Powerless

As previously mentioned, I had planned on taking 5 days in a row off to get some things done, get some riding in, take care of a few things around the house, spend at least one night camping out with the dogs, cat and horses, and like that. I knew it was going to be hot, so I had planned on other things as well, household chores, inside work, getting my nails done. Catching up with laundry. The best laid plans can go out the window when other things happen. Friday night a derecho hit the East Coast. I had never heard this term before, having never experienced one. Apparently a derecho happens in other parts of the country, it can't go over the Blue Ridge intact. Until Friday night. Derecho is a Spanish word that means "straight." It is in reference to the storm's powerful straight-line winds. Derechos typically form along the top of a hot air mass and can move an average of 70 miles per hour. That wind speed is normally associated with a Category 1 hurricane. The weather-dude had mentioned it on the 6 o'clock news, wind speeds around 60 mph, arriving between 9 and 1:00 a.m. It did start sprinkling around 9:00 p.m., so he was right about that. I did not really comprehend the rest of the scenario. We got no power! We live in an all-electric house. We do have a Honda 2000 generator. I highly recommend everyone get one. This generator will run, flat out, for 8 hours using one gallon of gas. We tank up before it runs out. It is a work horse, we got this unit before Y2K and have been so happy with it. We take it camping. We also had swapped out the A/C unit the Living Quarters Trailer came with with a smaller A/C unit so this generator could power it. This generator is extremely quiet. You can run it while watching TV right next to it. So quiet. Our well pump is 240 volts and the generator can run 120 volts. This caused a little acrobatics with running this and that, but we could fill the buckets up before it idled down on over-heat. We had to frequently change out water because it is so bloody hot, the water is cooking in the buckets. We used our trailer to take showers, everything in there runs on 12-volts. The generator easily powered our house refrigerator and a small window A/C unit we have.