Power

Over the last couple days the good folks of Ridgecrest have been learning how to live without power. Power in the form of electricity. On Friday for the third time this week we lost power. Not just our house, not just a part of the city. I'm talking the entire city was dark.

When I arrived at work friday morning there is was no power in our building. There had been power at our house when I left so I was a little surprised. Since the vault I work in has a building wide UPS we were able to work during the morning. But when I ran home at lunch the power went out while I was here. I called my dear wife at work and found out that they entire base was dark.

The power stayed off until almost 7 PM friday night. The father of one of my daughter's best friends works for the electric company. According to his wife the problems started early in the week when a raven got into the substation and caused the intial power outages. The outages and subsequent repair caused other problems which caused the other occasional outages during the week. Then on friday there was a fire at the substation.

This required the local electric company to get a major part from out of town. All things considered it was an interesting week. I got to test the battery duration on my laptop. My children got to entertain themselves with nonelectric toys. Friday afternoon when we picked the kids up from school we went back to our dark house. Since it was close to 100 degrees outside we rushed into the house in order to keep the hot air out. The house was warming up but the floor was still cool. Within an hour the whole family was napping on the floor. Afterwards we all agreed that an afternoon nap was just what we all needed.

I would like to point out that the unsung heros in all this were the employees of the electric company. My daughter's friend's Mom was telling me that when the toruble started her husband worked 32 hours straight out in the almost 100 degree temperatures. Then he was sent home to a house without air conditioning to rest for 8 hours and then had to go back out to work in the 100 degree outdoors. You have to admire job dedication like that. Of course I've met the man and I can't see him behaving any differently. He is one of millions of average guys in this country who do the hard difficult jobs so the rest of us can live a comfortable life. All too often when we talk about heros we mention police officers, firemen, and our military. But we forget the guys who work in uncomfortable conditions until the job is done, because the job needs to be done.