Oh man! The 2003 blackout was AWESOME!!! I’m from Cleveland, and I thought I caused it. Local time power went out at 3:45pm exactly. I know that because in those days I worked at a regional grocery store, and we used physical plastic time cards that you swipe, and then it beeps and you click the button that says “In” to clock in after it beeps.
Well, I start my shift at 4pm, and I was allowed to clock in 15 minutes early, but not 16 minutes early.
So at 3:44 I’m waiting. And waiting. And then 3:45. Swiiiipe! power dies
What’d I do? Oh fuck…what did I do? It didn’t even beep. I swiped my card, and then everything went black…
These were the days when your phone didn’t have a flashlight, but the nokia phones of those days were bright enough you could kinda use the screen itself as a source of light.
So once I made my way out of the office, I realized the whole BUILDING had no power. Now I was less sure I caused it. I thought one breaker had somehow gotten tripped, but that would just be a small portion of the building.
Then a coworker came running in, and said the whole block was out. So now I knew I had nothing to do with it. We turned on the radio, as we waited to figure out what to do. The music got interupted a half hour later saying the whole city was out. Within another hour we found out it was half the country.
So we got sent home before it turned dark. And thats when the day got fun. We sat on the sidewalk with lanterns and candles at our apartment building. We then watched in pitch black as a single headlight came flying around the corner real fast. A motorcycle that was then followed by about 3 cop cars chasing him. We’re all drunk on the sidewalk, sitting on folding chairs. We see the motorcycle go flipping and there is no way for me to describe the weird light show we saw. It lasted forever, and also onlu about 2 seconds. We had no idea what it was.
Turns out the motorcycle hit a curb at 70mph in the dark, went airborn and was flipping through the air, before crashing through the window of a house.
It took police 90 minutes to find the rider. Because they thought he ran on foot. Turns out he hit the wall above the window, died on impact, and his body fell to the ground behind a bush.
But we were all laughing not knowing he was dead. We were just imagining being inside that house, in candle light, before randomly a motorcycle crashes into your front window.
We just thought he did a magic trick, and vanished. Suddenly cops were descending on our block, with ambulances, and for some reason a fire truck. So we took that as our cue to go inside and smoke weed, and have sex all night.
Next day is when we found out what we saw. We didn’t know he had died. We eventually had figured out the light show was the motorcycle flipping end over end.
Oh man! The 2003 blackout was AWESOME!!! I’m from Cleveland, and I thought I caused it. Local time power went out at 3:45pm exactly. I know that because in those days I worked at a regional grocery store, and we used physical plastic time cards that you swipe, and then it beeps and you click the button that says “In” to clock in after it beeps.
Well, I start my shift at 4pm, and I was allowed to clock in 15 minutes early, but not 16 minutes early.
So at 3:44 I’m waiting. And waiting. And then 3:45. Swiiiipe! power dies
What’d I do? Oh fuck…what did I do? It didn’t even beep. I swiped my card, and then everything went black…
These were the days when your phone didn’t have a flashlight, but the nokia phones of those days were bright enough you could kinda use the screen itself as a source of light.
So once I made my way out of the office, I realized the whole BUILDING had no power. Now I was less sure I caused it. I thought one breaker had somehow gotten tripped, but that would just be a small portion of the building.
Then a coworker came running in, and said the whole block was out. So now I knew I had nothing to do with it. We turned on the radio, as we waited to figure out what to do. The music got interupted a half hour later saying the whole city was out. Within another hour we found out it was half the country.
So we got sent home before it turned dark. And thats when the day got fun. We sat on the sidewalk with lanterns and candles at our apartment building. We then watched in pitch black as a single headlight came flying around the corner real fast. A motorcycle that was then followed by about 3 cop cars chasing him. We’re all drunk on the sidewalk, sitting on folding chairs. We see the motorcycle go flipping and there is no way for me to describe the weird light show we saw. It lasted forever, and also onlu about 2 seconds. We had no idea what it was.
Turns out the motorcycle hit a curb at 70mph in the dark, went airborn and was flipping through the air, before crashing through the window of a house.
It took police 90 minutes to find the rider. Because they thought he ran on foot. Turns out he hit the wall above the window, died on impact, and his body fell to the ground behind a bush.
But we were all laughing not knowing he was dead. We were just imagining being inside that house, in candle light, before randomly a motorcycle crashes into your front window.
We just thought he did a magic trick, and vanished. Suddenly cops were descending on our block, with ambulances, and for some reason a fire truck. So we took that as our cue to go inside and smoke weed, and have sex all night.
Next day is when we found out what we saw. We didn’t know he had died. We eventually had figured out the light show was the motorcycle flipping end over end.