Outfitting, Part 2: Buggy's First Storm

One of my greatest fears about staying in New England through the New Year was the potential for a blizzard. I dreaded December and kept my fingers crossed that we would be far south by the time the winter weather made an appearance. Turns out I was worried about the wrong thing. Just two weeks after we brought Buggy home to MA, a crazy Nor 'Easter blew in, with wind gusts over 70mph. We had no idea how our trailer would hold up, given that it was still empty, and with it being all aluminum, only weighs 7500 pounds. Plus my parents' neighborhood is notorious for tremendous numbers of downed trees every storm.

Up at our house, we crossed our fingers and hoped for the best. We didn't want more dents on Buggy! But when we lost power, we feared the worst. In 7 years of living in our house, we never had a power outage that lasted more than a few hours. My parents' however, lose their power literally every storm, including this one. So there we were, experiencing power outages, with my parents giving me Buggy updates between cell phone charges. My mom informed me that a lot of branches had fallen near Buggy, with some close calls, but he was still standing strong. We went down to check on him as soon as it was safe to drive the local roads.

Driving the streets around my parents' house was surreal. It was like tornado hit. A neighbor's roof was busted by a tree; there was dirt and mud everywhere; we were dodging downed trees, potholes, and downed wires. A giant branch had come down scarily close to our trailer, but, besides a whole lot of pine needles, leaves, and small branches, Buggy was unscathed.

At that point, we were all on day 2 without electricity, and so Anthony and I opened up Buggy for business. We started the generator and furnace, borrowed my mom's Keurig, and invited my parents inside for coffee, warmth, and charging outlets. We spent the day all huddled in our messy, mid-reno trailer: 4 people and 2 dogs (we were dog sitting at the time). Yet, that day it felt more like home than ever.

We had been growing tired of the constant setbacks we were experiencing with our modifications (which I'll discuss in the next post), but that day, they didn't seem to matter as much. No matter what projects we finished before launching full-time, this trailer was becoming home to us. I was happy that my parents got to spend some time in the trailer doing more than just helping us with renovations, and I was even more happy that Buggy served as a perfect refuge when we needed him the most.