Where were you on August 14th, 2003?

[Alex Bruene]

I was on my way home from work.  I was sitting at a stop sign, waiting to make a left turn when suddenly the radio station I was listening to went dead.  I continued to drive, all the lights were out.  The power was out at home.  Cell phone didn't work.  I went home, waited it out for a while and decided to head up to the then girlfriend's (now wife's) house.  It was a fantastic drive up hwy 404, as there were very few cars on the road, and all the police were attending to intersections and such...

 

The then girlfriend (now wife) lived about 30 mintues north of Toronto.  I got there in just under 4 minutes (with the lack of police presence on the highways).  Our original plan was to go to the cottage, which is just outside of Parry Sound, Ontario...  about 3 and a half hours north of Toronto.  When we finally figured out the severity of the power outage, we decided to stick with our plan of heading up north.

 

I got up early on Friday morning, with the intention of finding a gas station that was operational.  It took me about an hour to find one.  Filled up, headed back to the then girlfriend's (now wife's) house, packed up the car and left town with the girlfriend (now wife) and her cousin and her cousin's boyfriend that were visiting from England.

 

Driving north again was great, as there was still minimal traffic and no cops on the road.  We pulled in to Parry Sound (just for the hell of it), and to our surprise, the lights were on!  We hit the grocery store, where the talk was that the town was going to shut down power to help conserve for the hospital and any possible emergencies.  We booked it out of the grocery store, and hit the beer store in dramatic fashion...  Loaded up on as much beer as the car would hold (under feet and on laps), and set off for the rest of our journey north.

 

We got to the cottage in Pointe au Baril, Ontario...  And, to our next surprise, the power was also on...  The power stayed on all weekend...  We had cold beer, clean water, warm showers and a fantastic time with very minimal power disruptions. 

 

I had a nice comfortable weekend at the cottage-where I chose to head because we can survive quite well up there without electricity... and even better with it!

 

What did you do?

[Jim Warman]

Jeez, half the time I can't even remember what I had for breakfast, any more. Your story doesn't have anything to do with the birth of a child, does it?

[Alex Bruene]

Not really... I did just have a child 3 weeks ago... But I don't think a 119 month gestation sounds right.

[Fordracer]

Must of been the big power outage in the eastern US and Canada. Our paper just ran a article about it being 10 years ago and that not much has been done to keep it from happening again.

I remeber where we were even though it didn't affect us in Kansas. We were in Salida Colorado doing some white water kayaking and we heard about it on the news in the motel room.

[Jeff Clyde]

probably drinking a beer somewhere....... remember, the 6.0 was fairly new at the time !! In Kingston we were only out to later in the evening. At the time, also being a Wholesale Distributor for the Toronto Star, it marked the first in my 20 years with the newspaper where it didn't print. Woo Hoo, it was a night off for me

[DwayneGorniak]

I would have been at work in Wainwright at the Ford dealership there, with my ice cold beer chilling in my fridge just waiting for me to come home and drink it with the power on and the A/C chilling the house quite nicely on our acreage.

[Aaron]

Had just dropped the filler nozzle into the fuel tank on my Impala SS when the power went out. Had been two mins earlier I'd have almost a full tank of free premium. Lol. Ran that thing past the E so far I thought the needle was gonna break off.

[Matt Saunoras]

Summer vacation waiting to start my senior year of high school.  Didn't know anything about cars, didn't even own a car!  Surely never heard about a 6.0L