So, Tuesday night the heavens opened and unleashed a monsoon. Tornado’s, winds, and rain all swept thru this town and others like a fat kid in a candy shop. That same night I was doing some telecommuting and was sitting in front of my TV until the wee hours of the morning. Although I could hear some stuff happening outside, I was content to get my work done.
While I was working I was continually pissed off by the power blinking and knocking me offline. I flipped thru the channels to check out what was going on whilst my router rebooted. All those lovely little whirly things all over the screen. Again, nothing going on at my house so I just kept on working. Then around 2:30 am Dusty Vegas called to let me know here house had been hit! Her garage, gone! Neighborhood, demolished!
This is crazy stuff, but still nothing happening at my house. I finished up my work around 4:30am and decided to head to bed. I was going to be forced to go in to make sure all of the changes I made to the servers didn’t blow anything up. 6:30am I’m up and at ‘em getting ready for work. My little street was pretty empty as I slid into my car and made my way to Dixie. There were a few twigs around here and there but for the most part, nothing.
I told my boss I was going to need to leave at lunch. Although the body can take a lot of turbulence, the mind is just an innocent bystander. After like 24 - 30 hours my head is like a cotton ball. So, I was out the door around 12:15 on my way home. As I was coming down Crum’s Lane I looked out in front of my car to what looked like a whole new Earth.
It was strange. The clouds were moving swiftly thru the sky as the sun lit up every corner of every nook. I had my window down since it was a balmy 70. The smell of the fresh rain was still around me in the air. This is when I started to pull into my street from the other entrance. As I looked down the row of houses, there was caution tape over the road. A huge tree had collapsed and taken a house with it. I was surprised but not overly thrilled. So I kept my pace to my home. I unlocked the door and had Icarus all over me as I stepped in. I unlocked Akasha’s cage and ushered them both out the back door. I followed since it was so beautiful.
Needing to drop off some of the last bits of my taxes, I bundled up some paperwork and headed back out to my tax preparer’s office. This time it was up Greenwood road or what seemed to be left of it. As I rounded the corner I could see over to my left a house completely in shambles. The electricity pole had snapped in two and was hanging in mid air about 10 feet from the ground. It had taken most of the roof of the house with it as the storm snatched it from the ground. Still, sun shining, I proceeded slowly towards my destination.
Every few hundred feet I traveled there was another piece of evidence of the nights storm. Trash cans disbursed all over. Tree branches on the ground. Root balls plucked from the earth like weeds from the garden. A tree was blocking my path so I was diverted down an alternate route which lead me thru another neighborhood. This one was even worse with power cables sweeping the street and sheets of vinyl laying in the grass. Wood was exposed from the trees that had been snapped like toothpicks by the powerful invisible winds. From what I was hearing on the radio, all in all there were around 50 deaths across the states which were hit.
So I dropped off my tax papers, and headed home. I cooked a chicken patty, and put on my night clothes. Then headed to bed to catch up on my sleep.
What’s the point of this little rant? I guess I’m amazed by the raw power of mother nature. This was just a little baby storm that flew over us. Pale in comparison to a hurricane or an earthquake. Yet the next day, everything seemed to sparkle. Like there was never anything around to kill us or make us run for fear of our lives.
According to the National Safety Council the odds of dying in a storm are 1 in 59,836 in a lifetime. Yet we continually freak out when there’s a storm around us. Your odds of dying in a car accident are 1 in 80 in a lifetime. So why don’t we run in fear every time a bus is headed in our general direction? My theory is control. There’s a certain amount of feeling of control with objects such as cars. With mother nature, you had better kiss your ass goodbye if it’s your time to go.
That’s why I just don’t worry about stuff like storms. I can stand outside with the wind blowing thru my hair, rain on my face and tornado clouds turning above my head. I don’t have to have some weather man showing me whirly’s and telling me take cover in my tub. I know the morning will come and if I’ve made it thru the night then everything’s going to be fine. A tree can take down my house and it will only be a misfortune and not a tragedy. There’s only a few times a year when you can see the power of mother nature. Take a look, you have a good chance of making it thru.
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