The joys of portability

Today was somewhat unorthodox.  Whenever possible, we like to sleep in to 8 or 8:30.  This morning, however, we woke to a buzzing noise that said a cell in vibrate mode was going off somewhere in the kitchen.  It was about 7:45.

I stumble-bunnied my way down, and sonar located the buzzing.  I answer the phone, and Ken's Three Hills daughter was on the line, "Hi, Dad's cell was off, so I called yours.  You'll never guess in a hundred years what happened this morning!!!"

She was right, especially with morning foggy brain, I was beyond even trying.  So....

Apparently, the Prairie Bible College is on an independent power grid from the rest of the town.  Rather, it was.... but due to a huge fire, several explosions, and accompanying smoke and such, it burnt to the ground today. (If I can, I will get some shots.) 

So as they live in residence for students, their power crashed, and the timeline for solving the absence of source is uncertain, she was wondering if we had a spare genset so the contents of the fridge wouldn't die a smelly death.

.... Funny that we had just left the smaller one at her sister's place in Nelson, only about a month and a half ago.....

So we re-secured the utility trailer's contents (Ken had been using them for a week), moved the bikes from the utility trailer where they were parked to the back of Mack for securing for the trip, did a hasty prep and pack, stopped to dump the black water, and were on the road by 10 am.  And that included shaking cobwebs, coming up with a plan, and acting on it.  I really must say I was very impressed.  

If we had planned to move on, it could have been done faster, I'm sure as the utility trailer and bike would have been prepped the day before, and a lot of the shut down and prep for slide retraction as well, but as we were likely to be holding ground for another week, it was no where on the grid of likelihoods.  The only minor misses were that the roll out pantry wasn't latched and the TV antenna was still up (both fixed at a gas stop in Hanna - 1 hour down the road)  Fortunately, that part of Alberta has absolutely nothing overhead, so there was no danger of clipping it.

One thing I had alway liked about this lifestyle is that one can abandon a disaster in a hurry, and live off the grid as needed when a crisis arose.  It never occurred to me that you could equally rush into one...

BTW, no one was in the building so no one was hurt, but half the population of Three Hills is running powerless.

So the plan is that now that we are here, we are leaving Spirit with the genset in her driveway to run the fridge, and we are taking Mack to Bellevue to pick up Smokey.  We are bringing the bike rack with us so it can go on Smokey and we will secure the smaller genset on it.  That way, we don't have to use 2 trucks to get it. (The camper rather encompasses the box after all.  Then we come back to Bellevue, and actually only are driving both trucks from Bellevue back to Three Hills.  We will be back on Friday according to this new plan.

So I sit in my living room with a cat that is confused about having spontaneously hit the road again, and who is also having a slight case of deja vu, having only left this exact site in the exact campsite only one week to the day earlier.

And just yesterday, Ken was commenting that we should really give the genset a good test run.  I also commented to his daughter that next time she wants a visit, just saying she would like to see us would suffice, no need to blow up the power grid.

So as tomorrow is another early day and a long trip, I'm going to bed.

And with that, I bid you,

Adieu.