Electric went out at home.

[Nick Badame Refrig/ACC]

Hi Guy's,

About 5:30 pm the high winds here knocked out our electric.  Usually, the electric co. is pretty fast so I just waited it out.

And waited, and waited. I have been sitting in the dark with my family debating weather I should tye into the generator

in the bus. So now it's 9:30 pm and I decided to do it because we were starting to get board and a little worried about

all the food in the frig.

Not a big deal to tye the house panel into the bus, I did it before. With the high winds, and being dark, it took me about 40 min's

to isolate the street supply and grid into the onan gen set.   WALA, it works, and so I put my tools away, walked into the house,

tested all the appliances, put a pot of coffee on, sat down in my chair, and....low and behold, that instant my neighbors house lights up!

I think they call that Murphy's Law!   Oh well, it was an adventure anyway.. I guess I would have been just sitting glued to the tube..

Nick-

[Beatenbo]

Hey Nick I lived in the country many years at the end of the line and every time the wind blew hard or big thunderstorm it was lights out. We even had the tail end of a hurricane that put us out for a week. I usually just drop a couple ext cords one for the fridge the other for TV and satellite Merry Christmas Charlie B.

[Gary '79 5C]

Nick,

Hope the power returns soon.

How did your canvas canopy withstand the winds? I will be anxious to call as to if I sustained damages close to the beach.

Still in Fla, but leaving today, Temps are 50 this AM, have been 85 / 65 for 8 days.

Good Luck,

Gary Pasternak

[Nick Badame Refrig/ACC]

Hi Charlie & Gary,

The tent withstood the 60+mph winds again..Thank God!

We did have alot of beach errosion..and trees that came down.. At least we didn't get the snow.

Gary, Have a safe trip home.

Merry Christmas!
Nick-

[Jerry32]

I'm in Yuma at an RV park and the wind blew here a couple of weeks ago and lots of rain and the power went off at 7:30 PM and didn't come back untill 3 PM the next day. Dont have a generator yet so had to run the engine to charge batteries. Batteries lasted till 5 AM. Jerry

[Tom Y]

Nick, Who is your electric co ?  First Energy? We some guys head your way Sun and some more today.  Tom Y

[Nick Badame Refrig/ACC]

Nick, Who is your electric co ?  First Energy? We some guys head your way Sun and some more today.  Tom Y

Hi Tony,

Atlantic City Electric..

Nick-

[Coops6]

Nick,
You are not alone, we had the power out here last week, I used my bus to power up the house as well.   It is now sitting at a friends house where it provided their power for two days.  My wife finally sees a reason to keep it around!     This brings up a question though.  My friends house in the country has a long narrow driveway that is now snow / ice packed.  How well will my MCI 8 move on this stuff?  If I wait for it to thaw, then the roads will be a mud and sand mix with little bottom.  Right now It may have to stay there for awhile.  Just wondering if I could get it out on the ice?
BTW I still have other friends who have been with out power for a week now. Abilene Kansas.

Coop

[plyonsMC9]

Hi Coop,

What I do know for sure is that trying to drive the bus on a deep, muddy road is almost impossible.  I bet if these were Crown busses we could do it, however, we had a brutal time trying to get our bus MC9 out of a muddy yard where the snow had partially melted.  I'm thinking I would take my chances with the hard ice/snow, maybe lifting the tag if necessary for extra traction.  Tho', not sure if that would help a lot.  My 2 cents.

Hope this helps, Phil

[Christyhicks]

Well, Nick, i don't have to say BTDT, ha, ha, but I sure am glad you got your power back on so quickly!  We used our bus genny to power our shop/office, but there was NO WAY we were pulling it out of the garage to bring it down to the house, ha ha. 

The only difference we'll plan on for the NEXT ice storm, is we're going to fill up the bus with water!  We were kicking ouselves for not filling her up so we could take showers, ha ha. 

You did the right thing, though, by going ahead and hooking up.  We thought the same thing. . . about the time we get hooked up, they'll have us on. . .but it doesn't always work out that way, ha ha.  We're going to rig up our pole so that we can make the connections a little faster in the future, as fighting split-bolt connectors in the cold, sleeting wind is NO fun!  Plus, that darn rubberized tape that Larry had wrapped around the junctions. . .well, let's just say it was some GOOOOOOOD stuff!  It had fused into a solid mass of rubber, and I'm glad I didn't slice my fingers off fighting it. . .had to literally slice and scrape it off, tiny piece by tiny piece! 

Glad you guys survived so well. . .hard to believe that there are over 80,000 people in Oklahoma that still have no power. . .over 50,000 in the OKC metro area alone!  We feel very lucky to be under full power again, that's for sure!  Christy Hicks

[brojcol]

During Hurricane Katrina, my bus saved our freezer full of garden veges and also kept us cool and informed (tv news) at night.  I just ran extension cords to the bus generator from the appliances I wanted to use.  That worked very well for me. 

I can mirror what Coops6 said earlier...for the first time, my wife was really grateful for the bus during those two weeks we were without power.   

[Gary W]

Hi Nick

We had a power outage during the Super Bowl a few years ago.  ( We Canadians like NFL football to ) We ran extensions cords to the bus, fired up the genset got the big screen TV going along with some lights. My neighbour was impressed he is  ex US Navy and really wanted to see the game. It goes to show how nice it is to have the bus at home. Power for any emergency.

It turned a car lost control and wiped a power pole down the street, the power was off till 8 pm.

Gary