Friday morning and we were rounding in to the final few weeks at our Park Host Job in Choke Canyon State Park. We woke to drizzle coming down and had a moment of panic to get our internet hotspot into the RV. Normally we store the hotspot inside however something about the internet connectivity in this particular area and inside the camper makes it difficult to get a decent signal. It shows several to almost full bars on the hotspot but for some reason the signal strength to our laptops is terrible. On a weird whim we tried using it by putting it in the screened canopy outside and the connection difference is HUGE. We’ll clock 0.5 to 1 mb download inside and with it outside we get 15 to 20 mb download speeds.
Back to today – we hurried and got the hotspot inside and I took the pups for an early outing in case it rained for a while as Michael went to his post at the gate at 6 am. As the pups and I were a bit rain soaked after their outing I sat up hit the start on the coffee early and just listened to the news with my blanket on my lap. UNTIL – 7:30 everything blinked, the microwave beeped like it does when the power flickers and we had no power. The batteries were working as the lights it runs were on. I called up to Michael at the gate and as I told him power was out here he calmly says “well that’s probably because there is an electrical pole across the street on fire”. My thought was is that all lol. He called 911 and eventually the fire trucks showed up he said it was quite a sight to see them shooting water from the hoses on to an electrical pole. He came back got the generator running (it decided to be stubborn – if you are traveling with one be sure to start it every month or so) and I made sure to charge my laptop for work so I could keep working despite the lack of power. After about an hour and a half on generator power with a few fans going to circulate the humid sticky air it decided to quit. He came back after a bit and got it running for us again. At lunch time I had him stay here with the running generator – he’d been going a bit crazy this morning – while I took the pups for their lunchtime walk. As I walked the pups I could see the electrical company get to the pole that had been on fire this morning so I was hopeful we’d have power soon. We also knew that in one of the buildings near us is the Dam Operations for the City of Corpus Christi and they would probably prioritize this area a bit. By about 1:30 thankfully we had power and could run the A/C again to get some of that stickiness out of the air and I could finish the workday in comfort.
I’m so grateful in times like that of his calmness when a “crisis” arises. There’s been a few times in our relationship where there have been situations that have happened i.e. a flat tire in Grand Junction a few hours before we were supposed to check out, the brakes almost catching fire coming down a mountain in New Mexico to name a few. In previous relationships these occurrences would have been life or death, end of the world situations – not with him. He takes it all in stride and just makes it easier for me to not panic as well.
We were grateful we’d planned a date night for dinner – the physical exhaustion from the humid heat this morning, him lifting and tinkering to get the generator running – neither of us felt like cooking tonight. As Michael says – these things like today – those are our adventures. The memories we’ll have years from now that we can say – remember that day the power went out in Choke Canyon….
GnomadicLife 