Finally: Blackout '03 Recounted

Okay, the move's over with - it went off well, and the Lagemae and Wayne Schroeder (a dear friend of Doug's) were on hand on the New York end to help off-load the truck. They're all blessed saints.

Now that the whole move is over, I can take a few minutes to record my experiences of the blackout... it's only four days old and already people are clamoring (via e-mail) to hear the gory details.

I, like most of New York City, was sitting at my desk happily chatting away with Holly Hobart about some thing or another when suddenly all the power went out. I'm not really a person given to immediate expecting the worst (contrary to my upbringing!), so we kinda just looked around and wondered what was up.

Within five minutes, though, people were on cell phones to their loved ones and it was quickly determined that the power outage effected not just all five boroughs of New York City, but parts of Connecticut, New Jersey, and Long Island. One person even reported that it had reached as far as Detroit! I was skeptical of that.

Eventually, the Powers that Be determined that we should close the office, let folks go for the day, and get everyone out of the building, since the back-up generators only had enough juice to keep the lights burning for 2 hours.

Not needing to be told twice, Holly and I skedaddled to the lobby to wait for our friends Nick Gontarz and Afua Adusei. The plan was for all of us to walk to Brooklyn together.

It turned out that Nick and Afua decided to stay in the city and hang out with another friend, so Holly and I got ready to head out, but not before Nick (God bless him) gave us each a bottle of water from the emergency stores [can you imagine an employer having safe rooms and emergency stores of food and water? Thank you, Usama bin Laden].

I had the bright idea of taking the bike path south along the East River, since I've often wanted to scope it out, thinking that at some point I'd start riding my bike to work for exercise. But since neither of us knew exactly where it was (for the curious, it starts at East 37th Street), we walked south on 2nd Avenue at least as far as the UN Building.

Our office is between East 47th & East 48th Streets, only about four blocks north of the UN. Not thirty minutes after the initial power loss, people were thronging out of all the high rise buildings in midtown, and the UN was no exception - it was a cornucopia of ethnic types milling about on the streets in front of the tower, and a Babylon of languages... all in all pretty amazing.

So at East 43rd Street, we turned left and down the ramp to the FDR, since I was fairly certain that the bike path started just south of the UN. As it turns out, I was right, but it wasn't "just" south.... it was six blocks. But who's counting when you've got six miles to go?

I thought there were a lot of people on the bike path, but it wasn't until later that I found out that, in comparison to the crowds walking up and down the main avenues of Manhattan, we had it incredibly easy! In any case, we made our way down the East Side, making steady, if slow, progress. There were as many people making their way north as there were going south - people of all types, not just office workers. Word must have spread quickly, 'cuz even though who were lounging around outside of buildings were suddenly on the move. Me being me, I couldn't resist the picture to the right.

Eventually, we hooked up with the bike path, and the going became, if not easier, more aesthetically pleasing. The path itself is lined with parks and gardens at various points, so we stopped when Holly exclaimed about the size of a flower (I've forgotten the name) so I made her pose with it.

The bloom she was exclaiming over was the one to the right of her head in the picture, but it was only after I downloaded it that I realized the one to the right looks like it's about to swallow her head. Just a lesson for anyone who's ever seen Little Shop of Horrors.
So anyway, off we went again, hustling along. It's important to note that the entire time we were trying to call people on our cell phones to get a fix on what was happening in the world. Remember, at this point, we hadn't really heard any news, so we didn't know that it wasn't the first stage of a terrorist strike.

Anyone who was in New York would tell you it was a pretty hot, muggy day, and by the time we'd reached the area of 14th Street (only about half way to our goal of the Manhattan Bridge!), we were both soaked in sweat, and what little excitement and novelty had clung to the experience was beginning to run out. It was a this point that Holly looked east and noticed a small children's playground in the park we were passing, and in the middle of the playground was a fountain for the children to play in. There was a solitary little girl frolicking in the spray, and it didn't take much convincing on Holly's part to get me to go in with her. The picture to the right was after we hosed ourselves down. God, that water was refreshing! Of course, for the next twenty blocks, people looked at us like we were smelly homeless people, but we didn't mind.

So, newly refreshed, we continued our charge south to the Manhattan Bridge.

As we got closer to the bridge, it became clear that we weren't the only people in Manhattan trying to get to Brooklyn. As we passed under the Williamsburg Bridge, and got closer to the Manhattan and Brooklyn Bridges, the trickle of people on the bike path turned into a throng. We worked our way westward, abandoning the bike path and slogging through Chinatown to the entrance of the Manhattan Bridge.

The bridge itself was packed. Holly and I decided to circle the bridge to the south and take the south (lower roadway) walkway, but the upper roadway walkway (on the northern side) was equally packed, and they even shut down traffic on the lower roadway (or at least one of the lanes) to allow people to walk there too. It was pretty amazing - and it was on the bridge, as people dodged in an out, trying to outpace the slowpokes, that tempers began to flare. Nothing serious, but it was clear that most folks, having traversed most of Manhattan in their work clothes and, more specifically, shoes, had had enough. For all that, though, it was really pretty orderly. The folks crossing over from Brooklyn had the hardest row to hoe, since they were like salmon swimming upstream - reduced to a single file trickle that hardly stood a chance against the mass of people heading for the outer boroughs. It was the folks coming into Manhattan who turned out to be the snarkiest... not that I blame them!

 

I risked the wrath of the mob and paused just long enough to grab a shot of the sunset over lower Manhattan from between the links of the fence... it appears to the right, and I'm pretty pleased with it. Once again, I'm left to wonder what I could accomplish with a decent camera... that shot's not bad at all for a lame four-year-old two-megapixel camera!
And clearly, I wasn't the only one with the idea to capture this view... the next picture is one I took of a guy who was standing on the lower roadway's I-beam guard rail, risking falling into the river below to get the snapshot. I sure hope his shot turned out!

Eventually, tired and a little short on patience, we made it to the Brooklyn end of the bridge. By the time we go there, Holly announced that she was getting cranky (though after she said it, we both laughed so hard it was hard to tell we'd had it up to our nose hairs with the hike). By this time my feet were particularly sore, and I was wondering if I was going to be able to make it all the way without a major rest. I was wearing a pair of Kenneth Cole shoes that had been purchased for me by Buick back during my auto show circuit days... they were part of a rather kick-ass outfit I got to wear while working the Buick display, but unfortunately the Powers That Were bought the shoes a size too big - which isn't a problem when I'm wearing them around the office and sitting at my desk, but doesn't make them ideal for the six mile walk from my office to my apartment! So, yeah, we were a little cranky.

Oh, but the madness was really only just beginning. The Manhattan and Brooklyn bridges touch down in Brooklyn a few blocks from each other, and nearly everyone crossing both bridges began walking up Flatbush Avenue. Suddenly the throng we were walking in became a throng squared! It was absolutely amazing. There was no room on Brooklyn's main thoroughfare for cars... an occasional emergency vehicle made its way along, but for the most part, the only traffic we saw was people trying to cross Flatbush at the cross streets.

It was sort of a carnival atmosphere, really. Some people were helping along those who were obviously in distress. I passed a group of firemen handing out band-aids for covering blisters, and another group administering oxygen to a lady who'd clearly exhausted herself. And all around me at the foot of the bridge, people were sucking on melted freezer pops... I have no idea who was passing them out, but by that point most of us would have drunk sand.

Eventually, we made it to Holly's apartment, where we sat drinking the beer from her refrigerator before it could warm up, and waiting for her girlfriend Sarah to get home. Once Sarah was there, I dragged my sorry ass the last few blocks to my apartment, and got to packing for my train ride to Pittsburgh on Friday.

Once that was done, I dug out some candles and matches, filled up a glass with the last of the unmelted ice in my now-dead freezer, and sipped Pepsi while perching in the bay window in my bedroom, watching the crowds march past on Flatbush. The stream kept up late into the night, and far past sunset... eventually people were walking along having their way lit by the occasional person with a flashlight.

The answer to your question is: No, I did not get on a train Friday morning. That was wishful thinking. My power came back on at 4:11 a.m. on Friday morning (the fan suddenly coming to life startled me awake). I tried calling Amtrak to see if service would be leaving Penn Station in the morning, but the hapless customer service rep had no clue, and suggested I call the station at 6:00 a.m. About an hour before my train was supposed to leave. I managed to drop off to sleep again for about an hour, then dragged ass into the bathroom and got a shower. Around 5:30, I called Amtrak again, and was told by their automated system that I had a 220 minute wait to speak to an agent. Needless to say, I gave up on my plan and went back to bed.

At about 8:00 a.m., Toni called and it was through her that I booked a train out on Saturday morning.

And so that's my story from Blackout '03. Not terribly exciting, really - and in many ways, actually kind of fun. If there's one thing that having no electricity will do for you, it'll bring all sorts of work to a halt and force a quietude you don't often get in the middle of the city. Friday the whole city was pretty much shut down, so I spent it with Eric and his friend Gary Parker (remember Gary from Eric's birthday party? He's the one whose stand-up comedy class graduation we went to a while back. Great guy. Total hottie. I admit it, I've got a lil' crush). The three of us and another of the Elf Man's™ friends, Patrick, spent the day drinking beer, eating take-out Chinese, and playing board games while we waited for the rest of the city to get its power back. So all in all if anyone tells you how horrible their blackout experience was, just remind them of what the folks in Bagdad are going through, and maybe they'll look at their 36 hours in the dark a little differently.