Almost Toast

As mentioned in the July 4th post, we had a fierce thunderstorm about an hour after I left the party at 5 p.m. Sue and I exchanged e-mails seeing if all was OK at our respectives homesteads after the power quit surging. We thought we escaped. But the lightning struck a big old cottonwood tree at their place, damaging nothing but the fence, missing son Pat's camper, the powerline house,road, ditch, etc.

We had our picnic just on the other side of the power pole.

The roots of the tree were charred. The wood was transformed.
In a bizarre twist Rasty's twin brother was killed by lightning on July 4th many years ago- I think 66 but I am not sure of that. Losing a twin is something people don't get over. I am not too superstitious but I think I will keep an eye on the sky before visiting again. Somebody might be on somebody's list.

Another storm yesterday left us without juice for quite awhile. I started prepping to move into the camper where the generator would provide electricity. It seems to be "surging" so that was the chore today. The problem is still unresolved but the oil has been changed, fuel filter checked, spark plug wire checked, etc. Only two things left to try on the checklist provided by Onan: checking the spark plug, which will require a longer socket extension and dealer service which I hope to avoid. In truth, I had a big inverter installed in that rig so I could have made-do anyway. The power came back later in the afternoon so life went on. Anything to avoid "going to bed with the chickens." Whew this a racy post: Onanism and sleeping with chickens!