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It’s Just Us Against the Storm.

As I write this, we’re in the middle of a tropical storm. I’d guess the winds are now gusting at 50-60 miles an hour, maybe a bit more. It’s raining hard and–trust me on this–you have never experienced heavy rain until you’ve gone through a downpour here. The heavens open up and it pours, steadily and without letup, for ten or fifteen minutes.
 
I must say that it does take one of these storms to remind us how isolated we are out here in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. This is, in fact, the most isolated populated spot on the globe, a minimum of five hours by jet from anywhere. We’re vulnerable, with nowhere to go and no place to hide. I try not to dwell on that.
 
The power went out almost exactly at 8:00 this morning and our only recourse now is to battery-powered devices–my trusty laptop, cel phones and emergency lamps. Who knows when power will be restored? Certainly not in time to watch the Red Sox play Toronto this afternoon. There’s no TV, no wifi, and no word on when we might expect power to come back. We really never know with Maui Electric. There are occasional power outages on calm, sunny days and yet we never did lose power when Hurricane Lane blew through here a couple of weeks ago. Go figure.
 
Meanwhile, some perspective is maintained when we remember that, at this very moment, a million people are evacuating the coastal areas of South Carolina, going somewhere … anywhere … out of the path of Hurricane Florence. Officials are warning about “catastrophic” property damage and I suppose it’s inevitable that there will be loss of life.
 
We’ll get through this storm all right, assuming we’ll have power back within the next four or five hours. Even so, just to be on the safe side, I just now had to eat a pint of Haagen-Daz Rocky Road that was in our freezer. Good thing, too. It was just starting to get a bit soft.

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