Friday, February 4, 2011 - Bosque Birdwatchers RV Park, San Antonio NM

Sandhill Crane, Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge, San Antonio NM, January 21, 2011

As luck would have it

This was a brutal storm we're just coming out of and I got lucky. John Farr has a great post today at FarrFeed about his reaction to the crisis up in Taos when the natural gas supply went down and how he and his dear wife coped.

I was reading just yesterday about the wisdom of resilience; the wisdom of having simple, bulletproof, systems in place to deal with the unexpected loss of services and I was feeling pretty smug about my setup. Until I realized while reading John's article this morning that I'd have been in deep doodoo if the electric grid had gone down, that is.

I had enough propane and clothes on hand to keep reasonably warm and to cook but I doubt I could have kept my fresh water tank from freezing - the pump froze a couple of times as it was - without electricity from the grid.

It didn't dawn on me what the frozen pump really meant until it froze. All my water was in the fresh water tank and I had no way to get it out. I didn't even have a jug of water in the fridge! Yikes!

I managed to get the pump thawed, it didn't burst, and all was well. But without electricity from the grid, so I could point a portable electric heater at it, getting that pump running would have been a real challenge.

These system critical moments don't come 'round often enough to keep me fully alert to the state of my systems and the implications of their vulnerabilities. I need to make a few changes around here - I want my smug back.

Night camp

Site 10 - Bosque Bird Watcher's RV Park, San Antonio NM

• This is a basic, small Mom & Pop RV Park with full hookups.
• Verizon cell phone and Broadband service are available here with a strong signal.
• Locate Bosque Bird Watcher's RV Park on my Night Camps map
• Click for Google street view
• Check the weather in San Antonio NM