Always Evacuate to a Place that has a Hot Tub

I try not to worry about things. Worrying only begets more worrying and the next thing you know you’re having a seizure and ruining your favorite t-shirt. The thing about worrying is, if something goes wrong it’s either your fault or it’s not. If it is your fault then maybe you should of done something about it instead of worrying, and if its not your fault, that what purpose did the worrying serve except to upset, stress, or cause you to throw up on other people.

In the middle of a ferocious hurricane season, it’s easy to tell the natural born worriers from those that aren’t. Surprisingly, it seems the ones who print out the latest spaghetti models and post them outside their office are actually the calmest. It’s the one’s who refuse to admit that they know what wunderground.com is, that are in the most danger of soiling themselves or elsewise acting irrationally.

When all the computer models are pointed at you though, I suppose you are allowed to freak out a little. Such is not the case with Ike (I like Ike, but how do you get that from Dwight?) The latest models all show Ike hitting around Corpus Christi, TX and the people of New Orleans will be spared another mass evacuation. Someone told me only 10,000 people didn’t evacuate for Gustav, the storm our Mayor, Governor, and National Weather Service called The Storm of the Century. Katrina gets to keep that title for now, and will probably keep it longer than C. Ray stays in office, but that’s neither here nor there.

We evacuated the Saturday before Gustav was supposed to make his late Monday/early Tuesday landfall. I packed 4 days of clothes, 3 books, the highly portable electronics (laptop, MP3), my guitar and cooler full of water, Gatorade and string cheese. I cleaned out anything that I didn’t want to find in my refrigerator an unrefrigerated month later, started the dishwasher and headed for higher ground. I-10 was a parking lot until we got past Gulf Shores, and between three people we smoked an entire pack of cigarettes before we passed Jazz Land. By 2 in the morning we were still shy of Tallahassee so we stopped for the night in a shabby Days Inn with no pool and a lying sign about free wireless internet.

We got up early, ate Burger King breakfast and hit the road with spirits considerably higher than they were when we had stopped the previous night. I wiled away several hours reading aloud a pretty awesome book called The Diamond Age by my second favorite author. Keep in mind at this point we were still visualizing disaster scenarios and wondering when we’d see home again. We hit Orlando and stretched our legs right to the TV to turn on CNN. I unpacked the booze and made a strong drink, and didn’t worry about the storm again until after a long day of drinking, after everyone else was in bed, I smoked my last cigarette and checked the models and saw them all headed straight for Cocodrie, 50 miles west of the city, downgraded to a category 1, and wondered what everyone had been so worried about.