It Took Almost Four Hours For the Power to Come Back On. "When the Elephants Fight," the Alleged African Saying Goes...

The power went off at about 11:15 this morning.  I soon got an e-mail from FPL saying they hoped to have it restored by 12:15.  Eventually, they sent another e-mail saying they expected the power to be back on by 5:00.

It was unclear to me what happened, but I was told by others that there was a line down at the corner of 119th St and 9th Avenue, just several yards from my house.  I'm sure that was right, in part because there were a few FPL repair trucks and some BP police cruisers at that intersection, which was closed off.

Those trucks spent the first part of their time at that intersection, but at some point, they were in front of my house.  I could see the repair workers testing the tension in the lines, and putting on something that I supposed was a gauge, to see if power was running in them.  (It wasn't at that point.)

Once the trucks were no longer in front of my house, but the power still wasn't on, I decided to go get some food.  (FYI, Vega's Burger now doesn't open until 6:00.  Bummer.  They have very decent veggie burgers and "seasoned fries.")

I settled on prepared food from Whole Foods, and I sat outside there to eat it.  My plan was to get my car washed after that.  While I was at Whole Foods, I got another FPL e-mail saying the power was now back on.  So, I finished my lunch, got my car wash, and went back home.  No, the power was not back on.  That happened at about 3:15, with no further updates.

But here's the thing that caught my attention today.  The trucks in front of my house were jockeying for position (two of them had cherry pickers), and to get their spots, they would drive across the median.  Setting aside what frustration and resentment this excites in me, I was thinking about other medians I know.  For example, I thought about the ones along Biscayne Boulevard in Miami Shores, south of about 106th St.  Those medians have royal palm trees, and probably 18-24 inch shrubs.  What would trucks, or any vehicles, do if they were on one side of those medians, and wanted to be on the other side?  Drive to the end of the block or piece of median, make a U-turn, and come back the other way.  Or, if they were emergency utility vehicles, like FPL repair trucks, and they both had to be on the same side of  the street, but facing opposite directions, one of them would back along until it got to the desired spot.

This really isn't rocket science.  It's not complicated at all.  It's a matter of having medians that anyone wants to be nice, and to look nice, and making it happen.  It costs money, but it doesn't have to be Village money, or not much of it.  The people, like me, who live on those medians would most likely donate to improve their own medians.  Some people would donate to improve other medians, maybe just because they want to live in a nice place, instead of a skanky-looking place.

There was no need for the FPL repair trucks to drive on the median in front of my house.  There's no need for the people who live sort of across the street to drive on them, which they do all the time.

But people will drive on the medians, if the medians don't look like something on which people shouldn't drive.  "Keep Off the Medians" signs?  Yeah, how's that working?

It's just a step we've never taken, and something we've never done for ourselves.  And we should.  We should live in a nice place.  We should want to live in a nice place.  It's a curiosity that we seem not to want that.