Snow Storm – Day Two

Woke up to darkness again. Shadow was with me so we just stayed in bed for a few more hours until the sun came up. When I finally got up, I put some socks on and went upstairs. My dad went for a walk around the neighborhood while I played another game of hand and foot with my mom. For breakfast they had french toast, but I was still asleep for that so I missed out.

When my dad got back he told us his story from walking around. People on other streets in our subdivision had power, so out street was cut off because of that power line I found the day before. As he continued walking, he noticed some smoke coming from a tree and also saw some flames. There was a highway patrol car nearby, followed by a firetruck. Basically nothing could be done until the power was shut off. The firemen started talking to my dad and after a bit my dad told him about the power line over by us. The fire-crew already had other places to go, but would be back to take a look at our street. Hopefully we can get the power back within the next day or so.

My parents decided to pick up the table today, so I also figured I would get ready and leave for work. After my shower, I made sure to grab my phone (needed to charge in my car) and my trusty headlamp (which I’m using right now to write this). My dad was worried that my car wouldn’t start because a few days ago I left a light on inside the car overnight and just about killed the battery. I reminded him that it started up fine yesterday when I moved it. So with headlamp and phone in hand I locked the house and headed to my car.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t going anywhere until I cleared the now-frozen snow off my windshield. I grabbed my scraper from my glove-box and got to work. About a minute into it I realized this might go faster if I can get my car warmed up and start blowing warm air through the defroster. So I got in my car and turned the key… And the car didn’t start.

I grumbled to myself as I continued to work on my windshield. I figured that once I got my car working it would be nice to have the window clear. I thought of things I could do to charge my batter. I could use my mom’s car to jump start mine, but it was facing the wrong way. I could use the electric charger, but it was probably locked in my dad’s shed. I tried to start my engine again, but no luck. I started clearing off the snow covering my trunk so that I could get the jumper cables. I thought that if I really had to, I could drive my mom’s car around the driveway to reposition it, but then I realized that my mom had already left and probably had her keys with her. By this time my hands were starting to freeze. So I stopped for a bit and walked to he shed to see if it was locked.

As I started walking up the slope I was happy to see that the shed was open. So I went back to my car to grab my headlight. I kept looking in the area where my dad had pulled it from the last time my battery died, but I couldn’t see it anywhere. Then I remembered that he put it on the front porch after we used it in case I needed it again. When I started to take the charger to my car, I was looking for the plug that was around there when I realized that we had no power, so the electric charger would do me no good. I started to think that I had to wait for my parents to get home to do anything about my car. With no phones, I couldn’t even call Togo’s to tell them what was going on.

All hope seemed lost until I remembered that we had a generator. I set the charger down and lifted the generator and proceeded to carry it over to my car. If you have never seen a generator, let me just eel you, our mid-sized generator was not light. After finally getting the charger hooked up and plugged in, I started up the generator. I let my car sit for a little then tried to start it. NOTHING!! I left the generator running and went up the driveway inspecting the now-frozen ground. After seeing that the road wasn’t slick, I went back down to test my engine again. Finally it started, after at least half and hour, my car was running. I let my engine charge my battery while I disconnected the charger and shutdown the generator. Then I put the genereator and charger back by the house, and was off to work.

I planned to continue writing until the power came back on, but I got tired of it I guess. We had power restored on Thursday around 2:30.