In most places, they have to have some natural disaster before they get a power outage. Here in the Robson Valley, we are fortunate that we haven’t had many natural disasters, but we still get an awful lot of power outages, because the power plant is an hour away and there are so many trees between that and our house that blow down during our many wind storms. In the past three weeks our windy weather has caused three power outages.
Yesterday it was windy again, and we experienced another one. Fortunately it was a short one, lasting only about an hour or so, we were relieved that it was so short because we had chicken roasting in our electric oven.
Here is an older blog I did in 2012 telling on a power outage we experienced in November of that year:
We had seen the notice in the local paper about a planned power outage. It was to effect “Valemount, and outlying areas”. Now, Valemount is just a tiny village like McBride. It is an hour’s drive away from McBride, so after reading the notice several times, we still weren’t sure if we were in the effected area or not. Most people would not consider McBride as being an “outlying area” of Valemount. The notice wasn’t at all clear.
The outage was to start Sunday at 9:00 AM. Just to make sure, I did my blog early. It was a good thing I did, because at 9:00, our power did go out. It was supposed to last until 3:00 PM (15:00).
Unfortunately, it was pouring rain outside, so we were pretty much stuck in the house for all those hours. When I am in the house, I need some kind of mental stimulation, be that the radio, TV, computer, or book. When the power goes off, most of those items do too. That left me with reading a book, but it was so dark in the house that I pretty much had to squeeze myself close to a window to be able to read. The chair we had that was close to the big window was already occupied by my wife, who was knitting.
Luckily, for me I had downloaded some things to read on my iPad, that didn’t require WiFi and a lot of time left on it’s battery, so that pretty much saved the day for me. First, I read the Rolling Stone magazine that I had downloaded. I read the interview with Obama, and an article about what a nice guy Tom Hanks is.
Then the phone rang. I figured that it would be my mother, who generally calls on Sunday morning. I jumped up and ran over and picked up the phone that sits on the piano. It is one of those hand held radio wave phones, so it didn’t work since the power was off. I stood there momentarily, while the phone kept ringing, then I rushed up the stairs to my office, which has a regular land line-type phone to answer it.
After trading all our local news for all the news in Evansville with my mom and sister, we said goodbye and I went back to the Rolling Stone magazine on my iPad. I read an article
about one of the ‘Anonymous’ Hackers. Then I read about a new album that Neil Young had just released. It sounded as if it had a lot of really, really, long guitar songs on it.
When I had finished reading the Rolling Stone, both my wife and I were pretty bored with being in the house, and the rain had let up a bit, so we went outside and walked around the pond. The ice had disappeared from half of the pond and we noted how clear the water was. Then we walked back to the house.
What to do? what to do? I remembered that I had the book ‘1493’ on the iPad and hadn’t read much of it, so I started on the next chapter. It was all about the Colorado potato beetle and how suddenly it generically mutated, allowing it to eat potato leaves instead of a plant called buffalo bur. This mutation caused the bug to totally wipe out the potato crops as it spread across the US and then into Europe.
I also read a chapter about rubber trees, and the “Rubber Boom”. By this time it was getting close to 3:00, so we were eagerly waiting for the power to come back on. Three o clock came and went, as did, 3:30, 4:00, 4:30. Still no power.
We went outside and walked our trail . Then back home we discover we were hungry. We ended up cooking some sausages and sauerkraut on the propane barbecue outside.
The change from daylight saving times that had happened the over night, meant it started getting dark at 4:00. We had a candle-light supper.
After that, I decided to finish reading my library book, since I was getting close to the end of it. I strapped on a headlamp and started reading the exciting conclusion. When that was done, it was 6:00 (18:00) and the power was still not on. The candles flickered in our living room and Lucifer, our cat had fun pouncing on the moving shadows that they made.
I needed something else to keep my mind occupied, and I tried my pocket radio. Usually, the relay towers depend on power from McBride to rebroadcast the radio stations, but it seemed the generator in McBride had been turned on, because the CBC came onto my radio. I listened to the 6:00 news, and would have continued to listen some more to the radio, but the next show was about a French Canadian Jazz singer. I had absolutely no interest in that, so I went searching for some other stimulation.
I returned to my iPad, and plugged in my earbuds, and started listening to music I had on it, as I laid on the couch in the dark living room. I have more than 30 hours of my favorite songs on the iPad, so figured that that should keep me occupied for a while.
Fortunately, I didn’t have to listen to all 30 hours of music, because at 7:00 (19:00) the power finally came back on. Allowing our lives to finally get back to normal.
View my paintings: davidmarchant2.ca
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