Came home last night No Power

[Farmritch]

Every fall I try to start every thing we own and run it before storage for winter.
I store a lot of my stuff along with storage of OPS ( other peoples stuff)
3 weeks ago I could not get our generator to start, I found a dry rotten gas line from the filter to the fuel pump allowing air into the line and not being able to pump fuel so engine would not run.

We came home last night, saw lots of flashing yellow lights around the corner(5 to 7 trucks and some treels fell & brought down some lines) and when we got home no power. ( only about 10 to 15 houses at most)

I have had a Generator that will run everything I need for going on 15 years now and because of our excellent municipal electric service have never been out of power much more than an hour at a time in all those years. It does not get much emergency use.
I's not an automatic but a nice larger 1800 RPM commercial unit that I cut into the system as needed.
I also use it as a power unit for running my welder and a few other things as needed.

Last night was a different story, I was fumbling through the barn to find some gas line and make the repairs, I also had to cut the generator into the box, another project I've held off too long for.

Got the genny on the line after about 35 minutes and we it ran for 5-6 hours until the power came back on line ( as seen fron the lone street light at end of road)
I was too tired to go shut it down and put it back in the barn so just left it run till morning, then took it off line and threw the Big breaker to bring us back on the grid after we got up. I figured it needed exersizing anyway.

It could have been worse, I could have not tested the unit a few weeks ago back and would have never known about the fuel line, and it could have been 0 degrees out with 40 MPH winds. I could have had everything stored in the barn and unable to make it over to the breaker box.
I have plenty of fuel on hand and the battery was charged.

No we really did not need the genny, we could have lit candles or lanterns ( battery, gas or oil) and could have just chilled but it is nice to use it and just move on business as usual like nothing happened

But the long & the short of it was........
I was not ready
I did make the provisions for the connection, I did not have the equipment in operating condition and plain and simple I was not ready.

You can have all the pieces of the puzzle but until you have them together you do not have a picture.

Moral of this story
as we learned in Boy Scouts ........ BE PREPARED