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| Trace amounts of carnage outside the Robcasting command center |
We were making the best of it, and I went back out to see if I could get dinner for the family. Sean waited in the car while I went into Peppino's, one of the probably 15 or so pizzerias around us.
Yes, really, there are easily 15 pizzerias in Mahopac and just across the town/county line in Baldwin Place.
And that's where I heard that quote. The owner and staff were working via generator. No lights were on. The pizza maker was wearing a headlamp as he ladled sauce onto the crust of someone's large pie. Extra crispy, please.
The owner was taking orders in between bouncing to the oven.
It was chaos. Controlled, but still.
"Peppino?...Peppino?...Yeah, sure, we'll have tables tomorrow. We're very busy. Yeah, sure. We'll make it happen. All right."
Click.
"This guy wants a f***ing tent."
I'm still not sure if he was serious.
I saw no way we'd have power back. We've often been fortunate on this side of the Pac. Yet, something felt different about this power outage. But we were prepared.
Having seen the explosion in Beirut and, truly, having basic human decency, I have enough of a clue to know that this was an inconvenience at best. But it makes for (hopefully) a good post on an irrelevant blog.
After the power went out, I took a walk and ran into my neighbor, Sharon, who was waiting to hear from her adult son. We both shook our heads. This was a little different and, we felt, worse than the initial reports.
Storms fascinate me. My inner "weather chaser" will come out, even it it's just to walk to the main road and see what's going on. But, duty called.
I went out to put gas in my car. The gas stations of Baldwin Place were buzzing, but not crazy. Others had gas tanks out of their trunks for generators.
Cell service seemed dicey at best but I felt I could find a signal to do "Doubleheader" on my computer, as opposed to via phone. I parked outside of the McDonald's in Mahopac and did the show. I had hoped maybe we'd get some calls or tweets, but the audience was quiet. The whole reason Bob Small wanted me on yesterday -- and I agreed with him -- was so that we could do our public service. I didn't really want to babble about sports. I wanted to be helpful and talk about anything.
I wanted to do pretty much what I did during Superstorm Sandy (2012), yet only for one hour, as opposed to seven.
Maybe I did help, even if it was to entertain and inform.
On the way back home, I noticed the gas stations now had "energy crisis" level backups of cars looking to fill tank. I sat in those 1970s lines with my mom at these same gas stations.
I had barely walked in the house when dinner duty called. So, I went back out to see if I could find food, and that's when I got some of my favorite chicken parm on the planet, at Peppino's.
Where there weren't, to my knowledge, any "f***ing tents."
Sean and I ordered in person and sat in the parking lot. He is a patient soul, thankfully.
All the while, I'd either let the car run a little or keep the battery on so that we could charge anything that needed charging.
Still, his patience boiled when he couldn't get so much as a passable cell signal at home. Cell towers seemed to be messed up.
With dinner finished, I still wanted to post Tuesday's "Doubleheader" online. I wanted to get it out there for Jonathan Rios and WON 920 The Apple/WEAF 9240 The Liberty (I'm stubborn* that way). Oh, and there was the blog.
*Or dedicated, as Doug Kerr wrote online. In all honesty it's part dedication, part stubbornness, part insanity. We all go a little mad sometimes. Or at least Norman Bates says so.
Back out I went.
I thought -- I really did -- that we wouldn't see power again last night. I assumed we would be out for a day or more. This one just seemed bad.
It had the feeling of being worse than Superstorm Sandy.
So I drove up the road, just looking for a passable signal that would let me jump online, check in on things around the world, and get back home. But nothing was strong enough up to the Taconic Parkway, even if the nearby gas station had power.
Then I went down the Parkway to Jefferson Valley. The Taconic seemed to be OK and JV -- or, "The Valley," as my dad called it (nobody else did or does) -- had a few traffic lights working, but not much else.
I sat in the empty parking lot of a small grocery store plaza (DeCicco's). Only the pizza place and the Chinese restaurant were open.
And I got online.
And that, friends, is where I got the blog online from.
I returned home, detoured at one point back to where I had just driven from after I came across another tree in the middle of the road, and settled into an easy chair for what I thought would be a long night.
I grabbed my trusty Radio Shack shortwave/AM/FM radio, put some AA batteries in it, and started listening to the Rangers.
Baseball and the Yankees would have also been great, because baseball on the radio is life, but there was no way I was going to listen to the Mets over the Rangers at this point.
And, allow me to say, radio for the win in these moments. I love online broadcasting and certainly love TV, and all forms of broadcasting, but in a time like that, there's a battery-operated radio FOR THE WIN! Go buy one if you don't have one already!
As Kenny Albert called the action, I realized that I couldn't keep running to Jefferson Valley or McDonald's just to put a blog online. That's the equivalent of Cal Ripken staying in the lineup everyday while hitting .250 just to keep The Streak alive.
All good things must end.
So I started to talk to Sean about ideas for a getaway. A day trip or an overnight or two. Anything to pass the time.
And, then?
LET THERE BE LIGHT!
We looked at each other.
"Don't jinx it," he said.
We were out for a little over six hours.
And so, my dear readers, rumors of the demise have been exaggerated.
I can't express with enough certainty how fortunate I feel. Nearly 700,000 are out in Connecticut.
Many are saying this is worse, power-wise, than Sandy, which was a more dangerous storm (my opinion).
So, I count my blessings, knowing that a lot will be "normal" today in my life.
I might -- just might -- even broadcast Greenwich/Westport baseball today.
Who known?
Maybe I'll have a f***ing tent.
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