Kevin Standlee: Fandom Is My Way of Life

Yes, I know summer doesn't start in the northern hemisphere until June 20, but Memorial Day is typically considered the "ceremonial" beginning of summer, so I checked to see if the snow on the mountains had made it this far.

( Yep, it did )

I know from when I went to Reno on Saturday that there is still quite a bit of snow visible in the Sierra Nevada mountains, and there was at least one ski resort up there (Olympic Valley) that was open yesterday for their final day of operations for the season.

Lake Tahoe is full, which is great news for our water supply here this year, as Fernley's aquifer is ultimately dependent upon water from Lake Tahoe via the Truckee River and the Truckee Canal.

I woke up slightly early this morning, a few minutes before my normal 4:30 AM alarm. When I went to the bathroom, I discovered that the water was not running. This jarred me more awake than my typical sleepwaking early-morning state. I confirmed that it was all of the outlets, not just the front bathroom. I logged into my utility account with the City of Fernley and confirmed that my account was indeed current. As I was considering what to do next things got worse, as suddenly the power failed as well. Grabbing a flashlight, I finished getting dressed and went outside, where I could see that the outage was not just the house, but the blocks surrounding it, but not the whole city, as I could see lights in the far distance on the other side of town. I could also see a bunch of blinking orange lights a few blocks away, which suggested to me that someone was working on the problem. It was unclear why both the water and power would go out at nearly, but not exactly, the same time. The power outage shouldn't have shut off the water, as the water pressure is, as far as I knew, fed by gravity, with several tanks on the hills around Fernley.

Lisa (who, as is often the case, is keeping overnight hours) had not realized that the power was out because she was working in her travel trailer, which has its batteries. This also means she had water if needed, as the trailer has a 40-gallon tank. The lights had dimmed slightly when the ground-side utility connection had failed, but she hadn't noticed it fully. When I came to talk about what had happened with her, she shifted to power-conservation mode (turning off one of the two "hotel" batteries and shutting down most of the lights). While we were considering what to do next, the utility power came back on, after having been off for less than 30 minutes. I left Lisa to continue what is typically the end of her "day" and I went back in and logged into my work chat and warned them that I might be knocked offline unexpectedly. As it happens, I had power for the rest of the day, but I didn't know that would be the case.

There was of course no water for a shower, but we have a closet in the house with a large supply of distilled water (up to five cases of six one-gallon bottles), so I did not want for drinking water, and I was able to make myself a cup of coffee and have a cup of yogurt for breakfast. For washing my hands when needed, we have large bottles of hand sanitizer that we've maintained since the start of the pandemic. So I was able to get started with my work day while still wondering what was going on.

The city's website said that if you have a water emergency to call the sheriff's department; however, I didn't consider this to be enough of an emergency to incur a $60 call-out charge, so I settled down to work. Our team's daily world-wide meeting (India, various US locations, Europe) ends at 8 AM Pacific, which is when the city offices open. I called in to find out what was going on. They told me that there had been a traffic accident that had damaged a water main, and that they'd call me back later to confirm whether my outage was related to that. From what they said, and from the lights I'd seen earlier, I knew where this must have happened, so I walked over to check it out.

( Big Mess at the Center of Fernley )

The workers at the site confirmed what had happened with the big-rig accident damaging the utilities. As I got home, the city water department called me back to confirm that this was nothing I did wrong, but that they had no scheduled time for when the power would be back on. I assume that the power was restored as quickly as it was because NV Energy could route power around the site of the damaged pole.

After checking in with Lisa to fill her in on the damage, I went back to work. Fortunately, as it's the last day before a major holiday, volume was relatively light. I ran over to Grocery Outlet and stopped by Starbucks, both of which had working plumbing as they are on the other side of town. As I drove home, I went by the Imerys plant, which had shut down for the weekend, possibly doing so early due to a lack of water in the mains. The area near the plant that we call "Lake Imerys" because it is where all of the local water drains was once again full. There's no natural drainage there, and until it evaporates, big rigs making deliveries to the Imerys loading dock are going to be heavily inconvenienced.

Aside from having no running water at the house, it was otherwise an ordinary work day, albeit an inconvenient one. Our reserves and backups meant that we would be okay for a while. I was bit concerned about how long it would take to get the water running again, especially as it was still off when my supervisor told everyone around Noon my time that we could call it a day if all our tasks were cleared. Fortunately, just about 2 PM, the water came back on, so congratulations to the city water department as well as the NV Energy workers for dealing with the emergency repairs.

We just got the water bill for June. We were gone for most of the first two weeks of the month and turned the water off entirely at the main because we have nothing that should be using water while we are gone. I'm pleased to see that our bill is for what amounts to the lowest amount we could possibly be billed without being totally gone the entire month: 1 unit, which is 1,000 gallons. (They only bill in 1 kgal units, so I reckon even one drop counts as one unit). We'll have more this month despite having been gone for a week because the swamp coolers (two of them) use water, but I still think we're doing a decent job of conservation here. And we're really happy that Lisa found that leak when it came to the surface. Another reason we turn the main water off when we go off on a long trip is that we don't want to come back to find a watery surprise like an undermined foundation.

Lisa left me a message this afternoon. She said, "I want my money back. It's rained up here for more than fifteen minutes." In fact, it's rained off and on all day, but hasn't cooled things off that much, so instead of hot and dry, it's hot and muggy. This is probably the most rain we've had in Fernley in 24 hours than we've had since we moved there just under a year ago. It's still not a lot of rain, which is good because Fernley isn't built to handle a lot of water at once.