The Great Storm of Summer 2010

It was a bright and sunny day. A friend and I were sitting in a Checker’s parking lot enjoying our burgers and fries. We look to our left and we see that the sky has turned dark. No, really. Half the sky was bright and sunny, the other half was almost completely black. “We’d better toss our trash now before the storm comes,” I said. Three seconds later, the rain came.

At first the rain faked as if it was just a normal rain, but as we pulled out of the parking lot, God let forth the rain and buckets started pouring, wind started blowing. Dark pieces of debris were hitting the windshield like rocks, and the windshield wipers desperatey wiped away the rain, only to have the windshield hit with another bucket of water.

We turn onto the main road and get ready to turn onto the pike. Only, the cars in front of us aren’t moving. Maybe things were just slow. Nope. 30 seconds later the cars hadn’t budged an inch. We decided to make a U-turn and take another route. As we head towards the light, two things happen. First a bolt of lightning hit the circuit-breaker box on top of the traffic light and an explosion of blue light filled the sky. BOOM! Needless to say, the lights went out. Next a tree in the median divider finally succumbed to the torrential wind and toppled over, covering one of the two left hand lanes. Meanwhile the rain continued to pour. As we make the turn, I see the reason for the stopped cars. A tree has fallen and is now blocking all three lanes of traffic, making the road impassable.

We make the U-turn and begin venturing to the highway. People completely go crazy when driving in the storm. They lose all common decency and sense when it comes to driving. It’s like without traffic lights to direct them, drivers forget how to drive – ignoring cars that are driving slowly with flashing lights and dodging cars at high speeds. Good gracious people, don’t drive stupid!

Driving down the highways, there are cars that have taken refuge under overpasses to wait out the storm. Other cars are driving slowly and carefully, dodging one of the many trees that have fallen along the way. About 15 minutes after the storm started, it ended just as quickly as it came, leaving a path of power outages, fallen tree branches, and mangled signs behind.

When we arrive at another friend’s house, we stand for a minute at the elevator. There is no power. We need to be let up the stairs. With no power, no board games, and not even a deck of cards to play with, we only stayed at the apartment for an hour or so before deciding that we needed to get out. We spent more than a few minutes trying to navigate a very confusing and complicated free 411 service, in search of a movie theater in the area that had power. Fortunately, we found one not too far away that had power, and we took refuge in the air conditioned theater and watched Inception.

I arrive home around 9PM that night only to discover that I too had no power. I ate Chinese food by lantern light for dinner that night. The next morning, still no power. Finally, sometime between 7AM and 12PM, the power comes back on. However, internet and cable are still down and out for the count.

I tell you all of this (and I promise you, there was absolutely NO exaggeration in this story) to let you know that if any of my posts are late, or if I’m responding to emails a little slowly, it’s because I STILL have no internet. I’m blogging on the generosity of one of my friends who has been kind enough to allow me to use his bandwidth even while he’s getting ready to start playing the latest release of Starcraft II.

I hope that other bloggers in the area are back up and running and made it through the storm with minimal damage.

Peace & Blessings,
Miriam