Tad's Life

We’ve read about the power problem in Queens, with thousands of homes without power for many days now. We are in complete sympathy. Our power company has granted us many opportunities to share that experience lately. We have been without power almost daily for a week or so. It has not been unusual to have the power off from 9 in the morning until 4 in the afternoon. Yesterday that was the case. And then last night, around 10:30, as we prepared to pack up our 15 visitors to take them to the airport, we found ourselves in total darkness. Well, that’s not quite right. The airport nearby gives off quite a glow. And the lighthouse has emergency generators.

Well, for that matter, so do we! We have a little 5000 Watt (that’s 5 KVA to you technical types) gasoline generator. It’s quite noisy, but it does the trick for powering the offices so we can work on our computers and be productive. It’s not good enough to refrigerators and all the rest, so we only power up the one circuit. We’re so used to using it over the last few months, though, that it has a permanent home on the property and a fairly convenient hook up. We’ve put it back by the banana plants to isolate the sound and there is a long electrical cable running back to our electrical supply closet semi-permanently! I have an electrical outlet on the electrical board that doubles as a hook-up when the power is out.

The funniest outage was last Thursday evening. We have been so frustrated that we’ve gotten serious again about getting an automatic generator large enough to power the whole facility. Hervé contacted his good friend and mine, Kevin, an electrical systems guy. He and Hervé stopped by that night around 8 and we sat at the kitchen table eating some pizza (Jane’s home-made) and talking about how big a unit we would need and what options we had and all that. And, of course, suddenly we were in total darkness!

Do you have candles at your house? And candle holders to allow you to wander around with them? Do you know right where to find matches so you can get your fingers on them in the dark? We do!

// posted by Tad @ 3:39 PM