It was like a plane's jet engines outside in the street. The power of it was door-ripping-off-the-hinges-strong. I once stayed on RAF (later JMF) St Mawgan, in Cornwall, UK, for a short while, and you woke up to the sound of Royal Air Force Nimrods warming their engines on the runways across the other side of the base, at about 6 am. Except this sounded a lot closer, give or take a few yards.
Earlier, we spoke to Mum and Dad who were worried in England. I reminded them that they'd not so long ago had surprise 100-mph winds that blew out all kinds of things, but people just didn't bother to give it a name. But they had weathered their own 'hurricane' and here we had our second annual Cat 1 (… and almost Cat 2 in places.)
Frank and I Facebooked and arranged that he might come up here, via the high back road exit, if things got out of hand. Lenny was AWOL, and Mustang Steve had not responded to contact. I figured he was smart enough to evacuate Long Beach, since he monitors the fishing and the surf on a daily basis and is a superb waterman with plenty of insight into what's going on on the water and with the wind.
Gordo held the step ladder as I taped the back gutter downspout back into a solid grip with its tubes, as the first raindrops fell. Taped the front East-facing downstairs windows, and went in to put the tea on.
Marg and Robby returned from Grandma Havlik's, and we ate something — what I don't remember.
At about 6 pm Gordo, with his headphones on said, "Uhhhm … it's a lame storm."
"Whaaat are you saying, nitwit?"
And within seconds of that, the lights and power went out.
"Nice karma job Gordo. … when are you going to get it?" But he does not believe in that, and seems to like to tempt fate with words, for now.
Hurricane Sandy roared and things shook a bit, and you hunkered down and hoped the house didn't blow away, or fall on you.
What are you going to do? Might as well curl up, listen to a few more radio reports.
Landfall sooner than predicted—well at least it'll be out of here sooner, right?
… And try to go to sleep, and pray all your peeps and everyone in harm's way are OK. I can;t believe I slept that well, but to be sure, the preparations and all the muscle-tensioning angst beforehand kinda tuckered one out.
I was expecting Frank to park his van up here that night, but the fact that he didn't probably meant that the waters at Manorhaven had not risen that high. All the same, it was impressive to see the east wind whipping the bulging Millpond as it flooded its banks and joined with the bay.
That was as far as we were going that Monday morning, as it was getting periously close to tree-limb busting status.
During the aftermath of the hurricane, powerless for 5 days, like many others we went back to an era of candlelight, radio and early nights.
No TV no phone, no Internet, no power, no lights, no gas/petrol, no milk, no meat, no frozen food … are just a few of the things you get if … you're lucky.
If you're unlucky you get flooded, crushed cars, trees on your house, fires, houses swept away, looting, disaster, death, so the alternative — a semi-cold/cool, vegan, powerless lifestyle was easy to deal with for a week and luxury by comparison. But we knew it would get real cold sooner or later—we were coasting on borrowed time and luck in that regard. That and the few preparations we'd made. Basically extra food, water, candles and batteries unused from Hurricane Irene preparations, plus full tanks of gas.
The internet — i missed it the least, the TV — we missed all the coverage of the election, the storm itself, the information about what was going on in the outside world. It was just cool enough — 40 - 50 degrees F at night not to be a real problem at night.
more to come...
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