Isaias: Why 2020 Can’t End Soon Enough

Some of you are probably saying that Tropical Storm Isaias (ee-sah-ee-ahs) was not as bad as forecasters had predicted. Of course those saying that have power and did not have trees fall or large branches decorate their front and back yards.

When I last checked there were about 250,000 JCP&L customers in Ocean and Monmouth County without power so to them the storm was a big deal. As for me here is my Tuesday story:

We lost power in our downtown Toms River office early in the afternoon which KO’d my computer so I headed home early just as the sun was actually starting to come out.  Fortunately where I live in Beachwood we did not lose power but later in the day I learned my mother, who lives in Seaside Heights was without any.  At age 92 she has refused a cell phone (to this point) so we had no way to reach her although a friend checked on her around 5pm and she was fine.

Once we found out that power might be out for days we decided to have her stay with my sister in Winslow Township so shortly after 7 p.m. my daughter Alex and I drove to her house to give her the news.  It took Mom about a half-hour to get her things together, we emptied her freezer and refrigerator into a cooler and began what would be about a 50 mile trip to our meeting place in Marlton.

Alex & I had not eaten so we figured we would just grab something on the way. We did not figure everything basically on Route 37 would be closed.  The exception to that was Popeye’s which had the longest line I have ever seen at a fast-food place with traffic backed up nearly to Hooper Avenue. It was chaos and it was not for us.

So we kept driving looking for food and now ice for the cooler and expected that once we got out of the Toms River area things would get better. They did not.  Power was out for most of our journey down Route 70 and the one Wawa that was open had long lines and no ice.

With detours along the way we finally met my sister around 8:30 p.m.  and after dropping Mom off began the trip back, now needing a bathroom stop as well as food and ice.  We finally found a Wawa on Route 70 in Whiting, ordered sandwiches we really didn’t want (it was too late) and struck out again when it came to ice.

I got home just after 10:30 p.m. and in time to see both the New York Rangers and New York Mets lose which was par for the course.  Went to sleep around 11:30 and then got up at 3:30 this morning for work.

Tuesday was just the latest example of why 2020 can’t end soon enough.