Non-disaster recovery

[aadler]

The snowmageddon threatened for most of the U.S. wound up being no particular big deal for Susan and me, for reasons that follow.

Susan had already been scheduled for relatively minor surgery (more about that later) on Monday morning, and so we had arranged to stay in a hotel near the hospital the night before, and then another night for recovery after she got out of the hospital. With the weather predictions raising the possibility that travel might be severely restricted, I went back and adjusted the reservation: we showed up Friday afternoon, stayed two full days, and then checked out to go to the hospital.

We also had some good luck in that — as most of the forecasts had indicated — our part of the state got mainly snow, without the ice and accumulated sleet that might have confounded traffic or caused power problems elsewhere. We reached the hospital without particular difficulty … and she stayed there overnight following the surgery, and they brought in a trundle bed so I could remain in the room with her. Once she was released, the afternoon of the following day, we returned to the same hotel and expanded a second reservation to two days rather than one, and used that time for her post-surgical recovery.

By the time we were ready to leave, this morning, the highways and most of the streets were clear, and we had no complications in getting back to the RV park where we’ve been staying the last several months. (Knowing there would be several days of severely low temperatures, I’d disconnected the water lines, drained our tanks, and set the gas heat to 60°F for our absence. I’d have thought, myself, that 50°F was good enough, but followed the recommendation of the manager here.) Susan waited in the car while I eased our rig up to the gate to top off our propane, then I returned to our slot and set things up for her to re-occupy our home of the last three years, and it’s been easy since then.

I’ve left the water disconnected, though; temps had gone up the last few days, but we’re looking at another hard freeze this weekend, and we’ll get by with bottled water till that abates and we can move back to the point where a heated water hose and a heated outlet are enough to keep things operating properly.