storms

Yes, Here Comes the Story of the Hurricane

In Florida, before man made global climate change, we had hurricane drills in grade school. We’d learn where the best place to hide was and how to skin, cook and eat alligator. This was before the internet… and apparently before satellite radar. Didn’t they have advanced warning in the 80’s? Did we learn nothing from the Seminoles who we took the land from? Why would we learn how to ride out a storm in school? We were either tougher then or the storms were less severe. Maybe by launching the satellites to better forecast the storms we upset the balance of nature making them more severe. Mother Nature said, “I’ll show you! You can have all of that down there but the attic is mine.” Or maybe the storms are scarier because I am older with more responsibilities, a house to maintain, and a family to care for? When the winds were beginning to whip the trees around and the rain was coming down sideways, I wished I was the college kids next door who were undoubtedly drinking warm beer […]

Since storms cancelled our evening with The Flaming Lips – I had to go to Youtube.

Well, The Flaming Lips show in Philadelphia turned into “A bit of a bath – a big bath” (to quote the Woodstock documentary – although theirs was in reference to the bath the promoters would take upon getting the bill for the festival.)Although we had a nice evening and some great Indian cuisine downtown with some friends at Karma, our evening of Lips was cut off after about 6 songs when storms rolled in from the West and forced us all into the air conditioned “too unbearably hot outside” tent. Or in our case, the air conditioned and cold “too rainy for outside” tent. Actually, first my wife and I cut through the rain into an unused beer tent that had since closed up shop. We were dry for about 60 seconds until we were forced to vacate our dry dwellings by a water saleslady, “You’re not allowed in there!”In the larger tent we waited for the storm to pass while I watched the Weather Channel app on my Google Phone draw red cells around “our current location”.We were warned about

Holds and diverts and storms, oh my.

This was our third leg for the day. We began in Omaha around 2 PM, flew from Omaha to Milwaukee, and then off to Boston. On the return from Boston to Milwaukee, we ended up holding over Grand Rapids for 30 minutes before we made the decision to divert to Indianapolis for more fuel. Holding over Michigan with fuel burning away and planes above and below you all doing the same, you start thinking about plan B. Chicago had been in and out of holding patterns for most of the day, and airports were already full of diversions. This meant a long wait for fuel and the potential for issues with the Passenger Bill of Rights. We had a full flight and several infants on board that could be heard through the bulletproof cockpit door. To make things even more challenging, our Auxiliary Power Unit (APU) was inoperative, which meant no air conditioning on the ground, and I was certain that if a dozen planes were waiting for fuel already, no one would be in a hurry to get us

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