After my extended holiday time at home it's drawing near to that time to hit the road once again. I have to be in Savannah, GA tomorrow morning. That's only about a 5 hour ride from here so I'm not in a major rush to get rolling.
I've been spending the morning enjoying my coffee, cleaning up the kitchen and generally preparing the house to be closed up for a few weeks. No rush, just doing a bit here and a bit there. I'll head for the rig this afternoon, maybe around two or three. That should still get me to the truckstop up in GA early enough to get a parking space for the night and put me about an hour from Savannah.
We did have a bit of commotion here this morning. Shortly after I got up this morning I noticed that the lights were flickering. There was obviously a problem brewing with the power. Over the course of an hour the problem grew much worse and I could hear electrical arcing outside.
I walked out and breaker on the power pole on the corner, maybe 75 feet from my house, was arcing badly and there were flames shooting off of it. Uh oh, not good. I got on the phone to the power company, pressed all of the prompts on their stupid automated system, and reported an emergency situation.
About 5 minutes later they called me to find out what was going on. I described the situation and let her know that there was a serious fire risk here as that pole is right next to someone's house as well as several trees. She assured me she would get someone out right away.
Now, right away with our power company usually means sometime in the next day or two, but with the potential fire risk I hoped they would roll someone immediately. About that time I heard voices outside and so walked out to see what was happening.
Several of the neighbors were outside watching the fireworks show up on the pole. Several had called the power company and one had called 911. Good, more calls, especially a 911 call, upped the odds that they would respond soon.
An hour later I heard the diesel engine of one of their trucks pull up. I walked outside to make sure he knew where the problem was even though the flames shooting off the top of the pole was a dead giveaway.
It took the guy about 30 minutes to replace the breaker and reconnect the loose wire connection that set off the problem and then all things electric were back to normal once again. I was able to restart my air conditioning and computer, and things were right with the world once again. It's funny how we develop habits though. Even though I knew the power was off for the repair I still found myself flipping the light switch when I walked into the bathroom. Doh!
I've enjoyed my time at home but financial necessity requires that I return to my gypsy ways once again. Gotta feed the bill collectors ya know.