Monday, December 10, 2012
Monday, November 5, 2012
Hurricane Week
People are interested, so here is my story of when Sandy came to town.
During the night of the peak, we were hanging out here on the 43rd floor, and you could feel the building swaying. It was a bit like being on a big cruise ship. Y was enjoying some pineapple juice when she saw the big explosion at the power plant (although we didn't know it was an explosion at the time).
The lights dimmed a bit, but then recovered. About half an hour later, the lights dimmed again, and this time they went all the way out, and with nothing better to do we went to sleep. E got to sleep in the parents' room. At this point the phone was still working and we called some folks to let 'em know.
Later on, around midnight, I woke up and got this shot from the window:
Later on, the Verizon FIOS box started beeping, presumably because the battery was running low. I chose to solve that problem by closing the door.
I was contemplating going into the office, knowing that our "Disaster Recovery" site was probably up and running with generator power, so I sent e-mail out asking what was going on. No reply came back, so I assumed that things were pretty bad and I wasn't going to be of much use. It turns out they were up and trading happily but had lost internet.
So, anyway, we basically hung around the house the whole day, ate cheese and crackers, and tried to not be bored. Surprisingly, the water in the building worked all day. During our last blackout experience, we quickly ran out of water on the 26th floor and lost use of toilets, but we were well in hand here.
We also had a hand-crank powered radio where we could hear all the news of what was going on. It also, to my surprise, had a USB port. When I plugged my iPhone in and cranked it, the iPhone display lit up with a "please charge me" picture, so it definitely could tell that something was there, but it didn't appear to be charging up. Later, I found on the interwebs that after 10-15 minutes of cranking (at least 2 cranks per seconds) you could get enough juice to talk for 30 seconds.
Another thing that happend was that BOTH of our smoke detectors started beeping at us for having low batteries. I guess maybe they normally get power from the building? We had one 9 volt battery in the house, so for a while we were going with only one detector since I pulled out the battery from the other one to shut it up.
So, we packed just the very minimum of essentials (plus a bunch of non-essentials, like E's halloween costume) into bags and suitcases, and boldly marched down the 43 (actually 41) flights of stairs. Someone had duck-taped glow sticks to the walls so it wasn't totally pitch black, but we were still glad to have flashlights. E said it was fun.
At the bottom, there was a flurry of activity of building people in the lobby, but not much for us to do, so we went out. I was fully expecting to walk over the Brooklyn Bridge, but Y insisted we try to get a taxi, and we pretty quickly got one. On the way there, the driver picked up another person who was also going to Brooklyn. There was a lot of traffic on the bridge, and the driver was saying "where's all this traffic coming from?" and I said "everybody's got their car today" and she still wasn't convinced until I pointed out that the subways weren't running.
Anyway, we arrived at E's friend M's condo, and we got right up and to the important business of recharging our iDevices. Oh, we also took showers and stuff. I finally made contact with the office and other people.
That evening M's parents took E and M off to Park Slope to go trick or treating. That evening, M went to sleep with her own parents, so E was sad and came out to sleep with us, so E and I ended up sleeping on the air bed and Y slept in M's bed.
In the meanwhilst, Y and I went to pick up a rental car we'd reserved the previous night from Avis, on the theory that after school was out we would grab E and our stuff and flee to someplace with power where we wouldn't have to impose. Specifically, we had a reservation at a Courtyard Marriott in Scranton, PA; the Poconos being the only place I could think of off the top of my head.
We got a car, but it had only half a tank of gas. So, pretty much the first thing we did was zip off in search of gas. I knew Manhattan was a total loss, and the radio was talking about Brooklyn and Queens and Staten Island and New Jersey ... but nothing of The Bronx, much less Westchester County, so I concluded that we wanted to go North.
We stopped a couple of times in Queens to gas stations completely out of gas, and once in Bronx to a fairly long line of a gas station down to its last pump. We decided to venture further north, which was made extra tricky because Y is a terrible navigator and when we tried to get off the highway to recover we were foiled by multiple downed trees. Eventually we managed to put Y in the drivers seat and me in the passenger seat with themapiPad, and I led us to a throng of three busy but open gas stations, one of which filled us up.
I was starving, so we found a Starbucks which had nothing but super sweet stuff, some of which we ate, and then ventured back into the Brooklyn, paid another bridge toll, and decided to stay in Brooklyn a second night instead of fleeing to the hills.
That evening M wanted to sleep with her parents again, but M's mom wouldn't let her, so eventually E and M slept in M's room. I slept on the sofa and Y took the air bed.
All throughout this time, we had been receiving e-mail updates from the new condo building. The situation there was both better and worse than our current rental building. It turns out they had a backup generator, and they were able to run lights in the hallways and the elevators (not inside the units, however). Unfortunately, the elevators on our side of the building had been flooded out and weren't running. Also the parking garage and storage room were flooded, although it later turned out the water was "ankle deep" so no cars suffered damage.
After school we hung out with a mutual friend of the girls, L, and we had a fancy dinner at "superfine", which did have a pretty good plate of penne for me. The kids were very interested by the pool table but were eventually not allowed to play. That evening through the magic of Twitter I learned that:
We had the choice of walking or taking the subway back (at this point the 6 line was running and it would take us back home), and E chose to walk. So we walked, and suddenly E decided she needed earmuffs. We were in Soho at the time, so I thought Patagonia or Timberland might do the trick. Patagonia totally failed, but the American Apparel we passed by totally had a ton of earmuffs and E got a nice purple pair.
Anyway, at this point we (by which I mean E) were sick of walking so we hopped a 6 from Canal Street down, and I stopped by the J&R to purchase various battery types (they had plenty of batteries there), and we had dinner in Chinatown, but that was basically the end of the adventure. Both Y and I were suddenly dog tired that night and went to bed really early.
The end.
Monday
School was closed and the stock exchange was closed, and we all hunkered down. Way before any wind or rain started, we had both bathtubs filled with water in preparation for possible power outages. I'd also filled the car with gas the previous day. In addition, Y found every single pot, pan, bowl, and glass we had in the house and pre-emptively filled them with water as well.During the night of the peak, we were hanging out here on the 43rd floor, and you could feel the building swaying. It was a bit like being on a big cruise ship. Y was enjoying some pineapple juice when she saw the big explosion at the power plant (although we didn't know it was an explosion at the time).
The lights dimmed a bit, but then recovered. About half an hour later, the lights dimmed again, and this time they went all the way out, and with nothing better to do we went to sleep. E got to sleep in the parents' room. At this point the phone was still working and we called some folks to let 'em know.
Later on, around midnight, I woke up and got this shot from the window:
Tuesday
On Tuesday morning, the land phone was no longer working. My iPhone's battery was completely dead, but it hardly mattered because Y was getting absolutely no AT&T signal on hers. We have a "portable battery" by means of which we could recharge an iDevice, but it wasn't obvious which iDevice to use it on. It turned out the iPad with Verizon was able to connect, so we were able to communicate with the world using e-mail.I was contemplating going into the office, knowing that our "Disaster Recovery" site was probably up and running with generator power, so I sent e-mail out asking what was going on. No reply came back, so I assumed that things were pretty bad and I wasn't going to be of much use. It turns out they were up and trading happily but had lost internet.
So, anyway, we basically hung around the house the whole day, ate cheese and crackers, and tried to not be bored. Surprisingly, the water in the building worked all day. During our last blackout experience, we quickly ran out of water on the 26th floor and lost use of toilets, but we were well in hand here.
We also had a hand-crank powered radio where we could hear all the news of what was going on. It also, to my surprise, had a USB port. When I plugged my iPhone in and cranked it, the iPhone display lit up with a "please charge me" picture, so it definitely could tell that something was there, but it didn't appear to be charging up. Later, I found on the interwebs that after 10-15 minutes of cranking (at least 2 cranks per seconds) you could get enough juice to talk for 30 seconds.
Another thing that happend was that BOTH of our smoke detectors started beeping at us for having low batteries. I guess maybe they normally get power from the building? We had one 9 volt battery in the house, so for a while we were going with only one detector since I pulled out the battery from the other one to shut it up.
Wednesday
Wednesday morning the water in the building finally gave up. When I loaded up E's toilet's water tank with water from the bath tub, she said that was the coolest thing she'd ever seen me do. So I've got that going for me. Anyway, we were going stir crazy, so we decided to make a daring break for Brooklyn, where some friends had offered to let us stay.So, we packed just the very minimum of essentials (plus a bunch of non-essentials, like E's halloween costume) into bags and suitcases, and boldly marched down the 43 (actually 41) flights of stairs. Someone had duck-taped glow sticks to the walls so it wasn't totally pitch black, but we were still glad to have flashlights. E said it was fun.
At the bottom, there was a flurry of activity of building people in the lobby, but not much for us to do, so we went out. I was fully expecting to walk over the Brooklyn Bridge, but Y insisted we try to get a taxi, and we pretty quickly got one. On the way there, the driver picked up another person who was also going to Brooklyn. There was a lot of traffic on the bridge, and the driver was saying "where's all this traffic coming from?" and I said "everybody's got their car today" and she still wasn't convinced until I pointed out that the subways weren't running.
Anyway, we arrived at E's friend M's condo, and we got right up and to the important business of recharging our iDevices. Oh, we also took showers and stuff. I finally made contact with the office and other people.
That evening M's parents took E and M off to Park Slope to go trick or treating. That evening, M went to sleep with her own parents, so E was sad and came out to sleep with us, so E and I ended up sleeping on the air bed and Y slept in M's bed.
Thursday
E's school had said "If New York public schools are closed, then we're closed too." but they realized they were in good enough shape to open, so they opened the doors for a "non required" school day. M usually takes the subway, but that wasn't working, so it was more like a 30 minute walk for E and M.
We got a car, but it had only half a tank of gas. So, pretty much the first thing we did was zip off in search of gas. I knew Manhattan was a total loss, and the radio was talking about Brooklyn and Queens and Staten Island and New Jersey ... but nothing of The Bronx, much less Westchester County, so I concluded that we wanted to go North.
We stopped a couple of times in Queens to gas stations completely out of gas, and once in Bronx to a fairly long line of a gas station down to its last pump. We decided to venture further north, which was made extra tricky because Y is a terrible navigator and when we tried to get off the highway to recover we were foiled by multiple downed trees. Eventually we managed to put Y in the drivers seat and me in the passenger seat with the
I was starving, so we found a Starbucks which had nothing but super sweet stuff, some of which we ate, and then ventured back into the Brooklyn, paid another bridge toll, and decided to stay in Brooklyn a second night instead of fleeing to the hills.
That evening M wanted to sleep with her parents again, but M's mom wouldn't let her, so eventually E and M slept in M's room. I slept on the sofa and Y took the air bed.
Friday
On Friday, E and M got to go to school together a whole second time. And it was extra cool because they had exactly the same lunch (prepared by Y). I took the opportunity to stop by Barnes & Noble to get a book to read, and Y went to the library to do some of her Friends of the Library volunteer work. We later walked back together:
All throughout this time, we had been receiving e-mail updates from the new condo building. The situation there was both better and worse than our current rental building. It turns out they had a backup generator, and they were able to run lights in the hallways and the elevators (not inside the units, however). Unfortunately, the elevators on our side of the building had been flooded out and weren't running. Also the parking garage and storage room were flooded, although it later turned out the water was "ankle deep" so no cars suffered damage.
After school we hung out with a mutual friend of the girls, L, and we had a fancy dinner at "superfine", which did have a pretty good plate of penne for me. The kids were very interested by the pool table but were eventually not allowed to play. That evening through the magic of Twitter I learned that:
- They had invented a new name for the blacked out part of Manhattan: "SoPo" (South of Power)
- Much of that area got its power back Friday evening
- But Tribeca (where we live) apparently did not.
Saturday
On Saturday morning, we found out that power was back on in our building, so it was time to pack up and get out of Brooklyn. Normally E has Japanese school, but it had been cancelled. So, instead E and M went to a classmate's birthday party held at their school, of all places. After the party was over, we loaded up in the rental car (with a full tank of gas, but with no booster seat for E) and drove back to Manhattan. We boldly parked in the No Standing Zone (except Sunday) and unloaded our stuff. Then, while Y went on a mad rampage throwing everything from the refrigerator and freezer out, E and I took the car up to an Avis shop in Manhattan to return it.We had the choice of walking or taking the subway back (at this point the 6 line was running and it would take us back home), and E chose to walk. So we walked, and suddenly E decided she needed earmuffs. We were in Soho at the time, so I thought Patagonia or Timberland might do the trick. Patagonia totally failed, but the American Apparel we passed by totally had a ton of earmuffs and E got a nice purple pair.
Anyway, at this point we (by which I mean E) were sick of walking so we hopped a 6 from Canal Street down, and I stopped by the J&R to purchase various battery types (they had plenty of batteries there), and we had dinner in Chinatown, but that was basically the end of the adventure. Both Y and I were suddenly dog tired that night and went to bed really early.
The end.
Sunday, August 5, 2012
Saturday, June 23, 2012
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