We are now solar powered! It is awesome. We actually have some leftover panels too. Guess I overestimated how many we would need.
Granted, it was long, tedious work, opening those boxes and laying out all those panels. And making sure they all fed into the battery array the starting sets had given me. And hooking the battery array into our extension cord that would be our main power line.
But if it means renewable power to keep our radio going and my food from spoiling, I would do it all again. And sooner.
There was a bit of a break at about...I want to say two. Grace came back from her raiding with her wagon and said that she'd finished getting what she could from the apartments that were open. So I accompanied her to another apartment building, and bashed it open next.
Maybe in a week or month or so, when the flies have died off, I'll recommend we hit up Wal-Mart again for dry goods. Assuming there are any left and insects or strays haven't taken the store over.
Of course, I could have gotten the set-up done a little faster if I hadn't been...
...Okay, I've been trying to control my wings, all right? It only stands to reason. Something with wings is meant to make use of them, unless it's an ostrich.
I managed to find the new muscle groups easily enough, I've only been causing all sorts of pain back there thanks to me using my back as an acceptable way to carry large, unwieldy items. And I even got enough control to flap my wings a good dozen times or so.
I'll have to make some sort of exercise regimen for my wings if I actually want to use them, though. And I sorta do. It'd be hella useful. Alternative mode of transport number...three?
Oh, that reminds me. Alternative transport. I know that these things exist...Yeah, that was what they were called. Tesla roadsters. Electric powered car. That, would be useful. It might suck all our power out while we charge it, but it'd be renewable...at least until the battery started to corrode. Still, that'd take it a while.
Now all we have to do is find one...bah, who am I kidding. We can't be that lucky.
"So," I told Grace as we gathered around the radio again. "I'm gonna take the van south tomorrow. Hit up a farming supplies store that I know of, see if there's anything left in it so we can start growing our own food. Think you'll be okay while I do that?"
Grace just nodded, and Skippy whined.
"Aw, hey, I won't be gone long," I told the mutt as I gave him a quick pet. "And I got an important job for you to do while I'm out, Skippy. You need to watch Grace, make sure that no bad dogs get her."
The border collie woofed once, either because he understood or he didn't. Not sure which I prefer at the moment, to be honest.
"To those of you in the Denver area that can hear us, you are not alone. I'm Henry." "And I'm Grace. We're willing to help those that need it." "In times like these, we need to help one another." "It is far more important that we stand together than apart in the wake of this event." "Just...please, be out there to hear us."
Telsas for everypony! And Everygiff.
6545869 Yeah!!!
6545869 I went to the mall which I used to hang out at when I was a sullen teenager. We had a house right behind the place. When I was a child, they obliterated the farm that used to be there, they literally tore off the top of the hill to make a flat space to build a mall. In the middle of digging things out in preparation for laying foundations, the property went into limbo due to a bribery-and-corruption scandal that tied the whole development up for the better part of a year. I would go scrambling around in the desolation with a toy M1 - the sort they sold before people started panicking about kids with realistic war-toys and started putting orange tips on everything - and played war-in-the-trenches; it looked that much like the Somme, or Verdun. When it finally got built, I would hang out in the bookstores there, eat at the food court, go hiking in the brush and crown vetch that covered the indifferently-landscaped slopes around the place. Part of my childhood, is what I'm saying. Ugly, chrome-and-exposed-grillwork sort of Eighties monstrosity, but it was a place, all in all.
So I went back, and it's unrecognizable. No bookstores, no game shops, nothing electronics-oriented except for five different cellular storefronts. Full of extortionately expensive rich-jackwagons-with-more-money-than-fashion-sense bollocks. And what did I find, in the middle of this stupidly upper-crust mall? A Tesla storefront. For people to window-shop and pretend they're richer and more cutting-edge than they actually are.
What I'm saying, I suppose, is that if you're doing one of these stories with, I don't know, a Zebra in Pittsburgh - there's a Tesla showroom in Ross Park Mall.