The generators were what I could find up here on short notice (I literally speed shopped all this stuff in 2 hours at lunchtime the day before I drove down).  They were pretty picked over because Sandy was supposed to hit up here after it landed on NY.

I ended up with a 2000 watt Powerhorse from the local RV place and an 1800 watt Champion from Tractor Supply. The Powerhorse was great, I'm thinking of getting one myself  to augment the big one we have here that can fire up the well pump.  It was quiet and ran for 12 days with no problem, and with a  bunch of rookies running it LOL. On the economy setting it was surprisingly quiet.  It was about 1/3rd of the price of the equivalent sized Honda that I found at a local place.

The Champion is still in the box. I offered it to some of the neighbors since our lights were back on but due to the gas problem no one wanted it (no good if you can't get fuel for it). They just toughed it  out.
I'm going to have my parents donate it, just need to figure out to who.

By far the most valuable two things were the Powerhorse generator and its instruction manual LOL. That and the know-how of the neighbor who wired it to the furnace. And an extension cord and a full gas can.

The Powerhorse had a built-in inverter. Can't remember about the Champion.

Due to water and nat gas being still on in my parents area, heat, lights , and communications became the things that had to be dealt with.   So my list of must-haves for this adventure were cell phone (feven though coverage was spotty), the generator, an extension cord, a power strip, full gas cans, and solar lanterns. An inverter is also a nice thing to have to pull juice off the car battery (or in this case, the fully charged deep cycle batteries I brought down) but having the generator could have been done without.

Excellent AAR.
I hope your folks continue to be safe and well.
Lots of good info for all of us.

I'm flattered. I think... LOL.

As far as different treatment because of gender during the hurricane trip:   I wasn't treated any worse because of it. No one told me I couldn't do anything. The clerks at the stores I bought the stuff  on Wednesday looked at me like they weren't entirely sure I knew what I was doing, which was ok because at that point I didn't LOL.  I'm a quick study though and figured it out once I had all the crap purchased.
I didn't get hit on or pushed around or anything, probably in part because of my age (48, though I hear I look 35, and I adore whoever tells me that LOL)  and height (I'm 5'10" and I DO look like my avatar), and I also usually have a demeanor that doesn't encourage my being trivialized. Lets just leave it at  that LOL.
All genders in VT are usually self sufficient (lots of farmers up here) so I'm not an oddity here.

If anything I got treated a little better at times because of being female.  One time I'm thinking of was also a classic NYC moment ( New Yorkers are often simultaneously the nicest and nastiest people all at the same time and this incident illustrated it perfectly):
When I was on line for gasoline I was standing in between  cars (I was too far away to see if there was a 'cans only' line near the pumps and I didn't want to jump the line).  I'm friendly and got talking to the people in the cars in front and in back of me.  
To a person, EVERY SINGLE DRIVER offered me a seat in their car so I could warm up (it was cold and I was just wearing a fleece, but being from VT it didn't bother me).
At the same time every time a car passed them on the left and looked like it was going to cut the line the same drivers would start screaming out the drivers window "YOU SOB I'M GONNA KILL YOU YOU BASTARD IF YOU CUT THE LINE YOU GONNA PAY FOR IT". Then they'd turn back to me and once again sweetly offer me a seat in their car so I could get warm LOL .
I was laughing my head off the whole time.

If I was male I don't think they may have offered me time to warm up in their car, especially the female drivers.  But I'm sure they would have screamed that they were going to kill me if I tried to cut the line no matter what sex I was LOL.

I may have pissed off some of the people I was working with when we set up the generator but  I tried to restrain myself and was joking around a lot during it and people were laughing at least.  And if I pissed them off they didn't say so, and I don't really care anyway .

As far as general gender issues, I was raised to believe I could do anything if I was interested in it and tried hard enough.  Gender was never made an issue. If you have daughters I suggest this might be a road you'd want to take.

For some background on me, I'm 48, married 21 years, and have a degree in Biology but have worked in IT for 25 years, mostly with men.I have long hair, wear nailpolish, and can cook in my sleep. I can also change motorcycle brake pads, change oil, change a tire, and mow the lawn.
I'm the oldest of 2 girls, and my parents (my father in particular) never told us we couldn't do anything just because we were female. I was my dads pet - I helped him fix the car, he took me to every hardware store on LI, etc.  Yet I can also cook and sew, courtesy of my mother. I'm probably a little more comfortable with the "guy tasks" because of my relationship with my father. My sister, who was more of my mother's buddy, is a little more comfortable with the classic girl tasks. But we can both do both, if we have to.  
It may have been different if we'd had a brother, he may have been the default for the "kid who does the guy stuff with Dad".  

I've always liked this quote by Robert Heinlein:" A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects. ".

I consider it words to live by for both genders, as you never know when something will happen to the person you're relying on for whatever you can't do and you'll have to do it on your own.

Gasoline. I rounded all the stuff up on really short notice so never really considered anything else.

Tri-fuel is an interesting idea but I'm not sure if I could get my father to go for it. As it is he really resisted my leaving the good gas generator there with them for the future.
He'd probably have to have some mods made to the house to get a place to tap into the nat gas to feed the generator, right?  Trying to get him to do that would be a fairly epic battle, as his idea of disaster preps is putting by an extra bottle of bourbon LOL.

Nice write up.  A few things that I might add from my own experiences and those of family and friends that also lived through this.

Diesel was definitely more available, although you had to find a station that had diesel, but no gas or lines, otherwise you might be waiting in line with gas seekers(waiting for a tanker to show up) while the station had diesel ready to pump.

Your assessment about people remaining civil for 72-96 hours is spot on from what I heard from a family member that lives in an urban setting that's in the very early stages of gentrification.  By Friday after the storm, him and his were BO to a hotel until the power came back on, up until then he had been sleeping on the couch at ground level while his family slept upstairs.  

The one thing that I noticed about this first hand, that I had previously thought and preached, was that if you're physically and financially capable of getting beyond the fringes of the affected area you can do or get anything you want.  I live further from the epicenter than your parents, although at one point 95% of my town was out of power, and it took 12 days for all but the last few to get restored.  On the Friday immediately following the storm, my neighbor waited 2 hours to get gas for his car.  My wife and I had a paid for trip booked at a place in New England, and decided that since our house had power, suffered no damage, had our very capable eldest child staying at the house, and I had cleaned up all the mess earlier in the week that we would go anyway.  After calling to ensure that gas was readily available we headed up, and decided to stop for gas just 35 minutes from our house where we found no lines, plenty of all grades of gas, K1 and diesel, along with a fully stocked quick e mart with people buying their coffee and snacks for their ride home as on any other Friday afternoon.  By the time we got to our destination, all was right in the world, we were eating great food, enjoying the accommodations, and planning our next day.  That weekend, we shopped, went on a tour and would have never known that there was a disaster going on less than 200 miles away if we had not just come from there.  All the other people everywhere we went were just carrying on with their normal lives.  I had brought a gas can that I filled up at the same station I did on the way up, and again, no lines, and no problems getting any fuel.  One of the most valuable preps that I thought, and now proved is a vehicle with good range, and some money to get where beyond the affected area.

Glad that things went well for your trip.  I bet your folks were super happy to hang out with a MVP.

nct