The Puffer Forum

We were out for more than 72 hours this week, with it too hot to stay home. We ran the two smallish generators to run the fridge/freezer and the tank room tanks but both less than full time. That is the worst thing about living here. Fall storm season , winter storms, and spring storms can be handled. High summer storm require either a huge generator to keep everything running, including specifically the AC, or bailing out. PITA.

Where on the east coast are you?

Oh bummer... What's the cause?

I'm in Maryland, Catoctin Mts. area, on a low spur off Great Catoctin Mt. (site of Camp David), with the Appalachian Trail running along the next ridge west of us.

The cause was a high wind storm - our utility abandoned right-of-way maintenance some years ago. This is a low ridge, pretty well treed, with above-ground wiring. The lines are old enough to still be copper and too few landowners make any attempt to tackle the upkeep themselves. Our homes are served by this old wiring, which is not up to the standards of the modern world. We gave up on the whole-house generator several years ago, we make do with a couple of much smaller units.

Pufferpunk finally stopped by a while back for a short visit while she and her Jack Russel were doing trials in the next valley west of us. We finally got to meet each other. That was a treat for us.

Sounds like you are the middle of no where and lovely you got to meet up with Pufferpunk.

Actually we are ~ an hour from either Baltimore MD or Washington D.C., but the immediate area looks quite pastoral. The dairy farm below us to the west has been in the same family since before the Revolution against England. Interstate 70 is only a mile from the entrance to our community. We look like the boonies but with easy access to civilization. Between the two nearby cities we have music, theaters, and museums, umiversities, libraries, and ethnic cultures to rival New York City - which is only about 4 hours away itself. Between that and the Bay and the Eastern shore, this is not at all a bad place to live. I am from the rural South, my wife was a Washington native, and we selected this area after carefully considering the whole country. It is not perfect, but nothing really is. We have never regretted opting to live here. We get annoyed by infrastrucre support not being as good as it should be, but overall it is a great place to live. We would very likely make the same choice again. Not everyone can do as well IMHO.