Well, it's been a crazy few days here in icy North Carolina, where a very powerful ice storm pretty much shut everything down. Really it's less fun than a hurricane, because at least then you can sit outside in your shorts and bitch about the weather. In this kind of mess, you just sit inside, get cold, and wish like hell the power crews would get to your neck of the woods.
Fortunately for Julio, they arrived yesterday, and life is returning to normal. There's still a lot of stuff to clean up - branches are all over the place wherever you go around here - but it's warm and happy again.
In Durham, though, the mess is dramatically worse. Telephone poles snapped all over the place, and power lines are on the ground, thick as spaghetti. Durham is looking at several more days for complete recovery.
One of the things that's been discussed a lot since 9/11 is heroism, a useful concept which has been revived after a period of social disdain. Well, to the list you can add the guys who go out and fix the power lines. CP&L crews are out, of course, as are Duke Power crews, but in times like this, utilities from all over the country send crews, and it's such a beautiful feeling to see the trucks from various utilities, knowing that help is here, and things are slowly getting back to normal. It's a great tribute to American culture that we just pull together and get things done when the chips are down.
After this experience, our only suggestion to all of you is to make some preparations for an eventual disaster - batteries, foods that can be stored, full tanks of gas if you know trouble is coming (trust us on this one). Whatever it may be, your life will be happier if you are prepared for significant disruption. A generator, for instance, is a bit of an expense upfront, but you'll never regret it.