Woke up to Mike and Mike in the morning last week. A few minutes later, I heard an explosion. The power was out--transformer blew.
Got cleaned up, and went into the basement to get things rolling. We have a gated walk-out under our porch from the basement. Secure, ventilated, dry--the perfect place for a generator.
I took out both Honda EU2000is, filled them with gas from one of my MFCs, and had them going within a few pulls. Ran one cord to the sump pump and small freezer, and the other to the fridge. My wife was also very happy to use the hair dryer.
We came back home 12 hours later. The power was back on and both generators hummed away for another 3 hours until the gas tanks ran dry. We went for a walk around the block and couldn't hear a thing--the walk out really muffles the already quiet generators.
This pair of Hondas is amazing. They are light, efficient, and ridiculously quiet. They can run a few essentials during an extended power outage. You can parallel them together to function as a 4kW generator, as well. Plus, I have two--redundancy is a great thing.