Thursday 2-18 Power is Back

I'm so excited

We're so excited. We were without power from Sunday at 11:30 pm until today (Thursday) at 5:00 pm, 90 hours, or 3 days and 18 hours, but who's counting. About 4:30 Larry saw a couple of Oncor (electrical company) trucks driving through the neighborhood and shortly afterwards at 5:00 our power was turned back on. They didn't turn on everyone, our neighbor Chris behind us on Marigold still doesn't have power. Larry told him he could string an extension cord to get power to his home. He said that they were OK and Oncor had told them they would have power tomorrow. They didn't want to overload the power grid. We unloaded the stuff we had put in the Minnie back into the house. Larry waited a little while until he was sure the power was going to stay on before he turned off the generator.

 

Icy Roads

We started day four with no power, who knows when we'll get the power back. The generator in the Minnie got us through another night but it won't last forever. This morning we loaded our gas containers, one holds 1 gallon and the other holds 1.5 gallons and headed towards the Liberty Mart to get gas. We didn't get too far when the car started to slide Larry slowly got the car turned around and we headed back to the house.

 

Neighbors stick at home

Ice hanging from the Minnie

After lunch we went into the garage to get fuel. The easiest vehicle was the motorcycle but it only had a gallon of gasoline, that will give us two hours of power. The car and truck would be very difficult but we were able to get fuel from the boat. We ended up getting a total of 8 gallons which would get us another 16 hours. We were hopeful that would last until the power came on. If not we could still keep a little warmth using our Wave3 propane heater.

In the morning a sheriff car came by and Larry flagged him down. The guy said that the main road, Adams was just as badly iced as our road. He said he was driving around picking up people that call and request to go to warming centers. 

After some of the ice started to thaw people started moving around, all wheel drive vehicles could slowly get around but the two-wheel drive not that well. One guy slid into the ditch and people had to help push him back on the road. 

Larry got on a site called NextDoor, people said don't try to drive with a vehicle that didn't have four-wheel drive. If you needed to go anywhere give them a call and they would come and get you. Other people said if you have kids and you needed firewood they had extra wood they could have.

I did my Daily Challenges and the Event: Pyramid Mini of 5 games. It took me 13 minutes and 59 seconds, which put me in 13th place in my group. Then I played some Jewel games and Mahjong games. I also did some Sudoku. 

Once the power was on the heater was running constantly trying to get the house back to temperature. It was 53 degrees inside and I would think since everything including the slab was cold it will take quite awhile for everything to normalize. We spent the evening watching YouTube videos. Then I continued watching the second season of Law & Order UK. I ended up doing 26,000 steps, which put me in second place in my group.