I fell short of my rather ambitious list of things to get done at the lodge this weekend, despite putting in almost 30 hours of solid time in 3 days, plus a visit to Menards. But Cara put things in perspective for me last night. At the end of the weekend we had a fully padded and carpetted upstairs. The top-of-stairs door was modified and hung. The kitchen sink was installed and we had leak free plumbing…huzzah, running water! The countertop backsplashes were 90% done. Kitchen island totally banded and needing only 1 sheet of formica to go. Plus all our yard work punctuating Sunday. Cara ran the riding mower for 7 hours straight and I gave a hand up at the road with the push mower and weed whip. Finally, measurements for the fencing.
Friday evening both the carpet installer and myself were totally beaten but the temptation of cold beer at the PL was too good to pass up. After seeing the installer out I finished the few things I was working on and Cara and I joined Cam, then Mia, then Katherine later in the eve to share stories of "the storm", but the 10 hour day, compounded by only a couple hours sleep had Cara and I packing before midnight. Slept like a log.
Saturday night made up for lost time that morning running to Menards for supplies. I had Dick Bartley on the AM, and working on countertops in the kitchen meant an inaugural meal of Pizza Rolls in the '60 Frigidaire oven was not out of the question. Fired it up around 10:30PM and broke out the ice cold High Life. Not bad. Hitched up the trailer in the dark around 11 and headed in, keeping my eye on the low, orange moon.
Sunday then meant prying our lifeless bodies out of bed, getting on the road, forcing the riding mower into the trailer and annoying just about every speed demon that came along on North Union. Long day. But sunny, and not nearly as humid as Saturday night. Cleaned up around 9 and we hit up the OP for cold Schlitz and fantastic pizza.
Which brings me back to Thursday night. I got home late from the lodge and ended up not getting to bed until at least midnight. Only a few hours in and we were both awoken by that unmistakable sound of trees being shaken by high winds and torrential rain. We raced around the apt in the dark, closing windows and surveying how much water had come onto the porch when the lights up and down the street went out. Through the sheets of rain Cara pointed out through the bedroom window that the top of our backyard tree was gone. I could only make it out aided by the flashes of lightning and thought it merely double over on itself. Clearly, this was more than a thunderstorm. As the wind escalated and the noise level outside grew to deafening proportions I wondered, "Why weren't the sirens going off?" Seconds later it got very violent. We hit the floor as hail pounded the building and the cracks and groans of the old trees let us know they were giving way. The rain pounded the glass and siding and we expected the windows to blow in at any moment. No joke. In fact, the windows in the apt downstairs did.
Then….the winds calmed, but the rain would not let up. 3" worth when all was said and done. With a flashlight we started drying things on the porch. It was approaching 4AM. Then it hit me. If the parents (who were in MN) lost power the way seemingly half the town had, the sump pumps wouldn't be pumping. The amount of damage this would cause is unthinkable. We grabbed whatever clothes we could find and raced down the steps in the rain, did our best to avoid the ankle deep lake in the backyard and made our way to the Blazer. The tree I thought had doubled over had actually split at the crotch and dropped 40' worth of trunk mere inches from our cars. It had come to rest both on the ground and supported by the trunk phone and cable lines over our vehicles. Getting across town was a lot more difficult than we had imagined. First with the alley blocked by a tree that had also fallen on a Mercury. We 4x4'd our way to pavement with the wipers running on high. Second, almost every turn yielded a blocked road. At one point on 18th I was driving through water that was up over the truck's frame and doing my best to figure out how we were going to proceed with 2 blocks of snapped power poles in front of us. House lights west of Hudson Rd. gave us some relief and we found the pumps running at the parents. But the carnage through town was pretty amazing. Rather than a tornado's wandering path of destruction, it seemed as if the whole town had been hit with equal force from above. Thankfully, the only damage to homes was wind torn fascias, broken windows and lost trim; cars didn't fare so well with all the falling detrius, however.
Next, to the lodge where we had some water intrusion, but the place was still there (and the road a freakin' river). Then to my grandma's around 4:30AM where trees had toppled ripping down her feed from the transformer. She slept through the storm, but without power, her basement was flooded.
We returned home, and eventually got an hour or two of sleep as the idiots in the frat house behind us tried to noisily clear a path out of the alley. I ended up using a tow rope to drag the blocked limbs clear and with some help from Cara and others we drug it out of the way. That's how you start a Friday.
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