From Power Outages to Wine – Adventures of a Long Friday

A few years ago, we went through a period where we had regular storms resulting in power outages for days on end. The longest was five days during an ice storm. Not fun. Because of this, Dan decided we should have multiple flashlights and batteries easily accessible. And for a while, there were many flashlights all over the house in different sizes and quality, including one that could be worn around the head.

It’s been a couple of years since we lost power for an extended timeframe, and we gradually forgot about/got complacent with the flashlights. Fast forward to Halloween night. We were all a little hyper from gorging on chocolate and went to bed later than usual. I fell asleep to the sound of heavy rain, but about an hour later, a blaring noise came from my iPhone 4.

(Yes – an iPhone 4. I have an older alarm clock, which I bought as a charger for my iPhone 4 back in the day. The iTunes on it still works, and the ancient phone wakes me with music in the mornings.)

“Mdjfhreiss” I mumbled, trying to find the source of the noise. Annoyed at being woken up, I grabbed the phone and threw it on the floor to silence it, too deep into my sleep to register it was a tornado warning.

Shortly after this, I heard Dan mumbling, “This is really bad. The winds… we need to move downstairs… tornado warning.”

“What?” I was up in seconds. The winds sounded awful and I thought the window might break. “Why didn’t you wake me?”

I then noticed the power was out.

“I thought you wanted to sleep,” he said.

“Not if there’s a potential tornado coming!” I exclaimed.

We woke our grumpy children, grabbed the flashlight magnet on the fridge, and forced them to move to the basement, where Ryan proceeded to complain nonstop until the warning ended.

Then it was midnight, and I was suddenly starving. It took another hour to fall back to sleep, before which I set my current iPhone alarm, since the clock no longer worked.

When my alarm went off in what seemed like minutes later, we realized we still didn’t have power, it was pitch black, and we couldn’t find any other flashlight. After some digging, we located two – with dead batteries – and of course then could not find any replacement batteries. “I don’t understand how we were swimming in working flashlights a few years ago,” I muttered. “Where did they go?” (Of course we have iPhone flashlights, but I wanted to save the power for as long as possible.)

With a one bar cell signal, we saw on the school district’s Facebook page that school was closed because of power outages and road conditions throughout the township. Ugh. Inconvenient because I was leaving later that day for a girls’ weekend in DC. I wasn’t finished packing and had planned to do that, get gas, and go to an ATM in the hour after the kids leave for school and before I start work. And Dan had to get to work early. (Separately, Dan and Ryan were going to visit his parents in Maryland the next day and Jordan would be sleeping at Marni and Dan’s – my sister and brother-in-law’s – house.)

I texted my parents, who said we could come over whenever we wanted. We heard 2400 people were without power and I suggested the boys pack for an extra night out in case ours was not restored later.

Sharing our one working flashlight and phones as needed, we all packed and were on our way by 7:50 – Dan to work and the boys and I to Willow Grove, six miles away. I was planning to stop for gas and money first; the tank was very low. (Side note: I realize anyone who lives out of the area will not know the streets I’m describing in the following paragraphs. I tried to write it without street names and it didn’t flow well. The main point here is the amount of time it took us to get to a house 6 miles/15 minutes away!)

As I turned out of our development, I saw Susquehanna Rd was closed directly to the left. I made a right and went seven minutes out of our way – around the corner to Tennis Ave., through traffic on Norristown Rd, to Butler Pike and finally, back on Susquehanna, a block further than our original turn. We slowly crept down Susquehanna in more rush hour traffic and made it to the Wells Fargo. Turning in, I quickly breaked in front of trucks and a clean-up crew working on digging out the large branches and debris throughout the bank’s parking lot. There was nowhere to drive and the bank was obviously closed. I channeled my inner Dan, saying to Jordan, “This is where a three-point turn comes in handy.” (Dan loves to talk about his three-point turn skills.)

At this time, we realized we’d forgotten Ryan’s medicines and decided to go back home and find a gas station in the other direction. We took the scenic route to avoid the original road closure and fumbled in the dark house trying to locate the right meds and put them in baggies. Then we were back in the car. I drove to another ATM on Norristown Rd, which was also without power, but did see a gas station with a car in it across the street. As I turned in, I realized all the machines were down. Sigh. For some reason the lone car was just sitting there, perhaps willing the pump to turn on.

Without gas or money, I decided we should just go directly to my parents’ house, since they had gotten up earlier and were waiting to go out to eat. It was now 8:30.

Back on Butler Pike to Susquehanna Rd., again, Ryan said, “I feel like we just did this.” Yes, we were driving in circles. It was a real ‘Hey kids, there’s Big Ben’ moment. (Hey, kids, there’s Susquehanna Rd!)

We made it all the way down Susquehanna to Fitzwatertown Rd, but when I went to turn left, I saw the road was closed. @#$%&! I quickly veered right and went all the way back to Twining and then had a brainstorm.

“Jord, can we just cut through Burn Brae (his day camp – which is off Twining Rd.) to get to the back roads to Mom-mom and Pop-pop’s? You can direct me there?” I always get lost on those back roads.

“We can, but maybe just take Twining all the way. It’s more straightforward,” he said.

“Nah, I want to get there already and avoid more traffic. Let’s try this.” We were going on an hour of driving by this point.

I turned onto the camp road, passing a large fallen branch (which should have been a clue to turn back) and then stopped suddenly as I realized we were stuck in front of many, many huge branches. Somehow, we were boxed in and I wasn’t sure the three-point turn would do it this time without messing up the car.

“@#$%&” I shouted a bunch of other expletives, which Ryan happily repeated from the backseat, giggling. “I don’t know if we can get out of here.” I was so tired and needed coffee desperately.

“Oh Mom,” Jordan said, feeling badly for me.

I took a deep yoga breath and backed onto the lawn next to us, did some careful three-point turns and, finally facing the street, accelerated over the debris. “Nice!” Jordan said. “I’m proud of our little CX5. Who knew it could be an elite off-road vehicle.”

Back on Twining road to Moreland, I saw an open gas station down the street (Oh joy!) and pulled in, parking in front of a pump that – of course – said out of service.

“Mom, this trip is like driving to Aunt Anna’s (in South Jersey) – there and back,” Jordan joked. We’d been in the car almost an hour and a half at this point.

“You should write a blog about this,” Ryan said

“Ha! Maybe one day when it’s a distant memory,” I replied.

A few minutes later, when a gas pump became available, I got out, breathed the fresh air, and just began laughing out loud at the craziness of the morning. It was only 9:10 and it felt like it should be 3:00. Ten minutes after that, we finally arrived at my parents’ house.

They greeted us and my mom, seeing I was clearly fried, asked “Are you sure you still want to go to DC? You had such an exhausting morning.”

Hmmm let me think about it. Stay here and deal with what could be an all weekend outage or go to a brownstone in Georgetown with my friends where there would be wine and laughter waiting. Really tough call.

Meanwhile, the day passed by and several hours later I was en route to 30th Street station. (and power was back on at home!) My college roommate, Doreen, and I had decided it would be fun to take the train together to DC. She’d get on in NY and I would catch the same train in Philly.

While on my way, she texted that our 2:17 pm train was two hours delayed. I suggested she find a different train and I would change my ticket when I got to the station.

I waited in line for 20 minutes, and when I got to the front was told they couldn’t switch my ticket because I had purchased it with points. Argh! I had to wait another 20 minutes on hold with Amtrak Rewards to make the switch. Finally, I was set.

I got on the train at 2:34, found Doreen, and we spent the next two hours to DC (ironically, not much longer than the time it took me to get to my parents’ house earlier that day) catching up. We were grateful we’d gotten the new train as the alerts for our original train said it didn’t leave Philly till 5:00!

Shortly after 5:00, we were in a beautiful brownstone catching up – wine in hands and laughing till we cried – with our friends, Melanie and Nguyen, the last 17 hours quickly becoming a distant memory.