Shut Up and Go Ride!: I have an excuse...

Yeah...I haven't posted in a while. But like the title says, I have an excuse.
I was feeling a little banged up, and my knees were hurting me, so I took a few days off early in the week.

KL and I met Thursday, Hurricane Matthew be damned, and went out to the Night Ride. Seems there are 10 brave souls, as that's how many showed for the ride. We had a good spin on an otherwise lovely evening.
Even rode up to the Old Wire overpass to see the contraflow traffic on I-26. Weird.
2 hours at night is good for you, both physically, and mentally. Big fun riding with the core members of the Night Ride group too. I missed it last Winter while I was laid up...
The weather deteriorated Friday, and Friday night, we caught the leading edge of the Hurricane.
Big rain, big wind.
Trees down everywhere. No flooding, but the trees falling took down power everywhere, including our house.
Our neighbor, who is a super nice, super bright guy, doesn't understand how easements work, and thought the dead tree in his backyard was (notice the past tense) his neighbor's tree. Nope.
The big, dead tree came down about 10am Saturday morning. One big 40mph gust, and BOOM. Tree down.
Ripped the supply line clean off the pole transformer. No power for us.
Now, for most people, this isn't a big deal. Ride it out. Not here.
You see, we have a basement, thus, we have a sump pump to keep it dry. Did I mention our NEW HVAC system is down there? And our hot water heater? Yeah.
4.5" of rain tends to make the water table rise. And with no pump operating, it started to fill the basement. After about 4 hours, there was 3-4" of water downstairs. SCE&G had no timeline for repair. Time to get busy.
I have an inverter in The Beast, but sadly, it wasn't big enough to run the pump. In case you're curious about such things, here's the electrical equation...
Watts/120v = Amps.
The inverter in the truck is 800w. The pumps draws 9.7 Amps. 800/120 = 8.33333 Amps. Not enough.
Any inverter over 1200w must be hard-wired, and I just didn't have that kind of time. We tried to find a generator to buy. Yeah...right...
Fuck it. Time for the bucket brigade.
At this point, there was 6+" downstairs. It was now dark outside.
Fortunately, I have a lot of bike lights. I hung them everywhere in the basement, and lanterns lit the way upstairs.
I dipped a 2 gallon bucket into the sump hole, filled (2) 5 gallon buckets, and carried them up the stairs, through the house, and out the back door.
Fill, up the stairs, dump. Repeat.
I lost count of how many trips were made. I DO know that I went balls-out for about 70 minutes.
As I got it to a point where I felt I could stop, and carried the last two buckets up the steps, the power came back on, and the pump finished off the job.
I showered, ate, and fell out on the couch. Wrecked. Ride Sunday? LOLZ.
I fell asleep @ 11. I woke up Sunday morning @ 10.
We're lucky. We lost power for a day. No damage to the house.
The Lowcountry of SC is smashed. Parts of NC are still underwater. Big losses everywhere.
The soreness in my back and legs is just about gone. I'm planning to ride tonight, but wondering how The PowerStation faired. Betting it's trashed...

Trying to get back to "normal" around here....