A Decent Storm
Allright, everyone I know already heard the story, but nobody saw the pictures. Here's a blurry glimpse of what happened this morning. I am ordering a memory stick for using my MiniDV camera to take pictures instead of the Palm, so very soon the quality will improve. In the mean time, here's today...
Here's the initial power outage that we had here on rue Beckett. Too bad I forgot to take a video snapshot of the water pumping just right of this; its diesel generator was surprisingly noisy.
One of the many sources of power outages on route 220 in St-Elie. Just after I took this picture, a pine tree got its roots pulled by the wind and fell on the same electric cable. It was quite a sight. Amazingly, I never fell because of the wind. Peaks reached 83 km/h though.
Unauthorized and injust photo of Daniel, my karting teammate and friend. Seriously, I need to start carrying my decent camera instead of this pinhole emergency one. This photo adds 10 years but it's the only one I took. I listened to Hydro Sherbrooke on my scanner while I was pedaling, so I could confirm that I kept heading in his direction. That was more difficult than it may seem, especially with the very difficult wind. Once on Ch. Hamel, I had to struggle even downhill to keep a mere 10km/h!
The owner of the house graciously opened his bathroom to me, and I thank him. Too bad for his two big trees however; it seems that easily half of their volume had to be cut down before Daniel could even begin working on a repair. A 20-foot branch on the ground got picked up by the wind and rolled right onto my bike and I once, but luckily not quite fast enough to throw me down. Freaky winds, though...
I have to hand it to these guys. The very nature of their work means that they're always out there during the worst conditions there is.
Overall, there was a nice apocalyptic feel to the St-Elie area this morning, which was a lot of fun to dive into, so to speak. Too bad rain added to the wind for my trip back home. I guess BionX weren't kidding when they said their engine was waterproof, because it got quite a test in that department today.