Welcome back.

As you read yesterday, we survived the storm (what local science-people are now saying was likely a downburst, not a tornado) relatively unscathed. The drama for us came afterwards.

With no power, and no prospect of it coming back on any time soon, we decided to head to town (Strathroy) to get some dinner and some yard waste bags for the next days expected clean-up.

We got to the store 10 minute before it closed, got our bags, got back in the truck…

And it wouldn’t start.

Help arrived about 40 minutes later.

His name was Benny. While Benny kept me company (and gave me kisses) Benny’s driver (Chris) and Dave mucked about under the hood for a while before finally determining I had broken the shift linkage. Though my shifter was in park, my transmission was still in drive.

I said goodbye to Benny, got in, put my foot on the brake, and they manually put the truck into park so I could start it. Once started, they manually put it into drive! Hooray.

Though of course, that’s only enough to get us home. The linkage is still broken, and we can’t kept doing the manual thing.

We drove it directly to the mechanic shop, which is only a few minutes from home. And being in the same town, they got hit by the same storm…

And they’ve got some clean-up to do before they’ll get to my truck. Yep… that’s a tree on top of the shop, and one of the classic cars they were in the midst of restoring…

So needless to say, my truck is a little lower down on their priority list.

We have Dave’s car still so that’s not the end of the world.

We left the truck in the tree-free part of their lot, walked home and promptly went to bed.

When Dave woke up the next morning, the power was still out so he decided we needed to get our generator on and hooked up to the fridge and freezer. And for some reason, that mean my grumpy butt had to get out of bed and go get gas with him.

That done, we got home, he started the generator, and I started on yard clean-up.

Normally, our neighbourhood is a symphony of birdsong, punctuated by the occasional dog bark interlude. But Friday afternoon – it was a heavy metal concert featuring multiple generators, chainsaws and woodchippers. Everyone was out doing their part to clean up.

I usually handle noise pretty well, but after a morning in the heat, it was really starting to get to me. Around 1 pm, we came in the house for a rest. A short while later, Dave realized our generator wasn’t running anymore.

He went back outside to much with it. A couple hours later, I told him it was time to admit defeat and off we went to buy another one. With the whole town without power, as you can imagine, generators were as little tough to come by at the local stores.

We managed to find one and headed back home. Dave got it set up and running, while I tackled some more of the yard. By the time I was done, my head was absolutely splitting from all the noise.

And then… 28 hours after it went out – those amazing hydro workers got our power restored! (As much as I’m complaining about my drama – I’m really glad I don’t have their job!)

We still have some clean-up to do

Mostly in the catio yard, and garden beds. There are leaves and small branches everywhere.

And despite our trials and drama of the weekend, we are still very lucky. But I’m ready for a little more normal.