OT: Where were you 19 years ago today?
With OT season winding down, I thought we could collectively harken back to a rather surreal moment in time. As those of you from a rather well populated portion of North America may recall, August 14th, 2003 was the great blackout. What were you doing when the lights went out?
Perhaps unsurprisingly, I was actually in Saint Petersburg, Russia when it happened. My then girlfriend now wife was back in Farmington Hills trying to tend to her father who had recently suffered a stroke. If nothing else, the blackout convinced me that I didn't ever want to be away from her in a crisis ever again.
Anyone else have any funny/good/interesting/scary stories from that day?
August 14th, 2022 at 9:56 PM ^
Not sure, but 40 years ago I was the best man at my buddy’s wedding. Met him in 6th grade and we were roommates at Michigan. Time flies!!
August 14th, 2022 at 10:15 PM ^
I'd have to think really hard to remember what I did 19 days ago, and I'm being asked what I did roughly 7,000 days ago. I mightve fried up some bacon and hash browns before relaxing and watching a good porno. I don't remember, but whatever I did, it was in Tallahassee, Florida where I'm 90% sure we had power all day.
August 15th, 2022 at 4:43 AM ^
I don’t understand people who watch a porno all the way through.
You do your thing after finding a suitable segment and that’s it. Watching the entire video seems tedious to me.
August 15th, 2022 at 8:01 AM ^
The compelling storylines, of course.
August 15th, 2022 at 6:15 PM ^
I only watch the storylines and skip the sex.
August 15th, 2022 at 9:17 AM ^
Yes, regrettably, it's true. Standards have fallen in adult entertainment. It's video, Dude. Now that we're competing with those amateurs, we can't afford to invest in little extras like story, production value, feelings. You know, people forget that the brain is the biggest erogenous zone.
August 15th, 2022 at 1:17 PM ^
Wait, so you don't wait for the film's climax???
August 14th, 2022 at 9:56 PM ^
I was 4, so probably parent's house
August 14th, 2022 at 9:56 PM ^
I was drinking heavily and playing cards on my first shift at a nuclear power plant
August 14th, 2022 at 10:16 PM ^
Ahhhh, back when America was great! Those were the days, I tell ya!
August 14th, 2022 at 10:36 PM ^
My father has the exact same stories while working at a nuclear power plant around the same time...so I know this is entirely probable.
August 14th, 2022 at 10:58 PM ^
Homer Simpson, is that you?
August 15th, 2022 at 8:50 AM ^
Nope, it's Lenny
August 14th, 2022 at 11:47 PM ^
Is this before or after you sent Frank Grimes into insanity and potential suicide?
August 15th, 2022 at 8:55 AM ^
All Frank Grimes wanted was to come home to his mansion and eat his lobster.
August 15th, 2022 at 8:54 AM ^
Having seen reactor operators in action, I can confirm that drinking heavily could be a necessity for all the second guessing and over-the-shoulder monitoring they go through, and that the card playing is required to alleviate the boredom.
I gotta say, I wanted nuc school in the Navy but missed the ASVAB score by 2 points. Once on my boat and seeing how the nucs operated, my no-physics class high school experience that led to my failed ASVAB was the best thing at ever happened to me at the time. I'm still thankful that I didn't get into nuc school - how boring that would've been!!
August 14th, 2022 at 9:57 PM ^
Driving past Concordia College in A2. Got to the light as you approach US23 on ramp and the light was out. Didn't think anything of it once I got past it as I was only heading to Supr. Twnp. Hot as hell and humid that week IIRC, slept in the basement for a night.
August 14th, 2022 at 9:59 PM ^
I was with a client. Took me quite a while to get back to the office...and then home.
I was working at a radio station at the time, so we were back up with power by the next day.
August 15th, 2022 at 8:55 AM ^
Did your turkey's thaw?
August 14th, 2022 at 10:01 PM ^
I stayed the night at my house and my wife and I used my power inverter from my work vehicle to plug in a couple of things that night.
My wife did the incredibly smart thing of calling Frankenmuth that night and booking us a hotel room at the Bavarian Inn.
The next morning we woke up and headed north. Problem is I was running out of gas and wouldn’t make it much past the gas station at 23 and N. Territorial. We waited over two hours on the exit ramp to get gas. Made it up the later that afternoon and chilled out for a couple of days in the land of chicken and electricity.
August 14th, 2022 at 10:02 PM ^
Cincinnati visiting a friend of mine.
My brand new Cadillac was keyed because it had Michigan plates.
From then on, my dislike for Ohio devolved into sheer hatred.
August 15th, 2022 at 2:15 PM ^
I hate that happened to you. I lived in the Cincinnati area for 22 years up until 2015, almost always had some Michigan gear somewhere on my vehicles and never got keyed, count my blessings there. Now I'm in South Carolina and the other day I found my block M magnet on my tailgate upside down...pretty sure it was one of my friends, probably a Gamecock fan.
August 14th, 2022 at 10:04 PM ^
My wife and I were trying to figure out how long we could stay in our house with our 9- month-old son. It was crazy hot that August.
Fortunately my parents home up near Flint had power and they were out of town, so we invaded their place until our power came back.
Interesting technology footnote: we knew their home had power because I called their phone and the answering machine picked up.
August 14th, 2022 at 10:05 PM ^
I was a teen at work when it hit and we had a generator so we had the news on in the clubhouse. Won’t lie, was definitely a bit of an uneasy feeling not knowing what was going on and 9/11 still being so fresh in memory.
August 14th, 2022 at 10:05 PM ^
Interlochen. Band camp. Totally missed the whole darn thing, but read about it in the newspaper
August 14th, 2022 at 10:30 PM ^
So this one time. At band camp. 19 years ago, the power went out and…
August 14th, 2022 at 10:13 PM ^
We were standing in what is now my kitchen, during my home inspection. The prior family was in the living room. They had a 4 year old daughter. She informed us that the power was out. My dad asked her if this happened all the time. She said UH-HUH! Her dad couldn’t get to the kitchen quick enough to reel her back in.
The inspector was a client of mine and knew my dad. The realtor was just about shitting her pants, and the 3 of us were laughing like hell. No one knew how bad it was yet.
August 14th, 2022 at 10:14 PM ^
With a buddy on a motorcycle trip around Lake Superior and down Highway 61 to New Orleans. We stopped at a campground just outside Memphis, turned the campsite hose on us to cool off, then headed to Beale St. to get out of the heat and into some air conditioning. The TV over the bar was showing pictures of 500,000 commuters walking over the Brooklyn Bridge. My wife has been chipping away at me to buy a whole house generator ever since.
August 14th, 2022 at 10:20 PM ^
wow, 19 years huh?
I was working as a cook in a family diner.
I had broken my wrist earlier in the summer and was set to get back to work about a week later.
I just remember the owner calling me up and asking if there was any possible way to come back early.
This diner was just west of the blackout and one of the first restaurants you would come across if you were out looking for somewhere to eat and/or cool off.
I ended up going in and helping out with dishes for 12 or so hours.
in 10 years working in various kitchen settings, I've never experience a sustained ass kicking that compares to that day.
August 14th, 2022 at 10:24 PM ^
Most fun night of my life. Living in NYC, was in a Barnes & Nobles with a friend when everything went out. We were worried, a ton of tension in the air, people were freaking out, thinking it was another September 11. Streets started flooding with people, no one knew what was going on until word made way from some people at pay phones were able to get in touch with family from out of town that told them it was just a blackout. Then the party started.
Bars going cash only, pizza places pumping pizza out and giving slices out. People sitting out on every corner, talking to their neighbors, having drinks. Every bar was packed, everyone by candle light, people singing acapella in lieu of the jukebox, relieved it was just a blackout and not everyone's initial fears. It was one of the most mass joyous events of my life.
From fear to relief to pure exuberance, it was almost magical in NYC... people just happy to be alive, enjoying each others company... outside of when I got married, it was the best night of my life.
August 14th, 2022 at 10:56 PM ^
I was in Hoboken, staring across the river at Manhattan and laughing, because I couldn’t see it. Somehow, the bars in Hoboken had generators and we got super drunk.
August 15th, 2022 at 12:09 PM ^
No shit - I was in Hoboken too (2xx Bloomfield St) at my (then) GF / (now) wife's apartment. Popped a bag of popcorn in the microwave, pressed start, then the whole east coast went down.
Whoops!
August 14th, 2022 at 11:31 PM ^
That sounds cool, but OTOH, if I lived on the 20th floor of a high-rise, that must have been pretty rough.
August 15th, 2022 at 11:47 AM ^
I think that's a part of the reason that almost no one went home that night. Thankfully, I lived on the 1st floor, at the time.
August 15th, 2022 at 1:12 AM ^
I was in Chicago at the time and we weren't impacted by my friends that were still in Ann Arbor described a similar experience. People just disconnected from technology and connected to each other. Pretty cool.
August 14th, 2022 at 10:24 PM ^
I remember it well.
The camper was packed that day and headed up to MIS for the week to the fall race, thought it was just temporary. It was weird because Dundee had no power but Brooklyn did. Didn't matter because I had the generator anyway. Got home on the 18th (Monday) everything was fine.
August 14th, 2022 at 10:26 PM ^
I was in Tunisia. Full summer Internship teaching English to Tunisian youth, bankers, etc. It was one of the best summers a 20 year old like me could have had. A big part of my shift toward an international life. August 13th would probably be the conclusion of my work there, but i could just as easily have been kidnapped for a weekend by some of the kindest Berber families in the Sahara.
August 14th, 2022 at 10:27 PM ^
I was just getting ready to leave work for the day - the blackout went counterclockwise around Lake Erie after the failure of several 345kV lines near Cleveland. I thought it was just the area around my office at first, like many people, and then as I drove home - every light, every building, ever home that I saw was also out.
At the time, my commute was about 30 minutes, so a sinking feeling built up as I pulled into my apartment building lot (we were in the process of buying the home we now live in) and we were out too. It was difficult to get information for a while - a lot of media was also knocked off the air, at least for a time. Slowly, some stations came back, and we listened on a portable to how vast this blackout was.
It was fucking hot too, so we sweltered in an apartment all night and until almost 1 PM the next day, when the power mercifully came back in our area, but I know other places in our territory waited an additional 2-4 days in some cases - they actually physically verified the connectivity of the entire system before re-energizing some areas, primarily for safety reasons.
August 14th, 2022 at 10:27 PM ^
At my cousins house in the pool
August 14th, 2022 at 10:34 PM ^
I went out looking for a flashlight and batteries. Forgot that no one’s cash register was working.
Saw that the local Dairy Queen changed their sign to “Free Ice Cream”. They were giving away whatever you wanted. Took home a box of Dilly Bars for me and the wife. Hung out with the neighbors outside and drank beer and ate ice cream pretty good night
August 14th, 2022 at 10:35 PM ^
I dunno. First I'm hearing about this
August 15th, 2022 at 1:15 AM ^
username checks out, off the grid huh?
August 15th, 2022 at 7:27 AM ^
Close, Georgia. Had to Google the event and look at pictures from New York. Pretty wild. Surprised I don't recall even hearing about it on the news.
August 15th, 2022 at 8:16 AM ^
Pretty sure I lived in West Michigan at the time and I had completely forgotten about it, as I wasn't affected. I remember hearing about it on TV or radio, but that's it.
If you ever want to know how NY/DC slanted the news is, I had no idea parts of Michigan had been affected until today.
August 14th, 2022 at 10:47 PM ^
I remember watching tv and the news had video of a bunch of people walking
August 14th, 2022 at 10:49 PM ^
Check the Michigan Daily's crime notes.
Seriously.
August 14th, 2022 at 11:02 PM ^
You were looting Bivouac?
August 14th, 2022 at 11:03 PM ^
Was in A2 at the time, living in a frat house that was hot & humid (no fans, no AC). No cell phone reception either (and no landlines where I was). Had I known, my parents house (less than 2 hr drive away) never lost power the whole time and I could have just gone back.
August 14th, 2022 at 11:03 PM ^
Driving home on Washtenaw to the fraternity house after work. Spent the next couple days grilling all the food and drinking all the beer before it went bad. Then learned that beer stores were staying open with flashlights and still selling beer, so we didn't have to worry about running out.
All in all a good time, though a little annoying not having power obviously.
August 14th, 2022 at 11:12 PM ^
Was on a call from my office in Detroit with a colleague in Grand Rapids. When the lights went out on my end I said "shit, we just lost power". He said "shit, we did too". So I immediately knew it was something major when power went out on both sides of the state. Called it a day early and headed back home to drink way too many beers in the backyard from a cooler of ice. It was a miserable couple days until the lights (and AC) came back on.