More Falling Trees

It seems that just as soon as I posted an announcement that I had been without Internet and cable for four consecutive nights (without any electric power for one night), then I drive home from work and see a Comcast truck parked in my neighborhood, with a man up in the cherry-picker working on the lines. Within an hour, my Internet connection had been restored and my cable back on. Perhaps it was the announcement, or maybe it was the previous night's call to Comcast. Either way, it's nice to be back on line.

Last Monday morning, a big storm passed through Atlanta. I had already left for work before the front hit my neighborhood, and all day I had been more or less oblivious to the damage it had caused here. But driving home, I encountered several traffic lights that were not working, and was frustrated by the resultant snarled traffic. But when I got to Collier Road, our major through-street, I saw the real reason for the sluggish traffic: a tree had fallen completely across Collier, forcing cars off onto the residential side streets. But since Collier is not only our major through-street, it's our only through-street, all the cars wound up circling back to the same blocked crossing - with Collier off line, there was no where for them to go.

Turning onto one of those residential side streets to my home, I saw first one, then two, then three more trees downed, one having completely fallen over a power pole, once again bringing down the lines. Before pulling into my driveway, I knew I had no electricity.



I was correct - the lights were out. Eliot was alright, but looked a little confused about what was going on. I walked outside with my broken camera to take the pictures posted here, and ran into a neighbor. She told me that she was convinced that a tornado had touched down, and had spent much of the morning hiding in the interior bathroom of her house, the safest place to be in a storm. Later, she walked the neighborhood, and reported that trees were down not only here and on Collier, but all around the area. Northside Drive was also blocked by fallen trees, and tragically a man was killed in a pickup truck off of Peachtree Battle Road, less than a mile from here, when a tree fell on the cab of his truck.

Last month, a fallen tree knocked out power for a Sunday afternoon and damaged a neighbor's car. A big tree went down last August only two houses down from mine, blocking off the road and narrowly missing a parked car and a house. Just around the corner from that, a tree came down following Hurricane Dennis back in '05, also blocking the road and causing structural damage to an unfortunately located house. If life were a parable, I'd conclude that the forest was taking it's revenge on us for all of mankind's clear cutting.

But it being a Monday night and not once upon a time in a fairy tale, I changed by clothes and headed over to the zendo for the Monday night service. There were downed trees and powerless traffic lights all over town, and the normally 15-20 minute trip took me almost 45 minutes. When I got there, the zendo was without power. Only two people showed up, so I decided that we would only sit for one 25-minute period, because after that it would get too dark for wakeful sitting (sitting in the dark tends to makes one drowsy). Afterwards, Bill, a Monday-night regular, and I headed out to eat, but had to try three different restaurants before we found one with power.

Since trees were down and power was out all over the city, it was apparent that it would be a while before it got restored at my house. I drove home and went straight to bed in the dark.

When I got home from work the next day (Tuesday), I was pleased to see several truckloads of power company crews cutting the downed trees and re-setting the lines. Power was back on at the house when I got in, and a quick survey showed that no damage had been done. Of course, I still didn't have cable or Internet, and they still weren't on by Wednesday or by Thursday, so I finally called the cable company. "Oh, there's a power outage in your area," they tried to explain to me, but I explained to them that the outage had ended on Tuesday and politely asked them when they'd get around to restoring their service to this area.

Their reply was non-committal, but when I got home Friday, they were hard at work, and as you can plainly see, I'm now back on line.

It's nice to be back on line.