The Traveling Ridleys: Sunday Journal

Melissa was out walking and I was reading an article on my computer when the lights went out. There’s a lot of construction (always) near our apartment, so losing water or power isn’t super unusual. We aren’t on all of the notification lists (though that has been attempted with only mixed success) so it also isn’t unusual to not know in advance.

A Ukrainian woman was here doing some work for us, and I went out and told her the power was out. She grabbed her phone and started trying to figure out what was going on but had nearly immediately decided it was the result of a bad actor, one in particular. Who could blame her?

My South African neighbor texted to see if we still had power as I was typing the same question to him. Cell phones still worked, but very very slowly.

Within a few hours the internet was out, and cell signals dropped to nearly nothing and then to actually nothing. There was no way to get information, except by word of mouth. The easy flow of information was not. It was like being in the 80s again, if the 80s hadn’t had any electricity. It was, admittedly, a little scary.

We were lucky. We weren’t on an elevator, or on the metro, or traveling anywhere, or stuck at a traffic light in Lisbon, or having a medical procedure. We had a fridge full of freshly bought groceries. We had some cash. Not enough to live on for weeks, but enough to get by for a few days. Others weren’t so lucky. Queues at cash dispensers and grocery stores started to form.

In Portugal, there’s living memory of living under a dictatorship. In Europe, the Ukraine conflict is close to home, like as if Mexico annexed Southern California. And without information, it was easy for people to assume the worst. Cyberattack, hack, actual war, who could say? At one point, we heard that all of Europe was down.

I walked to the hospital in the afternoon to see if my scheduled appointment still was. It wasn’t. I grabbed a few news stories using their internet, careful to not drain my already down to 35% battery too much. All seemed calm, relatively. Spain’s power operator had already dismissed, seemingly a bit early on, cyberattack as the root cause. Governments of Spain and Portugal were not so quick to say.

We spent the afternoon reading books. I got out the candles and matches, while we still had light. We turned off our phones. I filled the tub with water, “just in case”. We took a walk to see what was happening around town, to see what bars and restaurants were open and which ones were filled with tourists or a few locals. We ate a dinner of chips and rolls with honey not wanting to open the fridge for too long and spoil food. We figured the frozen stuff would just defrost if this went on and we’d cook it all up when it did, if we had to. We sat on our terrace until the sun went down. We brought our solar outdoor lamps inside and lit some candles. Played guitar and sang and played some cards.

When the lights came on and the cheers on the streets rose up, I found myself a little sad. Sad that it was over. But only because I had hindsight. I now knew when the power would return so I could mourn the loss of its loss. But, like I said, we were some of the lucky ones.