powerless ponders in the East

K30a wrote:

Am watching TV and seeing seas of people on the streets of
NYC. My goodness, what a big power outage! When you get your
power back on, any rec.ponders have a story to tell?
Stay cool...

Wow, I looked that up on CNN.com. What a mess.

Several years ago I lived in the San Joaquin valley in central California.
It was about 110 Fahrenheit when the big outage hit; I forget how many
states were affected. We had several families visiting us, many with
children, so we though we'd better go get some bottled water, ice for the
cooler, etc. We went four places before we found a place that would let us
in the door and that was a service station. We grabbed what we needed, but
the person at the cash register wouldn't let us pay because, of course, the
register didn't work.

(Normally, this is where I break into my old fogy routine about how come
kids can't make simple change in their heads, but you've probably all heard
it in some form or another)

We finally convinced them to figure it out on paper, but he couldn't quite
get it right. So we figured it out for him (including some non-whole number
for tax which blew him away) but he wasn't sure we weren't ripping him off.
We got him to believe in our integrity, but by then he couldn't make the
actual change. We offered to just pay to the next higher dollar, but he was
quite worried that when everything came back on, he wouldn't balance.

In the end, we had about 5 people, all in the same situation. We added up
all of our bills, managed to make the right amount for the clerk, accepted
close enough amongst ourselves and left with the stuff - good thing too, the
power was off for about 3 days.

Joe





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SO, We have taken utilities forgranted. We should learn to live with less.
Cook on Gas grills, Ride bikes. Store non perishable foods.
Go back 100 years.

LIVE

On Thu, 14 Aug 2003 23:53:44 -0400, Rich wrote:

SO, We have taken utilities forgranted. We should learn to live with less.
Cook on Gas grills, Ride bikes. Store non perishable foods.
Go back 100 years.

LIVE

Not in Texas! Not Me!

jammer wrote:

On Thu, 14 Aug 2003 23:53:44 -0400, Rich wrote:


SO, We have taken utilities forgranted. We should learn to live with less.
Cook on Gas grills, Ride bikes. Store non perishable foods.
Go back 100 years.

LIVE


Not in Texas! Not Me!

What part of Texas?

And where'd he find a 100-year-old gas grill?

Dale

Grid? Whats a grid? I've just got the old coop electric company. Lost it for
8 hours the other day nothing unusual just fired up the old trusty geneerator
and kids continued on with their tv show. Gee to be unprepared no way are my
fish gonna go without thier filtration.

Bob in rural Alabama

DT wrote:

jammer wrote:

On Thu, 14 Aug 2003 23:53:44 -0400, Rich wrote:


SO, We have taken utilities forgranted. We should learn to live with less.
Cook on Gas grills, Ride bikes. Store non perishable foods.
Go back 100 years.

LIVE


Not in Texas! Not Me!

What part of Texas?

And where'd he find a 100-year-old gas grill?

Dale

When we moved from northern Vermont to Raleigh a few years ago, we were
unpleasantly surprised to find that we lost power more often than we did in
our 8 years with Vermont Electric Coop. (Although there was a truly
memorable ice storm that brought down transmission towers in Quebec.)

I believe that it's going to take a long time (and much finger-pointing)
before the cause of this outage is found (and why it spread so far!), but
the most incredible thing in my mind that this outage, covering 9300 square
miles or so, happened in less than 10 seconds?????

Shaking my head and grateful for power,

Anne Lurie
Raleigh, NC





"Bob Koerber" wrote in message
...
Grid? Whats a grid? I've just got the old coop electric company. Lost
it for
8 hours the other day nothing unusual just fired up the old trusty
geneerator
and kids continued on with their tv show. Gee to be unprepared no way are
my
fish gonna go without thier filtration.

Bob in rural Alabama

On Fri, 15 Aug 2003 09:15:39 -0500, DT
wrote:

jammer wrote:

On Thu, 14 Aug 2003 23:53:44 -0400, Rich wrote:


SO, We have taken utilities forgranted. We should learn to live with less.
Cook on Gas grills, Ride bikes. Store non perishable foods.
Go back 100 years.

LIVE


Not in Texas! Not Me!

What part of Texas?

ANY PART!!!!

And where'd he find a 100-year-old gas grill?

Dale

Last year my microwave went out, you should have seen us, we didn't know
what to do. Things as simple as heating up a baby bottle or water for tea,
just to heat something up was a chore. We actually had to cook like ten
years ago. What we take for granted is right.
Rich wrote in message ...
SO, We have taken utilities forgranted. We should learn to live with less.
Cook on Gas grills, Ride bikes. Store non perishable foods.
Go back 100 years.

LIVE

Go back a hundred years? Not me! My Mom
will be 100 years old in September. She says, "you can keep
the old days - they were awful!" Mom knows best :-)

Nedra
http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Pines/4836
http://community.webshots.com/user/nedra118

"FBCS" wrote in message
...
Last year my microwave went out, you should have seen us, we didn't know
what to do. Things as simple as heating up a baby bottle or water for tea,
just to heat something up was a chore. We actually had to cook like ten
years ago. What we take for granted is right.
Rich wrote in message ...
SO, We have taken utilities forgranted. We should learn to live with
less.
Cook on Gas grills, Ride bikes. Store non perishable foods.
Go back 100 years.

LIVE

100! God bless her. The things she has witnessed in her lifetime. Awsome.
"Nedra" wrote in message
hlink.net...
Go back a hundred years? Not me! My Mom
will be 100 years old in September. She says, "you can keep
the old days - they were awful!" Mom knows best :-)

Nedra
http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Pines/4836
http://community.webshots.com/user/nedra118

"FBCS" wrote in message
...
Last year my microwave went out, you should have seen us, we didn't know
what to do. Things as simple as heating up a baby bottle or water for
tea,
just to heat something up was a chore. We actually had to cook like ten
years ago. What we take for granted is right.
Rich wrote in message ...
SO, We have taken utilities forgranted. We should learn to live with
less.
Cook on Gas grills, Ride bikes. Store non perishable foods.
Go back 100 years.

LIVE