Power Plays

The weather is out of control, our control. We just suffer along with a series of events…this time it was a significant windstorm in our region. Of course, as Murphy dictates so often, our little plot lost the plot for 2 days without power. So, toileting was a challenge since our water pump wasn’t pumping. Easy for the guys, they just go outside. But dwindling water supply coming out of all taps, cold as a witch’s you know what, and what’s worse just dribbling out if we were lucky. Of course, our major worry was that we’d lose our food in both fridges and freezers. And as the weather worsened with pouring rain and those hideous howling winds, thousands of trees met their maker, strewn across the landscape like corpses blocking the roadways.
On our trip back home after picking up our son at the airport, we had to take the much longer loop because our path was blocked as we neared our place. This shingled road of many ups and downs led to sylvan fields of green and primeval hills and dales that looked like they’d never seen a human. But just as we arrived at our door, the power went out and our phones followed 8 hours later as our nearby cell tower lost its charge too.
But hubby came to the rescue the following morning by turning on the esteemed generator so we could run our refrigerator and internet for a few hours. That was the first morning after the night of the candles as we ate our barbequed rib eye steaks, very thankful that we had a gas bottle with gas in it. They were delicious but we stumbled around afterwards in the dark, deciding to go to sleep very early and we slept fitfully to the sound of the pounding rain on the roof for 11 hours with a couple of hilarious pitstops as I couldn’t get my flashlight to stay lit.
That said, the generator was noisy and smelly and sat imperiously by the front door making such a racket that it was impossible to sit nearby twiddling our thumbs.
We waited and waited for the repair crew that was always enroute to find our fault for another day and a half, judging by the map online of our location.
Being the proactive mate in this household I ventured to call the power company for updates only to be given a web address to address the issues at hand. But it was out of my hands and firmly in theirs depending upon how many others in our fault were also out of power.
Eventually I realized the utter futility of finding us on the map and finding out our job number because we never heard from any of these crews with any positive news until I looked up and saw a light on.
Eureka!
In all, as I was told by a very nice lady representing the company, there were 21,000 faults across a huge area in North Canterbury and eventually it dawned on me that John was right from the start. He’d said that the bigger the fault numbers, the faster that fault would be fixed. The first faults were those that had many hundreds or thousands of patrons without electricity. Whereas, we in the wop wops had a few hundred at best. But there were others that had only a few households in their group and they may still be out of luck at this moment.
There will be no photos of this mess. Suffice it to say that our house looks more like an outhouse than an inhouse. But I now know that roughing it ain’t for me at this stage of my life in a screeching storm. The day after it was restored, we had rain all night and day and very cold temperatures. This is supposed to be spring, almost summer. What?