Quasi-Hurricane 2008

Well, it's been an interesting couple of days around here. I, like about half of Louisville, lost power for a couple of days, but things seem to be getting back to normal, so I might actually get around to regular posting. Our house regained power in the middle of the night last night, so perhaps something resembling normalcy will return to my neck of the woods.

These past few days, though, I've been thinking about the curious predicament Louisville has been in since Sunday. To recap the bald facts, a hurricane went north of us to Indianapolis, but happened to cause some high winds in the area. Then 300,000 people lost power.

Huh?

Does that seem odd to anyone? The wind blew real hard for a couple of hours and now our entire city is crippled. Seems kind of ridiculous, doesn't it? There was no tornado, no lightning, not even any rain to speak of. We had gusts up to 75 miles an hour and society as we know it is upside down. I went out to lunch yesterday (my work still happened to have power ... yay), and it felt like Armaggedon. I tried to get gas because apparently everyone in the city has decided to flood gas stations and empty them out, only to find that the Thornton's I went to was out of power. Instead I decided to try McDonald's for a quick meal. No power. Subway next door? Nope. Interestingly enough, both had lights on and a neon sign that said "Open", yet they weren't open. Whatever.

Finally I find a Quizno's that has power, only to find about 30 people crammed in the lobby as 3 sandwich makers struggled to keep up with the demand, doubtless pondering just how much they hated their job that day. Long story short, I went about 3 miles to a gas station and a couple of restaurants and got back to my desk 45 minutes later. Any other day, that trip takes about 10-12 minutes. On my way home I see people lined up three deep at gas stations to try and fill up (I eventually found a place to fill up myself), while other shopping centers look like ghost towns, completely devoid of power.

And it never even rained ...

This seems a helpful reminder of just how frail we are as a people, and how silly all our bravado and chest pumping seems at times. A little gust of wind can cripple life as you know it, and send you rushing to a gas station to pay $4.15 a gallon when you scoffed at that price two days ago and would have driven another 5 miles to find a cheaper price.

Kind of makes you feel small, doesn't it?