I thought some of you may appreciate this..........p
"Let's see, where was I? Oh yeah, we just lost electricity. The wind picked up steadily and was at it's peak at about 3 PM. We were on the eastern side of the eye, and the experts all say that the winds there are strongest. I would estimate that we were subjected to gusts of up to 100 MPH. Three 2 foot+ oaks went down in the yard as we watched, thankful that they did not hit the house. Two of them fell in the six foot space between my shed and a dog pen, damaging neither. The following morning I noticed three more big oaks down at the rear of our lot, along with two 12 inch pines in the front yard that missed both Gloria's car and my truck. It took Jake and I about two hours to clear Old Taylor Road of downed trees and then it turned out that there was no where to go once you got off the road. Every thing was closed down except Lowes and the new Walmart, which had their own generators. Anyone who had not prepared for this storm was out of luck, as available supplies were snapped up quickly. There were some stories of people buying up water and ice from Walmart and then selling them for double or triple in the parking lot. Anyone with a chainsaw and the will to work made a fortune cutting trees off houses and such. I talked to one guy who had made $1100 the first day after the storm. People seem to think that their insurance companies will pay up. We did pretty well during the week that we had no power. I had a couple of those little propane one burner stoves, a propane lantern, and plenty of canned goods and rice, so we ate well. I had two big containers that I rescued from a dumpster a year or so ago that held about 30 gallons of water apiece and I put them in the back of the truck and filled them at our office, so we had water for drinking and baths. The water in the boat was for flushing toilets. Jake, Joe, and I did take a bath in the creek back in the woods one time, and the woods between the house and the creek looks like a battle zone. Working in the woods won't be fun for the next few years. We had crews from all over the country here to restore the power and there is no way to thank them enough. One of them told me that he had been cleaning up after storms on the east coast for 30 years and he had never seen such tree damage. Damage estimates for York county are over 80 million dollars. Fire wood will be plentiful and cheap for a while. I ran a chain saw for 10 hours a day for the first three days after the storm until it dawned on me that I will be cleaning up this mess for months to come, so why kill myself now. The next day all I did was put my mailbox back up and cook what venison that was left in the freezer on the bar-b-que. The dogs ate well as stuff in the freezer thawed, but I sure hope they didn't get used to Hot Pockets and frozen Pizza. All in all, it was a defining experience, but one that we hope to avoid in the future. I was right. I AM to old for this."