The Devastation of Wilma Day 2:A Gas Odyssey

After spending the morning being stunned and reviewing damage information from Florida Power and Light and the local news stations, we trekked across broward county looking for an open gas station to keep our cars and generators running.
Janet and Mike had gotten a head start and waited at a Hess station on Griffin for several hours before they ran out of fuel. They had been there for three hours, were within a dozen customers of the pumps... It was 1pm, they next truck would be there around 5pm. They moved on in search of another station and we continued our trek to the southeast to join them.they found a Texaco that was using a generator to run the pumps and shortly after we arrived and joined them. I hopped in line with Mike and the kids (kris, Devyn, and her friend) went to the end of the queue. the person in front of mike asked in a heavy accent if we would keep his place while he rode his bicycle home and right back. 'Bike Man' said he would be five minutes but was gone for almost an hour, but he returned with a couple more small 2.5 gallon gas cans and a sixpack of Budweiser as a reward for holding his spot. At one point some police arrived and milled about. We learned that the roofing company next to the station needed fuel to roll their trucks and stuck a bargain with the station operator to hook up the generator in return for priority refills. The station had been shut down by the police twice before that morning because of tense customers starting brawls in line and the mixture of vehicle and foot traffic. On the third attempt to service customers, they only permitted foot traffic at the gas station and things went failry smooth. This was our first experience with rationing, as they were limiting customer sales to $40 per person. We rearranged our gas cans so that we could fill the cans, run them to Janet and Anita's cars, then run them back to fill them from the kids place in line so we could leave with fuel for the generators. It was a good plan, and the cars got enough gas to get by, however when the kids and I (I had gone back to stand with this kids) got to the pump, it was 6:00PM and curfew was an hour away so the station operator change the ration to one can per person. Ultimatly everyone got enough gas to last another couple days and we all returned home.

A Bath Odyssey
No electricity, no hot water. OK. two large pans of water, heat them on the grill and mix with cooler water in the bathtub for Victoria. This amazing technique provides a bath approximately 3 inches deep, whoop-de-doo. Make do with what ya got. Oh yea, its dark out and we are doing everything by candle light and flashlights/lanterns.