The Complexity of Simple Ideas
How a power outage turned one decision into many.
“When the power goes out, I go out.”
This phrase used to mean something different.
In The Beginning...
I live amongst many trees, and these many trees have many branches. When the wind picks up, one of the branches often makes its way to earth, stopping only briefly on its way down to collapse a power line and cut off some poor bastard's electricity. It's me. I'm the bastard.
Sometimes, the power would come back within a minute and we all got to pretend nothing happened. When it didn't, however, the subroutine for prolonged power loss went into effect. Panicked coordination with my friend next door followed while we ran hundreds of feet of extension cords from his portable generator to my refrigerator and garage freezer. Then we put everything on hold for however long it took for the power company to remedy the problem.
This was...suboptimal. Life completely stopped when this happened, including the ability to get any work done. In other words, when the power went out, I went out - like a light bulb. But I live amongst many trees, and these trees have many branches. This problem wasn't going away on its own.
Preparing To Prepare
Shortly after we first moved here, we discussed getting a generator to help mitigate the upheaval. This kicked off a long round of research about how much we needed, wanted, and could afford. We weighed the tradeoffs of getting a whole-house solution vs. a portable one. We decided gas vs. propane vs. renewable/battery backup. And on it went, down to me standing in the basement with my laptop making a spreadsheet about which breakers run which appliances and how much power each is likely to draw.
But before we could even buy the generator, we had to call an electrician to outfit our panel with the transfer switch necessary to connect an external power source in the first place. With that done, we were ready.
Then something occurred to me. What if we went through all this trouble, spent a bunch of money on the generator, and the next storm never came? I decided we should wait. We had everything we needed, down to the specs of the generator, but in my mind, we could defer that purchase until the next extended power outage. It's the old "wait until it's raining to buy an umbrella" technique. Of course, the wise among you will note that by waiting until it rains, you're already soaked by the time you open the umbrella.
Adding The Missing Pieces
A few months later, my dream of never having to actually buy the generator crashed and burned when a storm took out several trees causing damage to the power lines in multiple sections. This was a no-doubter. I fired up the family workhorse and headed across town to the gettin' place for the biggest portable generator we could find. As I pulled into the parking lot I saw others with the same idea. I crossed my fingers, toes, and butt cheeks that they'd still have something in stock.
To my surprise, they did. What they did not have, however, was the power cable necessary to connect it to the house. A minor detail. I got the generator home, unloaded it, and took out my phone to call around for the cable. I hate calling around. I've spent many an hour driving to stores I was certain had what I needed, only to find out what I could have learned by calling first. This time, I wasn't going to make that mistake. But there was a problem. No one had it. Every hardware store I called within a reasonable driving distance had no 30 amp generator cables. This thing wasn't going to be much good if I couldn't hook it up. The panic mounted and by the fifth call, I was getting desperate. The Lowe's 10 minutes away had nothing. The Ace 5 minutes away, nothing. Tractor Supply, Harbor Freight, Walmart, 3 other Ace Hardware's, every mom & pop...nothing. But then I remembered. 20 minutes away on the other side of town. Right next to the Target we never go to because they never have anything we need in stock, somehow. A Home Depot. In my mind there was no way they had it, especially after no one else even came close. I checked the app. 30 amps. 4 prongs. 25 feet.
In Stock. Qty: 1
I didn't call. If the app was wrong, I didn't want to know it. I just wanted to get into a car, drive to a store, and buy the only thing I needed. So that's what I did. I walked in, made a left, and two aisles down there it was. $89 seems like a lot of money for a glorified extension cord, but after all the sweating and fretting over not finding one, I was happy to pay it. I could finally power the house.
Prepared But Not Optimized
Once the minimum bar for any solution is cleared, some nagging details immediately emerge. How do I keep the rain off this thing in a storm? Where are we going to store this so I can get to it in a pinch without tripping over it the rest of the time? Do we have enough fuel on hand? How much should we have? What does maintenance look like? How many hours before I change the oil? Exceptional people address these questions right away. Average people defer these for "tomorrow's them". Some people likely don't even think to ask these questions, so I'm quite happy to lump myself in with the average. Regardless, as soon as I had the generator fueled up, fired up, plugged in, and switched on, tomorrow's me became right now's me.
I remembered we had a big camping canopy collecting dust in the basement, so I did the awkward solo dance of pitching that myself. Then I set off rearranging the space in a little vestibule we have behind the garage so I had a place to put it away when the time came. I already had a 5-gallon gas can I used for the mower, but that was only good for one refueling and this generator needs two per day if it’s running at full capacity. I knew we'd be out of power for at least a few days, and I didn't want to have to drive back and forth to the gas station every time I needed to refuel. So I took my can and went shopping for another so I could refuel both and be ready for the next day. I also picked up the oil I would need when it came time to change it.
Beyond that, there were even some nerdy details like buying a magnetic oil drain plug to catch any bits of metal to keep them from going through the engine. Unlike a car, the engine in this generator doesn't have an oil filter, so over time these tiny bits can put undue wear on it.
The Cherry On Top
With all the setup, optimization, and minute details accounted for, things worked pretty well. The only fly in the ointment was digging the generator out when we needed it. While it had its own spot in the space behind the garage, that vestibule is narrow and full of stuff. I still had to move snow shovels, garden tools, mulch bags, and other nonsense out of the way to clear the path to the door. Even then it was a tight contortionist act to get it turned and dropped down the single step onto the ground. After that, it was an arduous push up the grassy hill on the side of the house to bring it around back and get it positioned properly. Even mid-sized generators are heavy, and we got a behemoth, so I end up looking like a lineman pushing a training sled. The only thing missing is the offensive line coach standing on it, cursing at me.
It's just a shed. But one of its side benefits of building it was to give me a new place to store the generator and its accoutrement. The stretch of yard between the shed and its running spot is much flatter, and with the long ramp I built, getting it into position is faster and easier. Now our setup was as good as it was going to get.
How To Torture a Turn of Phrase
So far this deep dive into power outage logistics may seem superfluous. If we examine the phrase "when the power goes out, I go out", the meaning of "I go out" transforms depending on where I am on the problem-solving timeline. The problem itself emerges when it represents the cessation of action. I go out like a candle flame because everything I do requires power and with no backup, I'm reliant on the power company. Being prepared would mean having some way to take charge when these things happen, thus regaining agency over my circumstances even when an undesired event occurs.
So we prepared to prepare. We arranged all the necessary pieces to take control when the time came. We just needed the engine to power it all. When the time came, and the wind overcame the trees' ability to retain their branches, I entered into the second level of going out. But this time instead of shutting down my actions, it put me in motion. I had to “go out” to buy the generator. Thin as this metaphor is, it was stretched even further when they were out of power cables, sending me on an hours-long boondoggle to finally get up and running. But this was all a temporary state. These were the one-time actions in between a discovered and solved problem, which led to the final phase of "going out".
With the troubleshooting, the reconciliation of emergent details, and the building of the shed, this problem of going out is now not a problem but a matter of fact. When the power goes out, I go out to the shed to retrieve the idea of a solved problem in its fully realized form. At least this version. If I had more money to burn, I could have paid to offload this entire endeavor to a professional installer and a whole-home backup generator that automatically kicks on when the power goes out. But that doesn't illustrate the following point: every problem is like this.
The Problem With Problems
On its face, it's so simple: "Let's get a portable generator so we don't have our lives completely disrupted when the power goes out." But the moment we crack into something that looks like basic arithmetic, we find instant complexity. One idea - let's get a generator - spawns two children: Portable or whole-house? Practically speaking, we can't have both, so we choose one. Portable. Now we have a few grandchildren. What capacity do we need? Now we have to start researching every appliance and system in the house to get to the answer. Will it run on battery power from solar panels or fossil fuels? We don't get enough sun - remember the tree density is the whole reason this is a problem - so solar is out. So gasoline or propane? Now we have to research the pros and cons of each. Ok, gasoline. How do we store it? Where do we store it? How much do we need at a time, for how many days? If I'm on a trip and the power goes out, are my wife and kids physically strong enough to lift the 5-gallon jerry can to refuel it?
Guy at the store: "Looking to get a generator? Ok. How strong is your wife?"
Me: "Excuse me??"
Now I'm looking at cheap Chinese battery-powered fuel pumps that fit a portable gas container on Amazon.
It's this cascading and expanding of complexity that happens in most problems we face, and this example involved two people (my wife and me) who were actually on the same page. Involving additional humans (irrational creatures) who may disagree with the choices or even the entire philosophy of the problem can throw a blanket of doubt over the whole thing.
The solution? Know this going in. It's like trying to prepare someone who's never been to a major city. "Ok look, you're about to encounter some wild shit. Keep moving, don't make eye contact, and don't respond if someone asks for the time." If we properly set our expectations that things are certainly going to spiral down the toilet, we'll be that much more pleased with life when by some miracle that doesn't happen.