Today’s post is for all of you who have a dream of living here in St. John. š
The majority of my island tour guests ask what it’s like to live here on St. John, and the reality is that it’s pretty incredible… until it’s not – lol.
I woke up yesterday morning around 6:45 a.m. Usually I can hear the TV in the next room (remember I live in an itty bitty little house), and yesterday, I heard silence. “Mike, do we have power?” I asked from our room. “Nope. It just went off.” I was aggravated by it, but this happens from time to time here, so we’re somewhat used to it. I expected it to be back on within the hour, but that didn’t happen yesterday. All I could think was, thank goodness I showered last night! Yesterday’s guests were probably thankful for that too!
When I woke up yesterday, there was a ton of thunder and lightning. That’s pretty unusual for St. John. Well apparently lightning struck somewhere in St. Thomas, and both islands were fully out of power. It was raining pretty hard, which means traveling around the island can be pretty tough. Sheets of water pour down the hillsides, and small rocks fall into the roadway. Within minutes, the school text us and told us that we had a two-hour delay – for rain. We don’t get snow delays, we get rain delays. š
My tour guests still wanted to see the island (the rain let up before our start time, fortunately), so Mike took Dalton to work with him before school started. You may have caught a glimpse of him on The Beach Bar’s webcam yesterday morning. I am thankful that I live in a community where we can bring our children to work if need be.
So here we were in an island-wide power outage and guess what decides to happen – generators decided not to work. The one at Wharfside Village was out, which mean the restaurants and hotel were in the dark. The one over at Skinny Legs quit too, as the restaurant was filled with guests. The Windmill Bar and Miss Lucy’s were forced to close too due to the power and weather issues.
As I walked out of Skinny’s yesterday with my hungry tour guests, I text Bridgett, owner of Palm Tree Charters:
“This is the day we need to tell everyone about when they ask us what it’s like to live in paradise lol,” I wrote.
“For real,” she immediately responded.
The power finally came on yesterday about six or seven hours after it went out, and life was back to normal. But was it? Fast forward to today…
I woke up a bit warm around 3 a.m. this morning. Mike happened to be up too. “No power?” I asked. “Nope,” he immediately replied. Ugh, here we go again!
It’s now 8:45 a.m., and we still do not have any power. My house is basically a dead zone, so no power means no internet, no cell service, no communications, nothing. So we hooked up the small generator simply so I can get internet to share this story with all of you. Thanks Mike for begrudgingly turning it on for me!
We have been out of power for about 10 or so of the past 24 hours with no end in sight. For those of you who want to move to St. John, this will become part of your normal. It’s something that you simply have to roll with and find the humor in. Like this post by WAPA this morning, our water and power company. They graciously pointed out that offices will have a delayed opening this morning “due to a districtwide power outage.” Hey guys, just letting you know that you can’t pay your power bill because we don’t currently have power. But as soon as we fix it, make sure you head on over and pay your bill!
You can’t make this stuff up, folks! And this is why I love it here – with or without power. š
Have a great day!
Want to learn more about St. John? Looking to take an island tour?
Learn more here ā> www.explorestj.com/tour See the island of St. John with a resident. See the nooks and crannies that many visitors miss. Explore the beaches, historical sites, perhaps a tiki bar or two, and much more. Full & half days available. Rated āExcellentā on TripAdvisor.
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