I, too, hail from London, Ont. However, I was on the road when the grid went down.
I was heading from London to Waterloo for my last final exam of the summer semester, which was scheduled for 7pm on Thursday 14th. The exam was in the final slot for exams, as the exam period officially ended on the 15th, and the last day is always reserved for emergency make-up exams.
I left London at about 3:15pm, when everything was still normal. I was just entering Stratford, and planning stop off at a local chocolate shop I often hit on the way. Upon entering the town I passed through an intersection and noticed the traffic light wasn't working. I felt that was odd, but did not feel anything in a larger scale was wrong. I took a normal back-roads way to the chocolate shop to avoid the normally difficult traffic in Stratford, and parked on the street in front of the shop. Upon entering, I noticed the lights were off in the shop. Again, thinking nothing of it, I picked up my chocolates and lined up at the till.
I first had an inkling that something larger had gone wrong when I got up to the front of the line and realized that the tills were off. Fortunately, I had enough cash on-hand to pay. The time was about 4:25. Nobody in the shop knew the extent of the power outage, or at least if they did, they weren't being very forthcoming, as people started chatting about our common situation.
I got back on the road and, realizing that all the traffic lights in the city were off, I jogged off the main route onto back roads. Back routes don't have traffic lights; they have stop signs. Stop signs still function when the power is out. Given the normal traffic situation in Stratford compounded by the lack of traffic signals, back roads would be orders of magnitudes safer and faster. Half an hour down the road, I marvel at the size of the outage. I still hadn't seen any sign of power. My cell phone, which normally reports full reception along the entire highway corridor, is reporting zero reception.
Eventually I made it to Waterloo, where I was amazed to find the power is still out. I went to the university and confirmed that my exam was likely to be cancelled, as the buildings were all running on emergency lights and thus the light level was insufficient to write an exam. I stuck around until 7pm, whereupon the teacher announced the exam, barring a continuing lack of power, would be moved to 9am the following morning.
Now my biggest problem was that I had been waking up at 11am or noon the past week. Given that I was expecting to take one last exam in the evening and then be on a short vacation, I was already getting myself into total-slack mode. Getting up for a 9am exam would be problematic, especially with the lack of an alarm clock. Furthermore, before the power went out, my plan of action had been to take the exam and return to London. I had a train ticket to Chicago leaving from London at 10am on the 15th. With the exam being postponed to 9am, and the duration of the exam being 3 hours, the likelihood that I would make my train became zero, even neglecting the 90 minute drive between London and Waterloo.
Having not much to do, and not having any candles, I decided to wander over to the house of some university friends of mine. When I got there, I experienced another aspect of the power outage: what to do about spoiling food. Five of my friends live at this house, plus significant others and several "surrogate housemates" that don't exactly live there but can be found chilling out at the residence more often than not. Thus, they have a lot of food on hand -- several refridgerators full, including quite a lot of beer. Thus, a group of about 10 or 12 of us sat around, drinking, chatting, eating barbeque, and playing cards by candlelight.
By midnight, most of the crew was pretty well trashed. A few people, including me, had to walk across town to their homes (at this point, nobody was fit to drive), so half the party decided to do escort duty. A group of 6 of us wandered across the quiet and very dark city. Thank goodness for the full moon and clear sky, or else we wouldn't have been able to see 10 feet in front of us. The night was a perfect temperature for walking. Along the way we met upon several other roving bands of revellers. Everybody we met was very friendly, and similarly smashed. There was a bond between us and the strangers, of a shared experience. There were plenty of interesting stories told. We saw several front-lawn parties around lanterns, most with guitars and plenty of singing.
Eventually we made it across town, and I got to my bed at about 1:30. Ten minutes later the power came on, and I set my clock for 7:30am. The next morning, I woke up on time and dragged myself to the university. Tired, hung over, and still pissed for missing my train, I wrote my exam and went home.
I was heading from London to Waterloo for my last final exam of the summer semester, which was scheduled for 7pm on Thursday 14th. The exam was in the final slot for exams, as the exam period officially ended on the 15th, and the last day is always reserved for emergency make-up exams.
I left London at about 3:15pm, when everything was still normal. I was just entering Stratford, and planning stop off at a local chocolate shop I often hit on the way. Upon entering the town I passed through an intersection and noticed the traffic light wasn't working. I felt that was odd, but did not feel anything in a larger scale was wrong. I took a normal back-roads way to the chocolate shop to avoid the normally difficult traffic in Stratford, and parked on the street in front of the shop. Upon entering, I noticed the lights were off in the shop. Again, thinking nothing of it, I picked up my chocolates and lined up at the till.
I first had an inkling that something larger had gone wrong when I got up to the front of the line and realized that the tills were off. Fortunately, I had enough cash on-hand to pay. The time was about 4:25. Nobody in the shop knew the extent of the power outage, or at least if they did, they weren't being very forthcoming, as people started chatting about our common situation.
I got back on the road and, realizing that all the traffic lights in the city were off, I jogged off the main route onto back roads. Back routes don't have traffic lights; they have stop signs. Stop signs still function when the power is out. Given the normal traffic situation in Stratford compounded by the lack of traffic signals, back roads would be orders of magnitudes safer and faster. Half an hour down the road, I marvel at the size of the outage. I still hadn't seen any sign of power. My cell phone, which normally reports full reception along the entire highway corridor, is reporting zero reception.
Eventually I made it to Waterloo, where I was amazed to find the power is still out. I went to the university and confirmed that my exam was likely to be cancelled, as the buildings were all running on emergency lights and thus the light level was insufficient to write an exam. I stuck around until 7pm, whereupon the teacher announced the exam, barring a continuing lack of power, would be moved to 9am the following morning.
Now my biggest problem was that I had been waking up at 11am or noon the past week. Given that I was expecting to take one last exam in the evening and then be on a short vacation, I was already getting myself into total-slack mode. Getting up for a 9am exam would be problematic, especially with the lack of an alarm clock. Furthermore, before the power went out, my plan of action had been to take the exam and return to London. I had a train ticket to Chicago leaving from London at 10am on the 15th. With the exam being postponed to 9am, and the duration of the exam being 3 hours, the likelihood that I would make my train became zero, even neglecting the 90 minute drive between London and Waterloo.
Having not much to do, and not having any candles, I decided to wander over to the house of some university friends of mine. When I got there, I experienced another aspect of the power outage: what to do about spoiling food. Five of my friends live at this house, plus significant others and several "surrogate housemates" that don't exactly live there but can be found chilling out at the residence more often than not. Thus, they have a lot of food on hand -- several refridgerators full, including quite a lot of beer. Thus, a group of about 10 or 12 of us sat around, drinking, chatting, eating barbeque, and playing cards by candlelight.
By midnight, most of the crew was pretty well trashed. A few people, including me, had to walk across town to their homes (at this point, nobody was fit to drive), so half the party decided to do escort duty. A group of 6 of us wandered across the quiet and very dark city. Thank goodness for the full moon and clear sky, or else we wouldn't have been able to see 10 feet in front of us. The night was a perfect temperature for walking. Along the way we met upon several other roving bands of revellers. Everybody we met was very friendly, and similarly smashed. There was a bond between us and the strangers, of a shared experience. There were plenty of interesting stories told. We saw several front-lawn parties around lanterns, most with guitars and plenty of singing.
Eventually we made it across town, and I got to my bed at about 1:30. Ten minutes later the power came on, and I set my clock for 7:30am. The next morning, I woke up on time and dragged myself to the university. Tired, hung over, and still pissed for missing my train, I wrote my exam and went home.