What A Fucking Waste Of Time

Alright, enough already! I’m tired of Mother Nature having her way with us… and she’s not even giving us a reach around when she fucks us. First it’s winds, record rain, and snow in November. Now more wind, record wind, in December.

We knew there was a big wind storm coming; all the TV weather weenies were besides themselves about it for several days before, carrying on like a hyperactive retard about the storm bearing down on us. On Thursday night, the front of the storm hit Seattle around 4pm, and dumped — just dumped — an assload of rain. It had been raining most of the day, but it really started pouring around 4. We left the office around 5pm, and the rain was still coming down in biblical proportions. Rain was running downhill, turning Seattle’s streets into grade III whitewater rivers, and collecting into huge standing puddles of traffic-slowing goodness. Rich Eisen of the NFL Network even joked that we had started collecting pairs of animals here in the Pacific Northwest. Interstate 5 was pretty much wide open, making the commute easy… until we hit the usual snag in the colon of traffic known as Everett. South of Everett, a torrent of rainwater had pushed mud and gravel into the freeway. Some rocks were as large as baseballs, which started the slowdown, and it was slow all the way to the Highway 2 offramp. We listened to the Seahawks game for the rest of the trip home.

The wind had already started before we left Seattle. It was pretty strong when we got back to Whidbey Island, but we still had power. I was text messaging one of my carpool members about the game. The ‘Hawks were playing so poorly, I gave up on watching the game and started watching a recorded episode of Jeopardy! on my TiVo. Without watching the end of the game, another text message told me the final score of 24-14.

But we’re not talking about the Seahawks… we’re talking about the weather. I know, both were terrible… But this blog entry is about the blowing of wind, not the Seahawks blowing. The wind was whipping outside, but it wasn’t too bad. The power flickered a couple times, but stayed on. I watched the weather at 10pm and went to bed. Four in the morning comes way too early.

At 1:51am, a tree branch hit the roof and woke me up as it tumbled down the roof to the lawn. While my sleepy brain processed the noise, the power went out. Crap. Then as quickly as it went out, it came back on. I remember thinking I was glad I asked Tina to shut down the computers. Ten seconds later, the power went out again, and stayed out. I went back to sleep.

Tina’s travel alarm went off at 4:00am. Responsible adults plan ahead and prepare for possible power outages. We set alarm clocks that don’t require electricity so we can make it to work on time, thus avoiding the need to come up with lame-ass excuses for being four hours late…

Anyway, at 4:00am, the power was still out. I grabbed my 4D Maglite and dragged my groggy ass to the bathroom. I used a dirty towel and propped up the flashlight so its bright beam was aimed over the shower head. Perfect. The water in the tank was still hot, so I was able to take a shower and get ready for work like it was any other normal day.

By 4:30am, I was dressed and ready to go. I text messaged our carpool driver the following: “Power out here, how about there? I still had hot water. Im ready to go if youre going.” The reply was, “I good.” “I good?” What in the oven-baked fuck? While I twisted my drunken manager decoder ring in the pre-dawn darkness, another message came in. “B here ¿ 5:15” was still a little cryptic, but I knew what he meant.

I left at 5:05am, and headed towards his house. The wind had blown a shitload of pine braches everywhere. The highway had pine branches on the shoulders, but Swantown Road was carpeted in pine. It reminded me of my parents’ house where I grew up, which had the gaudiest wall-to-wall green shag carpet. The late seventies and earlier eighties lacked any style, didn’t they?

I turned onto Heller Road, but before I reached Whidbey Avenue, the road was barricaded. I couldn’t see the reason why, but followed the “Detour” sign. I use the sigular form, because in typical Oak Harbor fashion, there were no further detour signs, so I was somewhat lost in some neighborhood in the darkness. No street lights, no house lights… just my headlights to guide me to familiar territory.

I made it back to Heller — still before the barricade — and said “fuck it!” I headed towards town and would take a round-about path to my destination. I reached for my cell phone to call about running late due to detours, but I left my phone at home for Tina. Since there was no power, there was no Internet, and without Internet there was no VoIP phone.

After driving faster than 60 mph on back roads, I got to my manager’s house at 5:23am; 8 minutes late. I parked my truck, hopped into his car, and we started heading north to Deception Pass. The highway was cluttered with pine branches, and there were remnants of trees that had fallen into the highway about every 50 yards or so. By the time we reached Cornet Bay Road, the Washington State Patrol had barricaded the highway and turned us around. They told us Deception Pass was closed until daybreak at the earliest due to hundreds of trees that had blown down across the higway. With no bridge access, and no ferries running in the rough seas, we weren’t leaving the Island. We called the Seattle office, and were told to go to the old Oak Harbor office (which we still have open for repair, retail, and drop payments) at 8:00am and work from there. I went back home and crawled back into bed. It was still dark and cold — inside and out.

When I got to the Oak Harbor office, it was warm and lit up nicely. The office has a natural gas-powered standby electrical generator, and while the rest of the Island was dark, we had lights, heat, and Internet access. Rumor had it, Puget Sound Energy wasn’t going to have power restored to the Island for seven to ten day. Excellent. That wasn’t good news for Tina who was at home in the cold, trying to keep a small flock of birds alive.

I checked the local news web sites, and they had a lot of photos of the damage. There was an estimated one million homes and businesses without power! What are we, Amish? Goddamn! PSE alone had over 700,000 customers in the dark. Wind speeds were still quite high outside, but nowhere near what they were at the peak of the storm. Speeds at the Hood Canal Bridge reached 74 miles per hour. That’s hurricane speed, boys and girls! Yeah, okay, a category 1 hurricane has 74 mph sustained winds, and these speed were gusts, but damn! Ocean Shores on the coast reached 73 mph, and Tacoma, Sea-Tac Airport, and home sweet Oak Harbor each hit 69 mph. The strongest gusts were clocked at 113 mph at Chinook Pass in the Cascade Mountains. I like me a good blowjob, but this shit’s ridiculous.

At lunch, I went out and took some photos around town. I couldn’t find a lot of wide-spread damage, but I did find some. Hell, the fence in my backyard even took a hit. Here’s a link to the entire gallery of wind storm pictures I shot with a borrowed camera.

About 3:00pm, I went to Home Depot. They had generated power and were open for purchasing emergency supplies only. I was looking for some batteries (for the radio and flashlights), and possibly a safe heat source I could use indoors that wouldn’t give off fumes. The respitory systems of parrots are sensitive as hell when it comes to odors and fumes. A kerosene heater would smell slightly to humans, but kill a bird in minutes, just like over-heated Teflon. There were no safe heaters at Home Depot, so I headed to Marketplace (a grocery store) which was also on generated power. I picked up some milk, cereal, lunchmeat, bread, peanut butter, jelly, chips, and Pepsi; all things we could eat without the need to cook it. The great outdoors (namely the front porch) acted as our refrigerator, since the outside temperature was close to freezing.

I got back to work by 4, finished up a ticket I was handed earlier, and was sent home by 4:45pm. I drove home, being careful at the traffic lights that were obviously not working. I was shocked by the number of cars that simply blew through dark traffic lights as if they didn’t exist. When the traffic light isn’t working, the intersection should be treated as a four-way stop, you fucking artards.

I got home safely, and unloaded the truck. I installed batteries in a couple of flashlights, and Tina and I “enjoyed” a dinner of bologna sandwiches with Lay's potato chips and Pepsi.

I was playing wth my cell phone when it rang. I answered, but no one was there. Caller ID said it was my manager. I tried to call back, but since we were 15 hours into this power outage, Cingular‘s local towers must have quit working. My phone was reading “Emergency Only” or “No Service”, and only occasionally reading one bar of signal. Raising the bar, my freezing ass.

I hopped into my truck again, and drove around trying to find a signal to call back. I ended up at one of the highest points in town — under the radio tower at the police station, where I was getting 3 bars. When I called my manager back, he told me he dialed the wrong number. Excellent. I told him I was listening to KOMO-AM 1000, and they interviewed a PSE employee who said that “crews were currently working on restoring Bellevue, Olympia, and Whidbey Island by the end of the day.”

After that call, I received a call from Tina’s sister-in-law, Amy. She was calling to see how we were doing, since she saw on the central Oregon news that the Puget Sound region was pimp smacked by a wind storm. I assured her we had enough food for several days, and were doing okay, with the exception of Felix, a lovebird, who died because he couldn’t handle the drop in temperature. Poor little feller, he was just a bird.

When I got home, we listened to the radio while staying warm under blankets. I was dozing in and out of sleep. Midnight came and went, and I half-ass-bitched about that lying snatch at PSE who said they were working hard to get Bellevue, Olympia, and Whidbey Island restored by the end of the day.

Around 12:30am, I had to pee. I grabbed the Maglite again and headed to the toilet. In the beam of light, I could see my breath! Brrrr! The temperature in the bedroom was 57°F according to my alarm clock thermometer, and the living room and bathroom were probably five to seven degrees colder. Under the blankets, I was nice and warm… standing over the bowl while relieving myself, I was shivering like a scared chihuahua with the DTs. I had to clean up the seat before heading back to bed, or face the wrath of Tina.

It was 3:51am when I was awaken again. I heard the heater kick on, and the AV receiver do it’s normal clicking when power was restored — exactly 26 hours to the minute after it went out. First thing I did was turn the television on. But all that I could find on was Billy Mays pushing some stupid picture hanging hook and some limey motherfucker trying to sell me a buttplug-shaped mini food processor that could make dips and spreads in six seconds. Jerry Springer‘s How to be a Hillbilly self-help show and similar middle-of-the-night television bullshit was in full swing. I clicked the TV off and went back to sleep, never more thankful to have heat once again.