To be fair: I didn't want to stay out very late, as I'm spending all of my weekend at a diversity awareness / social justice summit. Though some other friends of ours were driving there and staying the night, I didn't want to drive myself on the basis of definitely not feeling comfortable. So - apprehensively and definitely second-guessing myself the entire way there - I agreed to take a bus to Dover and to catch an early bus back to campus before the Drunk Biddie Bus is the only one I can take home.
G and I agreed to take a 10:40 bus from near my friends' apartment back to campus. This ride takes about 20 minutes total. Due to Hurricane Wrong-Season, we were anticipating some delays; our bus was about 10 minutes late. Even though I think the technical term for this much rain is "fucking monsoon", I don't especially mind rain.
Our usual 20 minute bus ride, featuring G and I as the only passengers, a trainee bus driver and a training bus driver, took us almost two hours. We encountered:
6 fallen trees
1 electrical fire
and
1 downed electrical wire we nearly drove into
leading to approximately six detours, including one where the driver almost overshot an exit onto a highway, sending G and I flying. It was so scary!
While waiting for any sort of police/fire departmental response via bus intercom, I took an awful camera-phone picture (the one time I brought my phone somewhere! more about that in the future) of the electrical fire and the cars deciding to be brave and drive around us. The electrical fire is on the left and the cars on right.
Eventually we gave up, joining in their bravado with a strong desire to not be stuck on the side of a road forever, ultimately losing most of the contact we had with UNH transit until three detours and a few more trees later. Eventually we gave up attempting to contact Transit on the basis that every emergency service was under severe delay. At one point G and I got out of the bus to move a tree out of the road simply because it was not possible for us to turn around again! Luckily the training bus driver knew multiple ways to get to campus from where we were and luckily we were very close to a major intersection, allowing us far more options than if we had been stuck on one of our earlier roads. (I can't make this stuff up. Really, this happened.)
Upon arriving home we discovered that all of campus had lost power. No kidding. Even walking across the street from the bus stop to my dorm was a disaster! I was worried that a tree might fall on me at that point... based upon the journey back it didn't seem out of the ordinary. (Side note: a tree fell into some kid's room across campus and when the UNH police came to check it out, another tree fell on his cruiser. Oh, I hope Franz is alright.) We just got it back maybe 20 minutes ago, which - to be fair - is a huge turnaround. There are people who are going to be out of power for a while! And, because we attend the University of No Hope, we can all look forward to classes tomorrow.
(EDIT: 02/26 Due to power outages (plural, please note) overnight, the university curtailed this morning as of 9 am. The University of No Holidays deems it unfair for students to risk their lives driving / being outside, good job guys! We definitely lost power a few more times for sure though; I had set alarms to wake up for class - which of course didn't go off - and based on the time my alarm clock was giving me I would have slept through it anyway, ahhh! But apparently my Diversity Conference is still on for this weekend.)
I didn't own boots for my first three winters in NH. It was only last year I finally bought a pair... and now I don't know how I managed for so long!