We are at home today returning last evening from a several day visit to Brooklyn, NY.  Our daughter moved on Sunday, and we parental units provided assistance with the move and the furnishing of the newly renovated house.  The move went well and was completed before the arrival in the evening of the post-hurricane-Sandy storm that produced an extraordinary storm surge along the northern New Jersey and coastal New York area. 

Moves are difficult  affairs, especially so for cash-strapped young families moving into a first house.  The presence of a set of parents provides valuable labor and experience but also add to the stress.  We tried to be useful but respectful and especially not to interfere with the establishment of the household.  None of the parties involved needed a major storm to add to the mix, but Sandy didn’t care.

Anne arrived before I did.  There was a wedding dress to shop for.  I drove in early on Saturday morning.  Google and the GPS said to take the Holland Tunnel to Manhattan and then across the Williamsburg Bridge.  The trip went well although I’m not sure the GPS gave the best route.  Without a navigator I had to “trust my instruments.”  They got me there OK.  I joined in the tasks of making the new home ready, completing the packing and making the old apartment “broom clean.”  We enjoyed a take-out Indian dinner with the refreshing company of the next generation.  With Adam, the wine is always grand.

Early on Sunday I went with my future son-in-law to fetch the rental truck while Anne and daughter continued to pack.  Mary-Helen and Mark called and offered to help with the move.  We welcomed their coming.  The weather was damp and blustery, but serious rain held off through the day.  We began the many trips in and out of the ground floor apartment.  We needed to make two trips with the truck.  There were many steps up into the entrance of the new home. 

Good news was that the new owners are taking the first floor unit and tenants will occupy the second and third floors.  Bad news was that the move was from the west to the east edge of Bedford Stuyvesant neighborhood.  Going back and forth was a long slow trip.  So, it was a typical and challenging move.  We dined out and enjoyed Italian food on this evening.  Brooklyn has many kinds of fine food.  Returning to the house we slept between the stacks of boxes. 

On Monday we undertook unpacking and home improvement activities.  Prospective tenants were coming through the apartment during the move.  The renovations that had been made did not include critical bathroom accessories such as toilet paper and towel racks.  I worked on that and discovered how difficult it is to drill through tile.

Meanwhile the weather worsened.  I had noticed that the basement needed cleaning and gave it a coarse sweeping so that some items could be stored there.  While doing that I studied the systems.  Didn’t look too bad.  The basement door was study but rusted.  I couldn’t see much of the drainage system.  I saw what looked like one drain pipe going into the floor. 
Later in the day when I was bringing items into the basement, I noticed trouble.  Water was dripping out of that drain pipe.  I brought Elley down to look at it and we tore out a bit of dry wall to expose more.  This revealed that it was in fact the vent at the trap to the sewer.  It was full of water.  I gave the bad news to the kids.  They needed a plumber.  That is expensive in NYC and with the storm took seven hours.  The good news was that a simple snaking opened up the pipe.  There were rags in the pipe.  No surprise that a long vacant and renovated house had that problem.  The renovator should have cleaned out the pipe, but “these things happen.”  The sewer now drained smoothly and we could begin using the plumbing again.  We cooked in baking a whole chicken.  Clean-up would have been difficult without plumbing. 

Overnight the storm raged.  The lights flickered but we were on high ground.  In other parts of the city it was much worse, evacuations, flooding, and a major fire.  We had planned to leave on Tuesday but stayed put.  There was lots to do and Lowes was open.  I finished installing the bathroom fixtures and lots of door stops in the upstairs apartment.  The unpacking was mostly completed.  Our daughter went to work for a few hours.  The storm left town.  Anne cooked ravioli.

On Wednesday, yesterday morning, we knew it was time to leave.  We made an egg breakfast for everybody and waited until ten o’clock.  We hoped to slip out against traffic, but it took us two hours to get on the Brooklyn Queens Expressway.  The problem was the traffic trying to get into Manhattan.  The BQE was stalled and that backed up traffic on the streets of Brooklyn.  We finally got around the last bottleneck at the northbound ramp onto the BQE (making an illegal maneuver) and rolled easily up the southbound ramp.  We continued moving, if at times slowly, to the Verazanno Narrows Bridge and onto Staten Island.  The back-up in the other direction continued for a few miles after that. 

We stayed on 440 and I-287 to I-78 into New Jersey without incident.  Needing fuel we exited near the Round Valley Lake where I knew there were clean stations with low-priced gasoline.  This was a mistake.  The power was out and a long line was in place for the one station with a generator.  We returned to the highway without stopping.  I calculated that I could reach Lebanon PA without a refill.  We restrained our bladders until we reached the Pennsylvania welcome station which had power.  Inquiry there indicated that power was patchy between there and Harrisburg.  The gal told us there was power and gas at the next exit, but we blanked after the merge onto the interstate and I saw the ramp as we passed it.  We started looking for evidence of power (light traffic signals) before making an exit and finally fueled up at Fogelsville.  Now, with a full tank of gas we were confident we would sleep in our own bed last night. 

There were many downed trees along the way and more than a few highway signs.  I worried a bit about the road through the forest from I-81 to our home.  We sailed clearly over the main ridge of South Mountain and down to Pine Grove Furnace State Park.  There we found route 233 closed.  A large tree was down behind the barricade.  This was not good, but being near home I knew alternate routes.  I wondered if they would be open.  The first one was and we arrived home twenty minutes later.  Our yard was a mess with leaves and twigs, but all was well.  I turned on the water and started the pellet stove.  Today I clean up.

A final comment.  Sandy was a weak hurricane but a severe depression.  As such it produced an extraordinary storm surge that caused most of the damage.  Storm surge is the reason development at low elevations along the seashore is subject to periodic destruction.  I would be the last person to suggest that one not build there but the first to say that the public should not subsidize such development through either disaster relief or flood insurance.  Such “welfare” encourages unwise development and is unfair both to those who build along the coast but do not seek handouts to absorb the additional cost and to those who elect not to build along the coast to avoid these costs.  People managed well and made better decisions before government assistance for “disasters” became common.  I must think that payment for bad decisions makes us all poorer.