I store my generator in my garage but when I need it, I run it on my back porch.
I run it on the porch because the porch is wide open on three sides and it's large enough that I can keep the generator away from my house. That way, there is no problem with carbon monoxide build up and the roof keeps the weather off the generator.
Last fall, when we closed our porch up and covered the furniture, I decided to move the generator out of the garage and leave it on the porch for the winter. That way, if I needed it, I wouldn't have to drag it through the snow to set it up.
Today, I figured it was time to move the generator back into the garage. Before I did that, I checked the oil, cleaned the air filter, started it up and let it run for a bit.
As it was running, I thought back to why I own a generator and said, "I really hope I never go through that again."
*
The summer of 2011 turned out to be the worst summer I have ever experienced when one of our children was diagnosed with a devastating disease.
As if that wasn't bad enough, a few days after the diagnosis, my little town got to enjoy the thrill of having a tornado rip through the middle of it.
After going three days without power, I decided that since I couldn't cure my child's disease, I could at least make him a little more comfortable so I went and bought a generator.
One month later, as the disease was being beaten back by the saints over at Baystate Medical Center, my little town got to enjoy the thrill of having something they called a microburst tear through it.
I'm not sure what a microburst is but I can tell you it does the same kind of damage that a tornado does and, once again, we were without National Grid-supplied electricity for 2 or 3 days. My little generator sure came in handy then.
Flash forward to late October and it appears that my heroes over at Baystate may have beaten the disease. Mother Nature, however, just can't leave us alone and she dumps up to 12 inches of heavy wet snow on trees that still have most of their leaves. The trees all fall down and they take all of the power lines with them.
Once again, we are without power but this time it was for 11 days. Thank God for that little generator running on my porch because that generator supplied us with the electricity to run our furnace, light our rooms and run our television. We had heat, hot water, lights and television. We had hot meals, coffee and news. In other words, we didn't have to eat cold mush, we didn't smell bad and we knew what was going on in the world around us.
So today, as I was putting the generator into it's little cubbyhole underneath my workbench, I had to wonder what Mother Nature has in store for us this coming summer. Maybe another tornado, maybe another microburst, maybe a hurricane. Hell, maybe she'll leave us alone and we'll have a nice pleasant summer with temperatures in the 70s and blue skies.
To be honest with you, I don't care what Mother Nature does. She can do anything she wants to me as long as that f***ing disease never comes back to my child.
*
Here are some links you can click on:
