And Now We Wait....

Have you ever planned a trip for months, saved, bought your tickets, planned your itenerary, contacted people and arranged meetings only to have a category 4 hurricane bearing down on you only 36 hours before departure?

Trust me, it's not something you want!  Julie and I have done just this - not in the past, but right now!  Hurricane Matthew, currently boasting winds of 145MPH (Category 4) is currently sitting just SW of Haiti with a constantly changing projected path that now places our home well within the "Cone of Uncertainty".

We have pets that are staying home, and have a service to take care of them, along with great neighbors that are more than happy to help out anytime, day or night.  All that having been said, would you leave for over 2 weeks with a storm of this magnitude "MAYBE" hitting your home?

That is our predicament now - do we cancel a trip almost 6 months in the planning, and stay home to protect our property "Should" Matthew take aim on our little kingdom, or should we just leave it to chance and take off?  Many would say just go, you've made all the preparations and your home has been made ready for the storm.

BACKSTORY -
In 2004, a little old lady named Frances made landfall near Stuart, Florida.  At the time, I was enjoying life living aboard my 50' Cabin Cruiser - a mere 32 Tons of Steel that sat proudly in the marina.  By the time Frances left town, the marina was in shambles and my beloved cruiser, named "Tropical Depression #2", was well aground on an island where the inhabitants felt that maritime law prevailed and they were entitled to everything I owned.

At the same time, Julie was a real estate investor with 5 homes in various states of construction - she lost most of three of them.

Now, mind you, we were both here, ready and immediately involved in trying to regain some form of normalcy after such devastating blows. Imagine if you will, being hundreds of miles from home and getting word that your home had been lost to a storm.

*CRICKETS*

And then a mere three weeks later Frances' cousin Jeanne decided to visit the exact same locations!  I might add that both of these girls were forces to be reckoned with, tipping the scales at better than Category 3 in both cases!  Imagine the horror as cleanup was just getting things back to normal!

Exactly - now we have to retrace our journey home, this time without the aid of planning or pre-purchased tickets, and attempt to get to our now non-existant home.  In 2004, bridges were washed out and the county was closed down - National Guardsmen (armed) were blocking all roads into the county to prevent looters from coming in.  Power out for over 2-3 weeks in places, and although having lost my home and all my belongings, it was my duty to help restore telephone and internet (and now TV) service to AT&T customers.  Six months of being scheduled 12 hours a day, 13 days on with one day off.  Makes getting things back to normal just a little more that a challenge.

So there you have it - the dilemma faced by Julie and I.  Do we take the chance that everything will be OK and leave, or cancel our trip to protect our property should the storm come ashore here.
And now we wait....

Bob Blankenship (Desperately needing a vacation)

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The 2019 WPPI Photo Expo, Revisited...

Image
The 2019 Wedding and Portrait Photographer Expo in Las Vegas is now behind us.  Two and a half days of non-stop opportunities to gain knowledge and networking with professionals and avid hobbyists is a description that could be given to summarize the event. That would be an extremely short sighted statement that barely touches the surface of an event like this.  All of the major equipment manufacturers of cameras and lenses, as well as major vendors and accessories have large displays, live seminars, and plenty of equipment for you to hold, shoot, and experience unlike anywhere else you could imagine. As if that is not enough, consider that you are given many opportunities to take photos of models that are there for your use.  Weddings, portraits, family portraits, wedding receptions, all set up with their own studios just for you! And after three days of miles of aimless wandering, you might want to change shirts, they make sure you have something clean to ...
Read more

Are photographers competitive?

Image
When two photographers live in the same house, you have to wonder - are they competitive? DUH!  Of course we are!  If you are not aware, my wife is Julie Everhart.  She is an artist in every way!  I support her endeavors and projects completely, as does she mine.  So if we are so supportive, how is it that we say we are competitive? We challenge each other all the time to perform better.  One of our favorite means is through photo competitions.   Gurushots  is an excellent forum where photographers from all over the world compete in themed competitions running for 18 days where the photographers vote in a blind format on the photos of their peers. Four days into a competition themed "From a Distance", you can see that Julie is currently 20 votes ahead of me (although I currently hold one of the top photos in the competition).  She is in 7th place, and I am in 9th place.  This is out of nearly 7000 photographers and over 25,000 phot...
Read more

Organize Your Photos? Why Bother?

Image
The worst problem a photographer has, even at a casual level, is finding that ONE photo that you know you have, but can't remember where you put it.  Sound familiar? You can, of course, just dump all your photos into one or even many photo folders, but unless you really think through how you want them organized, that can still be cumbersome.  I just did a quick check, and see that I am currently sitting with 31,020 photos organized that I can cull through in moments to find the image I want.  Check out this screenshot of my "Pictures" folder.  Yes, over 6 TB of photos in almost 600 folders! How quickly could you find that one special photo? There are many schemes that people use to try to organize.  Years ago, I organized my music collection.  OH MY!  Was that ever a nightmare!  Let's just say I really like my music, and have either purchased digital or digitized all my old vinyl.  The project of organizing it took far more time that ...
Read more