No Linx For You!

Since we've been posting the Linx pretty much every day since January 9, 2009, it figured we owed our 12 regular readers an update for today's "missing linx".

On Saturday, the extended posse and I traveled to Grand Beach, Michigan to a nice little rental home just a couple of blocks from Lake Michigan. It was our first post-Wuhan getaway, and represented a quick change in venue as our South Carolina plans were nuked when the Isle of Palms went into lockdown.

We hadn't been to Grand Beach before, which sits near the border of Indiana and Michigan. It's a lovely, heavily wooded area, with limited public beaches --- due to high water, erosion, or some combination thereof. But several of the beaches were open.

Sunday and Monday were great beach days. The water was cool and invigorating --- but not frigid, like the 57-degree August water temperatures you'd experience on Cape Cod.

Late Monday afternoon, a weather alert hit one of our phones. A storm called a "derecho", a term I'd never heard before, was headed into Chicago with 100 MPH winds. And it wasn't stopping there. It was headed east, directly onto Grand Beach.

Curiously, the fast-moving storm ripped through the area quickly, but without obvious heavy damage. The Internet and power were both on 30 minutes after the red and orange bands had rolled through.

Then the power suddenly went down. And stayed down.

The six of us played some board games (they're making some of them X-rated by the way --- I'm looking at you, "What Do You Meme") into the night and then sacked out. Cell service was one bar, rendering a hotspot attempt ineffective.

I figured with the spectacular, multi-million dollar houses right on the lake, our little cabin a few blocks inland would also get some prompt attention from the power companies. I figured wrong.

Waking at 6am: still no power. The power company website says there are more than 2,000 points of failure in their local grid. And that it may take days to restore power. Later I heard a transformer had caught fire.

So we pack all the cars up over the next few hours -- hey, we'd brought a lot of food and adult beverages -- and then head out our separate ways.

On I-94, headed to Chicago: boom. Flat tire. Road debris. The run-flat got us a few miles to a local tire place -- which was fantastic by the way -- and two hours later we were back in business.

Summary #1: our truncated vacation was a perfect microcosm for 2020, I think.

Summary #2: hope to have Linx tomorrow.

Stay safe out there... and I hope you have power. And don't get used to it, by the way, if you vote Democrat.