In my next life, when money is no object, I have no fears, and science has made it possible to do so without dying, I want to be a hurricane chaser. I’m sure there’s some correlation to the fact that I don’t like roller coasters, but I love a dark and steep water ride. A tornado does nothing for me, but whip up a mad amount of rain and it’s my thing. I’ll never forget the one hurricane I lived through.
Hurricane Floyd must have happened the fall of 1999. I lived on the eighteenth story of an eighteen-story building that swayed in a decent breeze, so of course I stuck around when the rest of the state was clearing out. Two of my best friends and I even created The Floyd Witch Project, filming ourselves “scared” in dark corners of our dorm rooms with the windows taped up and all of our furniture pulled to the middle. (P.S. Why did we put our furniture in the middle? If the windows broke, wasn’t there a better chance of our stuff getting wrecked now that it was right in front of the window instead of next to it? Anyway, I digress…) The rest of the time was spent watching Stormy Weather Stud, Jim Cantore, and waiting for something to happen.
The hurricane turned out to be a flop in South Carolina. It led to major damage, loss of life and substantial flooding in North Carolina, but all we saw were a few drops of rain and a bit of wind. The sky made it all worthwhile though. (As did having the whole building to ourselves. Finally…no Tri-Deltas wasting elevator time getting up to the fifth floor…) You know when you look at a satellite photo of a hurricane you see circling clouds with a big hole in the middle? Well, that’s exactly what it looked like underneath as well. The entire sky spun in rotation around a clear space off on the horizon. It was breathtaking!
When Katrina hit, Roommate Nicki could attest to the fact that I was glued to the TV that whole weekend. Sorry to say for Randy and his nieces’ birthday party, I expect the same to happen over the next several days. I do hope that Irene turns out to be as passive as I remember Floyd to be, but it sure is fun to watch in the meantime.
