The Amazing Shower Blackout Adventure

We loaded a load of industrial machinery just up the street from the TA truck stop in Branford, CT and headed for Euclid, OH. That is near Cleveland, OH.
We took I80 across PA. That is a pretty drive, but PA has some of the bumpiest roads in the country.
It isn’t quite as bad as AR, but close. Their idea of fixing potholes in PA is to fill them up with cold patch until there is a bump where there used to be a hole! There are so many of them some places that it is impossible to dodge them all.
That makes for interesting driving,but the scenery can’t be beat!

Since we (for a change) weren’t in any particular hurry, we decided to stop for the night just before the OH line in Barkeyville, PA at the TA Truckstop. We bought fuel, parked, grabbed our bags and headed upstairs to the showers.
I finished my shower first, hopped out and decided to dry my hair.
I turned on the hair dryer, made a couple of passes with it, and the lights went out!
Aubrey was washing his hair at the time, and when he opened his eyes, "Either the lights have gone out, or I’ve gone blind!" he said, thinking I was playing a trick on him..
Then he changed my first name to "Dammit!" And told me to turn the lights back on.
(He changes my first name whenever he gets exasperated with me. When I lose patience with him, I change his first name to "Knucklehead.")
After I convinced him I wasn’t kidding around, he shut off the water and asked me for my cigarette lighter.
I didn’t have it, because I had left my purse in the truck. I didn’t have my flashlight either, because that also lives in my purse.
He groped around in the dark until he found a towel, dried himself off, located his pants, and put them on.
Then he went out into the hallway to investigate the problem. He and the porter (the guy who takes care of the showers) tried resetting the breakers, but that didn’t help.
Meanwhile, I groped around getting dressed in the dark and peeked around the door to see what was going on. There were three or four other drivers milling around scratching their heads in the hallway, which was lit only by the emergency lighting system.
Eventually everybody agreed that fixing the problem wasn't something they were able to do, so everybody trooped downstairs and hunted up the Manager.

The Manager apologized to all of us, quite graciously, and gave us each a coupon for free supper in the restaurant.
She mentoined that they had had the same sort of problem before, and had called an electrician in who was supposed to have fixed it.
she said she supposed she would have to call that electrician again.
One of the drivers piped up and suggested she call another electrician, because the first one hadn’t fixed anything.

Of course I got kidded unmercifully over supper for turning on the hair dryer and causing a blackout of the whole top floor of the truckstop.

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