An Adventure In the Dark

Or should I say ON the Dark Side?


We were in a meeting yesterday afternoon in a room that faced the swimming pool courtyard. When the meeting started in the morning, the sun was shining. By a little before four o'clock, a huge set of thunderclouds had built and rapidly advanced across the hotel. We had a tremendous downpour with lots of lightning and thunder. There was NO time interval between the incredibly bright lightning and the thunder claps. And then, the power went out!


The storm quickly blew through, but the power did not come back! We heard later that 44,000 people were without power and our hotel (The Radisson) was right in the midst of it. We could see street lights later that night a couple of blocks away. We finished our meeting and then waited around a bit longer to see if it would come back on.


Of course, with no electricity, the elevators don't work! Our room is the 16th floor. The thought of all those stairs! But, then someone told me that the tower we were in was only seven floors high! It seems when the hotel built the addition, they didn't want to re-number rooms, so just started over with 1200 on the second floor. But still six flights of stairs with a heavy bag and a long day was a daunting prospect. Slow but sure -- and a stop or two on the way -- I made it back to our room and took a nap.


When I woke up it was getting dark. I ended up sitting out in the hall (with lots of other folks) and reading my Kindle for an hour or so using the emergency lights that were in the hallway. While I was there, a fellow from the hotel staff came by and handed out flashlights! My room mate had picked up a couple of glow sticks downstairs and between them and the flashlight we were able to get to bed and then into the shower this morning. Thank goodness we had water -- even hot water for showers. It's amazing how DARK the bathrooms were.


The hotel staff was even able to fix breakfast for us and they had candles in the meeting rooms to work by. The lights came back on -- to cheers! -- about ten AM. They went off once more, but only for a couple of moments.


Who says life is not an adventure!