Now I know what it feels like to be Tina Turner. Why – because we just got a smack down from Ike. Hurricane Ike, that is. That big blowhard of a storm that started off the coast of Africa, spun across the Atlantic, wiped out a few Caribbean islands (Wisely avoiding Key West), cut through the gulf and ran straight into Texas pushing water over Galveston Island, and then barreled on up into Houston breaking windows and flooding everything it could. Oh sure, thought we’d see was artificially inflated gas prices (we did) and some weather guys with their ties loosened, sleeves rolled up, while looking stern and talking about how bad it was in Texas. What I didn’t expect was that we’d have any more of an effect from the storm than maybe some rain. But what we got was something altogether different. Sunday, we got 75 mph winds on a sunny day 75 mph IS a hurricane. It seems that Ike somehow created just the right conditions to create some freaky low pressure system that just begged to be filled in by some fresh air from Texas. Of course, it happened at 75 mph. Ohio is really not ready for hurricane winds. We lost power for three days, lost shingles down to the tar paper on our roof in several places, lost shingles and tar paper from the roof of our shed and ripped out several screens from blowing debris. We lost one small tree (didn’t like it much anyway) and thought the soccer goal was going to fly away. The neighborhood has lost lots and lots of trees and some roofs are way worse than ours. One guy down the street has a horse barn and he lost the entire roof. On the upside, I was able to get a generator from Home Depot – the last one available in a box. That kept us from losing all of the food in our fridge and we were able to help the neighbors by running their fridge and recharging batteries for people’s sump pumps. The power would have been back on sooner but Duke Energy, our provider, had sent all of its crews to Texas to help so there was no one around when our freak storm hit. The lucky thing was we didn’t get any rain like they did further up north. In the end, it was pretty much like a 3 day camping trip – but with better chairs! Here are a few snapshots from the craziness.
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