We are living at the Holiday Inn. I felt like I lived out of hotels when Yoda and I drove around the country. And sometimes I feel like I live out of hotels with all the traveling Eric and I do. But this time is different. This isn’t by choice and doesn’t have anything to do with work, and we are only 10 minutes from our house and not in some far away location.
It started last Thursday night when freezing rain started flooding our basement. We spent hours bailing out the water until Eric finally figured out a way to temporarily divert the leak. Then Friday morning things got worse when a so-called “bomb cyclone” hit, bringing with it snow and, in some locations, hurricane force winds. Within a couple hours the storm had uprooted one tree, which knocked down our fence and landed in the pool. Then another tree fell and took out our phone line. Finally, a third tree fell and landed on the power lines over our driveway. Instantly we had no heat, no running water or flushable toilets (our well is powered by electricity), no lights, and no internet.
So we checked ourselves into a nearby Holiday Inn so we could continue to work. But within an hour of settling into our room, the hotel lost power. When it hadn’t come 
back on by early evening, we moved to a different nearby hotel that still had electricity, but within 15 minutes of us checking in, that hotel’s power went out. Because the Holiday Inn had a technician valiantly trying to fix the generator and had gotten to the point where they had limited power in the lobby, we decided to move back to that hotel with the hope that the generator would power some of the rooms.
With each move, we were lugging a cooler (in our attempt to save our food from rotting in our fridge), a guitar, suitcases and computer bags up and down the dark stairwells of the hotels because, quite obviously, the elevators weren’t working. By the time we got back to the Holiday Inn, we collapsed into bed. Right before we went to sleep, Eric fist bumped me and said “Disaster Buddies,” which was both hilarious and comforting at the same time as he reminded me that we were in this together. The storm was a doozy—at least five people died and 1.7 million people and businesses lost power.
The power came back on at the hotel Saturday afternoon. But not at our house. And not at many many other people’s homes. In fact, when a conference of 300 people checked out of our hotel on Sunday, there was a line out the door with people trying to claim the newly vacated rooms. People waited in line for two hours to get rooms, and some sadly had to be turned away.
It’s now our sixth day of living in the Holiday Inn. The hotel guests are all starting to recognize each other. People give one another a knowing nod in the elevator when they see someone carrying a bag of groceries, a cooler, or bottled water up to their rooms.
Our next-door neighbors are here and we’ve met many other locals who have taken refuge at the hotel with their families and pets. I’ve never seen so many dogs in a hotel (which, quite frankly, is totally awesome). Most of these dogs have never been in a hotel, and given they are here with their humans as fellow storm refugees, I’m not about to complain about the pile of dog poo in the hallway outside my room, or about the pile of poo in the elevator. Really, I get it. The humans are freaked out, and so the animals are freaked out too.
To keep myself from going stir crazy in the room, I’ve been finding little corners of the hotel to work in. We’ve also tried our best to make our room feel more like home. We brought our own coffee, coffee maker and mugs, a tea kettle, dishes, silverware, dish detergent, hand soap…and of course our brag-worthy disaster preparedness means we also have plenty of avocados and gourmet chocolate on hand.
But after six days with no sign in sight of our power being restored, I’m starting to struggle to spin positive. Especially given I’m sitting here writing this while the second Nor’easter in a week is hitting. Adding an even more surreal twist to the week, this morning I was on Good Morning America in a segment where they were warning people about this dangerous storm while also highlighting that there are many of us still without power from last Friday’s storm.
The smart people who do the weather on TV have been saying that this storm, with up to 14 inches of very wet, heavy snow, will likely take out more people’s power. This is bad news for us. We live in the woods with a downed power line that is only connected to our house. The rule of power restoration is to restore power to the areas where the most people are impacted.
Yet each time that Eric and I start to get down about our situation, we fist bump each other and say “Hey disaster buddy,” which makes us laugh. Then we talk about Puerto Rico, where there are still 400,000 people without power, almost six months after back-to-back hurricanes ravaged the island. Now that’s a reality check. Those people don’t have the luxury of living in a hotel, with comfy beds, lights, Wi-Fi, and plenty of fresh food and clean water. Puerto Ricans are living the true disaster, and it’s all too easy to forget that.
So until our power comes back on and we can move home, I’ll continue to fist bump my disaster buddy, while remembering that we aren’t really living a disaster. The old adage is true: Home is where the heart is. My heart is with Eric. And since he’s here at the Holiday Inn with me, it’s a pretty good place to be.
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