Last Friday at 4:00 a.m. my home security system alerted me that the temperature in my house was 40° F. My furnace stopped working, and I was 1,500 miles away! With single digit temperatures predicted over the next few days my water pipes could burst – even with the water company shutting off the main to the house. The last big blizzard was making its way through Chicago and a wide band of thunderstorms were over Texas (the only practical routes to fly home to DC). Odds were good that I could miss my connecting flight or it would be canceled.
So 6:00 a.m. Saturday I headed east on I-80 for the two day drive home. The storm has moved to New England, but it was bitter cold and extremely windy. However when I got down to I-70 approaching Indianapolis the biggest annoyance was the tons of salt solution dumped for the next 700 miles of the drive – my black car became a hideous white! Anyway I arrived home Sunday night and the house temperature was just at freezing. I switched the oven on and got four small ceramic heaters running. Within an hour my bedroom was warm enough to sleep comfortably (with an extra quilt). The next day the repairman arrived and diagnosed the problem – a $30 “switch” failed. Within fifteen minutes I had heat again and the water department arrived to turn the water back on. The pipes were just fine.
Wonderful, as a new storm was predicted to dump a foot of snow overnight and bring more bitter cold! The only thing that I was lacking was my cable/internet service which unfortunately was not restored until today, because of that storm. I wasn’t completely cut off, as I had my iPhone serve as a hotspot and streamed some Netflix video on my iPad (sucking gigabytes of data). I had picked up some provisions and was now happy to be home. This Saturday morning I reverse the journey, only to run into another storm – all because of a failed $30 switch and for foolishly not heeding my neighbor’s advice to leave a spare key. Spring can’t come soon enough!
