most of the day on Friday, we were an island. All highways to the coast (26, 30, 202, 101) were closed due to fallen trees.

We lost power at my house about 2pm on Thursday the 14th while Peyton and I were playing Xbox. It came and went for about an hour, then Poof, it was gone. No biggy, we have lost power before, so we played with those "manual toys" for a few hours till nap time. She woke up from her nap at 5pm and by this time I had to break out the flashlights and candles, of which most of the candles were small and the flashlight batteries were dead. Rachelle had power at her office, because Jim recently installed a natural gas generator, so we went there for dinner because they had a kitchen we could use. Went to bed that night thinking the power would be back sometime during the night. I was wrong!

It was not until Sunday evening that we finally got power back and by this time most of the rest of the county had already gotten it back a day or two sooner. Let me tell you, that an extended power outage with no heat: gas heat but furnace still needs power, no hot water: gas water heater worked but septic didn't so couldn't use that or the toilet, and no lights: other than candles, with a three year old sucks! We ended up losing all the food in the fridge and freezer, Rachelle had just bought like $150 worth of food the day before. It got damn cold too, we have a gas fireplace, but it has no fan, and only heats like 5 feet in front of it, so it didn't do much good. By Sunday we had had enough and Rachelle's parents power came on Saturday night, so we packed up and went over to their house Sunday morning.

I have to say I didn't realize how power dependent I really am. I have no hobbies that don't require power, video games, computer, music, movies, all useless. I need a new hobby. I guess the bright side is that my power was only out for 3-4 days, some people I work with just got it back around Christmas. And my roof didn't blow off during the 106 mph gusts that were recorded on here.