Taking a vacation is a flat out gamble. It’s right up there and almost equal to visiting a casino card table and doubling down ace high when the dealer is showing a 10! It’s risky! But we all do it and 8 out of ten times it all goes smooth. bUT…this is a different type of tale!
This here re-entry has been a doozy and one for the Abercrombie abroad record books! #abercrombieabroad. While we were away, Mr. Chicken Fry received a call from our marvelous house sitter who reported some tree damage. Due to several severe Texas thunderstorms that rolled through, one of our ginormous trees appeared to be seconds from crashing down onto my studio gym! Yikes!
Our trees are large and tall!
Thankfully with the help from a nearby neighbor, Mr. Chicken Fry was able to remedy the situation and have the tree extracted! Aside from the emergency sticker shock we never gave it a second thought. Living on a highly wooded acre lot, we have grown accustom to big branches and trees falling down.
Sunday evening, we rolled into our humble abode at about 9:30pm. We enjoyed a long cuddle session with our sweet puppy Faith then we three went into full blown unpack laundry mode. I followed it up with a hot Dr. Teals epsom salt bath!
Just before bed time about 10:45pm I turned down the bed and turned on the television, crawled under the covers only to discover there was no cable/ fios/ or internet service! After exhausting all the basic trouble shooting 101 techniques, I caved and called Spectrum who politely offered up the problem. The gentleman politely confirmed that we had no service and had been without it for 6 days when at exactly 3:05am the service was wiped out / interrupted. Most likely due to the storms.
Okay…that’s not unheard of because we often get blasted with torrential rain storms! So, I closed my tired eyes, reminisced about the beach and drifted off to sleep. At approximately 6:15am I dodged our sprinklers to my gym to fire up the air conditioners.
It was semi dark out and I heard an odd crunch just before I stepped into my gym but didn’t think much of it. My main objective was to get the AC on and hurry back to my percolating cup of coffee! Unfortunately what I quickly discovered was I had no power, no lights and which meant no air conditioning. You got to be kidding me! Was I on an episode of punked?
I turned, looked down to see startling shattered glass. Earth to angi…it’s now dawning on me that this could be related to the tree! Before I could panic, I placed genuine apology cancel calls to my next two clients who were already in route. Sigh! Now I had to investigate and piece together what in the world was happening. But first COFFEE! Can’t process or face this disturbing turn of events without my friendly warm cup of COFFEE! Then back to clean the mess in my gym! I made it to the circuit breaker and tripped all the buttons. By the grace of God one of the AC’s fired up! I begrudgingly swept up the baby chards of glass that must have jolted the fluorescent tubular lights to fall and crash into a zillion pieces.
I then had to pick up glass from the outside lights that had also fallen and busted! But still no lights and no radio or television. I felt like that commercial where everyone is panic-stricken mainly BECAUSE I have a FITness business to RUN! I was genuinely perplexed. But at least I knew I could do business in the dark w only one AC for my next group and private client.
Urgh…now it was time to deliver the news to Mr. Chicken Fry who will now want to go and do his own investigation. Who can blame him! His first discovery was the pool equipment failure. It was dead as a door knob y’all! This was getting real real REAL fast!
I called in an emergency reinforcement-which is code for I called our buddy Danny! He’s the hero of the story! He’s my Mr. Fix it for real guy! He has also worked for an electric company for over 35 years. He’s a good friend to have! Danny wasn’t at our house longer than 2 min when he said, “you know you were hit by lightning don’t ya?” I quickly asked, “how do you know?” He said, “let me show you the burn mark.”
HMMMkay…hadn’t thought to look around outside….dumb blonde moment!
Of course I hadn’t seen this…
Good grief…the day before I was carefree on beach… Reality was beginning to set in!
Danny’s theory is that lightning hit the tree and either a spark or current of lightening ran down hit this wire which fed in two directions. One way led right into my gym directly into the television basically destroying everything plugged in! The other current went directly to towards the fiber optics cable box and pool equipment. Boom! Not one outlet in my gym was protected with a surge protector. I’m a ding-dong! Therefore everything plugged in such as the new treadmill, tv, radio and speakers and ac were doomed. They didn’t stand a chance. They are history. Cuput!
We have also acquired a long list of media equipment failure as well! BUT…
Our house didn’t burn to the ground! I mean really, we could have pulled up to a pile of ashes. The reality is we are sooooo fortunate that this is not such a BIG deal! Good gosh this could have ended so badly and ugly. Thankful it’s just an insurance claim and a bit of a hassle.
Also on the bright side, hero Danny boy got the electricity restored to the gym and got one ac unit working. (Not for longI’m afraid…it’s on its last leg) Thank you Danny, aka miracle worker man! So now I can kick some workout warrior tail tomorrow! Tis travelers woes!
Insurance claims on fried treadmill, stereo and tv in gym. And the windshield from yesterday’s drive home! Can you even believe it?!?!
Oh joys of adulting. . Welcome home y’all!
Wait what? Did you catch that last part? While enjoying the ride home yesterday in the truck, we heard a loud crack, which I thought was a water bottle cracking, but no such luck! A rock flew up and cracked Mr. Chicken Fry’s NEW FORD truck windshield. About a golf ball size starburst crack and as drove in the rain it began to splinter wide and long!
So guess what…reentry was a bust but in the big scheme of things it feels more like breaking even!
I was so very flattered and proud of the champs that came and happily did their workout duty in the dark! That’s true loyalty and discipline! I love it. I have the best clients ever! One even brought me a wireless bluetooth speaker to play tunes! We did it!
Ya win some, ya risk some, you lose some! You live and learn and count the blessing along the way! We are home, healthy and safe!
Surge protectors are a big big deal. Thank goodness my Mac was protected with a battery back up surge protect thingy!
When in doubt unplug before you leave town!
Love, and travel because it’s worth the hassle!
Angi xo
