Connected

Last Christmas when Santa brought me an iPad, I was thrilled. I had done quite a bit of research on this gizmo, online, at the Apple store, and asking   writer friends what it could and couldn’t do. I was trying to get some sense of how I might be able to write a book on it. The consensus was that writing a book on the iPad might be possible if you have a keyboard and Pages, but it wouldn’t be any writer’s first choice. However, the iPad, they agreed, does everything else.

“Like what?” I asked.

Your e-mail is easier to pick up

Cool apps

And, my personal favorite – you’re always connected.

But did any of that justify the price of an iPad?

Well, that depends. In the six months I’ve had  iPad2, I’ve tested that Internet connection: at the gym, in the supermarket, on road trips, while getting my hair cut. No matter where I am, I can be electronically connected to the larger world- and to the people I care about most. I can conduct business, purchase a book, read a book, edit a manuscript, write and reply to e-mail. But in the back of my mind, I have always known  the ultimate iPad test would happen during a hurricane.

In 2004 and 2005, when the hurricane season was particularly active, we invariably lost electrical power. In one of those years, we lost power for a week. In the other year, we didn’t have power for 10 days.  During the 10-day outage, we plugged into a neighbor’s generator ad at least got the fridge powered up. I used to open the door and stand in front of it just to cool down.  In both years, I notice that cell reception returned within a day or two.  I remembered this fact when I was doing my research about the iPad.

Today, May 29, two days before the official hurricane season starts, we got a taste of that power outage. A cell of thunderstorms swept in over our county, thunder, lightning, 60 mph winds, the whole Olympian tempest. Our electricity went off at 2:30. Our landline didn’t work, so I called our neighbor on my cell and asked if her electricity was off, too. Yes, it was. Okay, time to report this to Florida Power and Light, I thought, and got out my iPad.

I use ATT for my cellular connection on the iPad. I activated it, went online, reported the outage to FPL,  then used their interactive map to find out where the outages were and to keep tabs on the status of repair. I was able to check the local radar, the National Weather Service, and to answer some email.  Even though this storm was just a violent weather cell passing through, the power failed, the cell towers didn’t. I was always connected.

During a Category 3 hurricane or higher, cell reception probably would be lost because cell towers would go down. But unless those towers snapped in half, they would probably come back online more quickly than the electrical grid. So what purpose might an iPad (or iPhone, for that matter) serve during or in the aftermath of a major hurricane?

Let’s take Hurricane Andrew,  which slammed into South, Florida 20 years ago, in 1992, and decimated Homestead.  Granted, there was barely an Internet in1992, at least not for most of us. But if there had been and if the cell signal held during even part of the storm, I would have live radar that showed  where the worst cells were located, where tornadoes might be, and where the center of the storm was. I would know which side of the storm was the strongest and whether I needed to take extra precautions – like hide in my bathtub with a mattress over me, as one friend had to do. And in the aftermath, once the cell towers were back online, I would know where I could find help, food, water, and everything else I needed to know.

Of course, in the aftermath of a Cat 5 storm the cell towers probably wouldn’t come back online any faster than electrical power, which means you have to rely on battery-operated radios or TVs for news. These venues are better than nothing, but there’s something empowering about holding this iPad gizmo in your lap and hopping around at your own discretion to find useful news. While using FPL’s interactive map, I discovered that only 63 homes had power outages and one of the areas pinpointed on the map was close to the yoga studio where Rob’s meditation class that evening would be held. He used his cell to e-mail the owner of the  studio about whether she had power. She didn’t. She was using candles.

For me, this inconvenient power outage confirmed a couple of things:

–       This is NOT my parents’ world

–        I love most technology

–       I’m grateful this was  NOT a hurricane

–      I love my iPad