We arrived back from Hong Kong on Saturday, June 30–14 hours later than planned due to a 10 hour delay taking off from Hong Kong, a diversion to Minneapolis due to bad weather in Chicago and insufficient fuel to hover after the trans-Pacific flight, and a system alarm light coming on as we were getting ready to depart Minneapolis. We landed at Chicago O’Hare at 2:00 am, which gave us just enough time to go to the Airport Hilton, shower, and wolf down a meal (I’d call it dinner, but I’m not sure what time our body clocks were on). We caught the 6:05 am flight to Dulles and were greeted with the aftermath of the derecho (a thunderstorm with hurricane force winds). We arrived home, zigzagging our way on roads blocked by downed trees, to be greeted with no power (because we’re on well water, no power means no water), no cell phone service, blocked roads, and an inoperable generator.
Jim had made a reservation at the Hyatt Reston, which conveniently neglected to inform him that the hotel, too, had no power. When we arrived and discovered this fact, Jim politely requested the Hyatt to find him another hotel room in the area, preferably one with power. We stayed Saturday evening at the Hyatt Fair Lakes, recharged our phones (our backup phones, which are on Sprint’s network, were working reliably, although our primary phones on AT&T were twitchy), and tried to recover from jet lag.
By Sunday, the generator was running and powered enough of the A/C to cool the basement, the well pump, and the refrigerator and freezer plus some lights. Fortunately, both of our offices had power, and the kids’ camp had power, so, on Monday, we toddled off to camp and work and slept in the basement (which we’ve been doing for 6+ months now, so that wasn’t a significant change, but they had moved all of our beds upstairs, so we slept on air mattresses).
Power did not return until Tuesday night for us, but the area is gradually returning to normal, and we are better off than a lot of other people who are still without power, as the temperatures are 90+ degrees for 6th consecutive day.
The trip to Beijing and Hong Kong was fabulous, but more about that later!
And, most importantly, the kids were golden throughout the entire chaotic time, from plane flight through power outage. We are so very proud and thankful!
Leave a Reply