Within the last couple of weeks, the local TV station had the viewers vote on the worst weather event to hit the state. They selected the ice storm of 1998. A little premature? If you haven't seen the news lately, there was a small ice storm here in New Hampsha [sic]. Only about 400,000 customers without power. Considering the human population only recently exceeded the bovine population here, that is pretty wide spread. Cliff better be working hard to get them back on line. Birches grow here like weeds. And they are about a strong. A drive down the road is a slalom course. The trees on the right bend over and block the lane. You go by and the left lane is block, then the right, then the left, etc. Every thing ice covered looked beautiful, but... We were mostly lucky. We were out only about a day and a half. All those weekends as a kid up at Kemo gave me the skills to keep the fire in the fireplace going. At least I didn't have a chimney fire this time. Unfortunately I had to dip in to my wood stack for woodturning for fuel. Our only source of power was a small generator. Small to the point of only having a gas tank large enough run an hour. And I filled it, every hour until it froze up from the cold at 3 AM. About this time I thought of Bob Piorkowski and his subsistence living in Alaska. I figure he would have been walking around here in shorts, sandals, and a windbreaker saying "What's the problem?" We did have a real generator, propane powered. Unfortunately it wasn't working. My daughter, son-in-law, and 15 month old grandson made a humanitarian trip from CT to help. I helped my son-in-law for the better part of the day in the cold wind trying to get the generator running. No luck but just as we threw in the towel and my daughter came out and said the power was back on. At this writing there are still a lot of homes without power. What makes it bad for some is that your neighbor, or a block over, may have power but you are still out. Welcome to northern New England..
Lou Z
Saturday, December 20, 2008
Notes from the land of the WEEPING BIRCHES
Within the last couple of weeks, the local TV station had the viewers vote on the worst weather event to hit the state. They selected the ice storm of 1998. A little premature? If you haven't seen the news lately, there was a small ice storm here in New Hampsha [sic]. Only about 400,000 customers without power. Considering the human population only recently exceeded the bovine population here, that is pretty wide spread. Cliff better be working hard to get them back on line. Birches grow here like weeds. And they are about a strong. A drive down the road is a slalom course. The trees on the right bend over and block the lane. You go by and the left lane is block, then the right, then the left, etc. Every thing ice covered looked beautiful, but... We were mostly lucky. We were out only about a day and a half. All those weekends as a kid up at Kemo gave me the skills to keep the fire in the fireplace going. At least I didn't have a chimney fire this time. Unfortunately I had to dip in to my wood stack for woodturning for fuel. Our only source of power was a small generator. Small to the point of only having a gas tank large enough run an hour. And I filled it, every hour until it froze up from the cold at 3 AM. About this time I thought of Bob Piorkowski and his subsistence living in Alaska. I figure he would have been walking around here in shorts, sandals, and a windbreaker saying "What's the problem?" We did have a real generator, propane powered. Unfortunately it wasn't working. My daughter, son-in-law, and 15 month old grandson made a humanitarian trip from CT to help. I helped my son-in-law for the better part of the day in the cold wind trying to get the generator running. No luck but just as we threw in the towel and my daughter came out and said the power was back on. At this writing there are still a lot of homes without power. What makes it bad for some is that your neighbor, or a block over, may have power but you are still out. Welcome to northern New England..
Lou Z
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