All's good here in Texas

[JerryM100]

Sorry for the delay to those who sent inquiring concerned emails, all is good here now. Still catching up on several days of emails, sorry if I missed yours.

For context, for those who are not familiar, we live in northwest Houston, about 30 miles outside the city. On Tuesday and Wednesday our power was out along with Internet (we're on AT&T fiber!), cable TV, and cell phone data service. Fortunately, we have a 17kw Generac natural gas generator that kept our house powered for the duration. Many people weren't so fortunate. Tons of burst pipes in our poorly insulated Texas homes with pipes in the attic.

I will avoid analysis and recriminations here and let the bureaucrats and politicians sort it all out.

Lessons learned - plan for worst case scenarios. And plan ahead of the pack. When a storm hits it is too late to compete with the mob for bottled water, boards, plastic, gas tank fill-ups, storable food, etc, etc.

Also plan for being potentially off-the-grid. We were without access to any information for almost 48 hours. Others much longer. It is amazing how much we depend (and take for granted) our connections and information resources. Most everything we do these days is on a computer and in a browser. Keep some batteries, candles, and some good, paper, books handy. (I highly recommend "The Evening and the Morning" by Ken Follett!, I just finished it)

I had also researched places to go in advance. Local hotels and even other towns within an hour or so. But, again, we no cell phone data service we couldn't get information or make reservations if we had to. Many of our neighbors did and I understand many of the hotels filled up. Those that had generator backup, many didn't and remained closed.

I don't want to be overly dramatic, and we are not out of the woods yet, but my single biggest lesson learned is to have a plan. I had a plan and it worked out very well for us.

Perhaps we could start a separate thread on that subject.

All the best to all my Romeo friends!

Jerry M
Romeos Administrator

[schoolmaster]

Jerry,
It’s nice to hear from you and good to get a personal perspective about the Texas situation. Also good to know that you have fared relatively well through the debacle. I have mulled over for several years about installing a Generac generator and this may spur me into following through. Fortunately here in eastern Kansas there were only a few minor outages and very short in duration but I think we are much better prepared for cold weather events here than Texas’s electrical grid and contingency planning was prepared for. Weather in the 50’s next week and the month of March peering out from just under the next calendar page plus an accelerating pace of Covid vaccinations makes me think that there may be a bit of light peering through at the end of the ROMEO tunnel! Would sure brighten some spirits to see a ROMEO ride or two safely scheduled!!

[Parkville Rider]

Mick,
Hope everyone is getting an opportunity to be vaccinated. Unfortunately I know a few who are refusing for various personal reasons.