It seems to be done now – as I wrote those words, the sun came out. Perhaps My Run of Bad Luck is over.<\/p>\n
\n <\/p>\n
Around our neighborhood, in fact, there was mostly very good luck. Only a few big trees went down, and it looks like minimal property damage.<\/p>\n
\n <\/p>\n
Excellent luck at this address – at worst the electricity flickered last night, and a fair-sized limb dropped onto the back roof. Otherwise, it was just a great evening to watch the forces of nature in action.<\/p>\n
\n <\/p>\n
Apparently I’m an exception, though, as the rest of the metro area didn’t do so well<\/a>. There are millions of homes without power, and the water supply in Fairfax County (suburban Virginia) was contaminated after the treatment plants lost electricity (no back-up generators, apparently). Alexandria, as usual, is swimming in floodwater<\/a>.<\/p>\n \n <\/p>\n ~<\/p>\n \n <\/p>\n While I think that emergency planning is always a good idea, I think that OPM<\/a> and WMATA<\/a> overreacted a bit<\/a>. The Federal government really didn’t need to close for the full day yesterday, and today I drove downtown with little trouble. On the other hand, erring on the side of safety makes sense. I’m just not sure whether an error of that magnitude was justified.<\/p>\n \n <\/p>\n (Edited to say: It was. Completely. If for no other reason than you really didn’t want to squeeze millions of people who had not had a shower for a day or two into office buildings the next day . . .. The streets of Arlington and downtown DC were filled with thousands of people looking for something to do last night, and there were quite a few you didn’t want to get too close to. <\/em><\/p>\n \n <\/p>\n ~<\/p>\n \n <\/p>\n I went for a walk around the neighborhood early this morning, to see what had happened. Mostly branches and limbs everywhere, but one street was blocked by a tree, and another tree will make some new homeowners quite upset. A giant maple (at least 70 foot) took out their deck and detached garage. The house was just bought a week ago. Ouch.<\/p>\n \n<\/p>\n Today’s Mileage: 10.40 miles<\/p>\n \n <\/p>\n 2003 Mileage: \n <\/p>\n It was a long slow ride along the floodpaths down to the Potomac. Along the way, I saw a number of families who had come down to the river to gather water, using trashbins lined with plastic bags. They were walking, otherwise I would have invited them over to my house to use the hose.<\/p>\n \n <\/p>\n The riding itself was more a test of my nerves than my knee – the path was wet, filled with lots of debris that made it very slippery. This made for something of a white knuckled ride, but in the end I was glad I stuck it through – again I had done something I did not think I was prepared to do.<\/p>\n \n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It seems to be done now – as I wrote those words, the sun came out. Perhaps My Run of Bad Luck is over. Around our neighborhood, in fact, there was mostly very good luck. Only a few big trees went down, and it looks like minimal property damage. Excellent luck at this […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":4,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[10,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-442","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cycling","category-personal"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t
\n24.58 miles<\/p>\n