Back from San Diego

This post is kind of late in coming--I've been back in Newcastle since Sunday the 11th but have been kind of busy since arriving, and still haven't unpacked! My last night in San Diego was kind of interesting; we experienced the great San Diego Blackout of 2011! Try this link for a story that's better than I could tell it. On Thursday afternoon my friend Heather came over for lunch, and before we left I took her out in the back yard to show off the view of Mission Valley. One of the things that stood out to me was that from where we were it was quite obvious that there was a trolley stopped in an abnormal spot on the track. We mulled over the strange sight for a minute, not thinking much of it. Until a neighbor informed me that the power was out.
We were at a loss as to what to do for a few minutes. It was still light outside but we did take a few minutes to find the flashlights, check batteries, and put some candles out for when it got dark. And we turned on the radio to try to figure out what was going on. The first reports about the outage were not very informative--no one knew what had caused the outage! I should probably mention that the power was out all over San Diego County. That's 1.4 million customers; at least 3 million people. What was very worrisome were the estimates to the time it would take for power to be restored--at least a day, maybe 2 or more. Keep in mind this is all happening on Thursday, and my plan was to leave San Diego on Friday. What would I do if the power wasn't restored? It's a bit harder to find a working gas station when the power is out. Luckily, everything turned out just fine. The power ended up coming on around 10 that night (much sooner than expected!), and we had no trouble driving north from San Diego on Friday.
Now that you've read through that whole synopsis, I do have a couple of photos! The first is what the westward view from the back yard usually looks like at night. The second is roughly the same view on the night that the power was out.