Dec 24 - just humming ...

A little after 8am the power flickered for the umpteenth time and then went off ... and on ... the Generac kicked in after a suitable 4-5 second delay.  I gave it a little time and then called the Hydro One power outage line, which reported "tens of thousands" of customers out of power and gave me the opportunity to register us as out of power as well. 

Our electricity comes to us through a submarine cable, coming from the ESS Narrows.  That feed comes from Loring along 522.  It does not continue west from that point.  At most, right now, there would be a dozen or so people affected by that line down.  Perhaps two dozen if move people are in residence at their cottages this Christmas but without snow, there's not a lot of attraction.

Sandy headed off to Sudbury to do some shopping, not returning until a little after 3pm.  She needed to get back by 3:30 so that I could go to Loring for Mass.  I followed her on SPOT while she was traveling, or not.

The temperature started off at 55F early a.m. and gradually dropped during the day to 38F when I headed to Mass.  This morning it's 32F / 0C; supposedly the high for the day. 

The wind was crazy, supposedly with gusts to 90 kph (sorry for the flip-flop between Imperial and Metric) -- that would be 55 mph.  The waves were rolling from right to left, which is never as dramatic as the waves from left to right.  We're sheltered in here from that direction. 

We (Cassie and I) took a walk over to Jason's and saw that someone had cut up the fallen spruce ?? -- wait, no, another spruce has fallen across the first.  Sure enough, a little long-dead spruce fell down across the first, breaking into four pieces as it did so -- giving some indication as to how dead and brittle that little tree was.

I got out the little electric chainsaw and cut about four feet off the pine that had fallen across our driveway.  When Ernie cut it up one side came pretty close to the roadway and I wanted to leave more space for the traffic and the fellow who clears our driveway.  The little chainsaw was slow and it took three extension cords to reach it.  I used that one because the Stihl in the house has had the gas tank emptied for the winter.  I do that with any gasoline motors that I store in the house (power washer, Stihl trimmer and chainsaw, DR trimmer).  If there had been more cutting to do, I'd have used the gas saw which would have cut that trunk in seconds, rather than a few minutes working my way around.

Cassie had a blast as usual any time we were outside.  I cleared up some old branches, letting them drift down the lake in the wind, piled up some more by the waterfront.

When I used the chainsaw I ran those extension cords from the old generator as there isn't any power up at the garage and barn during an outage.  Those breakers aren't on the generator circuits.  Later in the day, I decided to give the Generac a rest and flipped over to the old generator, checking the oil in the new.  It was full, no surprise.  The old generator is running a little rough; the carb needs cleaning no doubt.  I should do some maintenance on it.

The trip into town for Mass was an adventure.  Right after the dump, heading east, I encountered a couple of "men working" signs and then a stopped pickup truck with lights flashing.  Just ahead of that, the hydro wires cross the road overhead - well, not so much overhead any more.  That's where the line was down.  I proceeded slowly, driving under the wires on the south side of the road; on the north side they almost touched the road.  Workers had hung streamers on the lines to make them visible.

About a km further east, "road closed" signs blocked the road but I was able to drive around because there's a little bush road right there.  I hesitated -- should I go back ?  Will I be able to get back ?  Naaww ... we are very low priority for Hydro One with so few users and "tens of thousands" without power elsewhere in the province.  They won't be here within an hour and a half, I figured, nor would there be any police presence added to the scene.

My risk, of course, was that the road would be impassible on the trip back and I'd have to reverse course, drive to North Bay then Sudbury and back that way.  That's easily a four-hour or more trip.  I worried about it all through Mass and then drove at a much higher speed than usual on the way back, wanting to get to that spot before dark.

Sure enough it was still clear but as I rounded the corner towards the downed lines, a bunch of Hydro One trucks barred the way.  I drove slowly, parked behind the last one and walked up.  Workers were using chain saws to cut the downed trees.  I told some guys walking towards me that I'd come through a little more than an hour earlier and my destination was just on the other side ... and they said no problem, just watch the lines as you drive under them ... whew !!  That made my day !!

Back home, I switched to the old generator again although I fully expected that we'd have power sooner than the estimate, given that they were working on the outage already.  I guess that lines down across the road made this a more urgent situation than us simply being without power.  Sure enough, as we were eating dinner, suddenly the outside lights came on -- the Christmas lights -- and we were back in business.  I gave it a couple of minutes and then went downstairs, flipping the breaker to utility power, going outside and turning on the standby generator (Generac) and up to the shed to turn off the old generator.

The business with the old generator wasn't really necessary, just make work.  Much of life is like that.  Preventative maintenance !

Sandy had picked up shrimp and spinach so we had a Florida dinner.

Earlier in the day I had hung the inside Christmas lights, so we're now ready ... except that nothing is wrapped !  Today ...

We heard from David that he intends to come up on the 26th; Jeffrey on the 27th; Stef likely the 27th or 28th; we're thinking Christmas dinner on the 28th.  We may very well go into Sudbury tomorrow, the 26th, for some grocery shopping.  Cassie and I will make that trip as well.

Onward !