A Guy Will Do Anything To Post

I'm currently at 86 hours without electricity. This all started at 7:00pm on Thursday night when the storm got nasty. Friday morning I woke up to between 14 and 18 inches of snow depending on where you were on the driveway. On top of that, I had 2 trees down that fell across the road on my property and one that fell across the road on Roy's property.


I spent most of Friday (it was still snowing) running the snow blower and trying to clear a path out. The Friday I was supposed to be at Lake Pardee for the opening, by the way. It took me until 1:30pm to get a path wide enough to get the truck through. Where's Bob with the tractor, you ask? I wasn't sure Bob was home. I didn't see any lights (of course, the power was out, duh) when I made the first pass with the snow blower. He might have still been asleep since it was about 7:30am when that happened. I had to clear a path to the first tree, cut a section out of it (a 9" diameter Pine), and then clear a path to the second one (another Pine, but this one was more like 11" diameter) and cut a section out of it too. Then I could continue toward Bob's house. At the third pass, I saw Bob getting the tractor out. He went out toward the road and cleared that, then came back and finished my drive.

I had left a message for Mark (from Rich & Mark) to let me know how the opening went. He and his friend Ethan were camping out the night before and had plans to hit it early Friday before the hoard got there. I haven't heard back from him by phone, but I might have an email somewhere out there in the email stratosphere, but I don't have access to Outlook. I'll let you know if I hear something.

Now, you're wondering, if this guy doesn't have electricity, how is he posting. We have a generator, you know that. It gives us some electricity in various parts of the house. One of them not being the nerve center of Northern California Trout. I'm sitting at my wife's laptop upstairs. It looks just like to one I was hoping for, from Santa at Christmas, but didn't show up. But just having a computer will not allow posting, so I ran an extension cord from that same generator through the downstairs door (using a bag of books to keep it somewhat shut) to the plug strip that has the DSL Modem and the Wi-Fi Router plugged into it. I can now post, but still no email or any of the other things I have on the external hard drive.

Next comes the Fly Fishing show this coming Friday. Ken and I had reserved a room and were planning to hit the show on Friday and Saturday. Well, guess what. We have another storm coming in on Thursday that is supposed to be colder and wetter than what just went through. I still have 10 to 12 inches of snow on the ground. Ken, on the other hand, doesn't have a "Bob" or a snow blower or a generator. He was without power for two days this last storm. He also broke the chains on his truck and his wife got the Jeep stuck, so he wants to be close to home too. So we chatted and decided to cancel the fly show and make sure out families were safe and secure.

Since my main focus is getting power back, getting the wood box filled, and finishing the clearing of the driveway, fishing will probably be on hold for this week unless power gets back on soon. If it does, then maybe I can sneak out for a day.

Till next time, I'll be outside shoveling, carrying wood in the wheel barrel, or on the phone harassing Pacific Gas & Electric. Oh, as I was typing this, I got a electronic call from them wanting to know how my customer service experience was and if I was satisfied with their service. It wasn't a pretty picture.

Mark