Donuts, beef jerky and a bottle of Merlot

Until recently I’ve been a Western kind of guy. I was born, raised and continued to live most of my life west of the Mississippi, and a good amount of that time there was no court order requiring that I stay.

When my recent reluctant search for a job resulted in my relocation to the Florida Panhandle I had no idea how severe the cultural differences would be. I always thought of Florida as the California of the East Coast and, since I’ve spent a lot of time in California, I expected to feel right at home.

I was wrong. I was way wrong! Remember back when you thought that getting married meant a steady supply of home cooked meals and the physical expression of your marital bliss? Remember that? I was more wrong than that.

First of all I moved to Pensacola which is located in what Floridians refer to as LA. That’s not a reference to Las Angeles because of an abundance of freeways or strip malls with In- N-Out Burger joints on every corner.

It stands for Lower Alabama, which is code for a shortage of freeways, a Waffle House on every corner and hurricane evacuation route signs on most of the paved streets.

I wasn’t worried about the threat of hurricanes because I’ve spent months at a time in Pensacola on consulting trips and the hurricanes always seem to miss it. Remember how wrong I was before? I was about to be that wrong again.

I think it was about the time that we had settled into our little place near the waterfront and Sandra had paid for non-refundable tickets to Italy when we first heard the name Isaac mentioned on the local weather reports.

When I mentioned it at work everyone scoffed and told me that tropical weather systems happen all the time and they hardly ever amount to much. A few days later when it turned into a large Tropical Storm and hit Cuba like a heavyweight fighter, they told me not to worry because there was almost no chance it would hit us.

When the weatherman showed the storm track heading straight for us they told me not to worry because those storms almost rarely actually turn into hurricanes. Of course that was about the time that they announced that Tropical Storm Isaac had become Hurricane Isaac.

About then everyone who had been comforting me evacuated the office and I heard that the airport was closed for the next few days meaning Sandra would not be leaving for Italy the next day.

So, totally unprepared I was about to ride out my first hurricane with no provisions, no generator and an angry wife.

I immediately went to the store to stock up on supplies. I was able to get couple of cases of water, some beef jerky and a bottle of Merlot. I’m not sure of the etiquette in this case but I’m pretty sure that it’s white wine with Tropical Storms and red wine with hurricanes; I could be wrong.

For the next couple of days we comfortably rode out the little bit of Hurricane Isaac that we got. and, since we never lost power, we watched old movies and dined on standard hurricane fare of beef jerky and Merlot until the sun came out again.

The storm raged through the first night with such ferocity that it created a howling sound that no one should ever have to hear. At about 4 AM I realized that the howling was just Sandra snoring and so, after getting her to roll over, things quieted down quire a bit.

The next morning when the sun came up it was raining hard and the wind was gusting pretty much like an average spring afternoon in Northern Nevada, so I figured I’d go out for a drive to assess the damage.

I found trees down, buildings boarded up and the occasional TV weatherman dressed up like a New England fisherman broadcasting from street corners. I remember thinking that I had seen this many times on TV and it wasn’t all that bad.

As I turned around to head home I noticed that the Krispy Kreme store was open so I stopped and grabbed a dozen donuts.

It turns out that Floridians call 60 MPH wind gusts, horizontal rain and flash flooding a class one hurricane; in Nevada we call that Tuesday.  Sandra and I rode out the rest of our first hurricane munching on donuts, sipping merlot and watching old movies; no big deal!

I realize that hurricanes can be a lot worse than that and I don't intend to make light of the tragedies experienced every year throughout the Hurricane Belt. Heck, I once rode out a Typhoon in the Sea of Japan that tossed our aircraft carrier around like a cork in a bathtub, so I've seen real storms before. 

I guess that when your first hurricane is kind of like your first kiss; when you're expecting to be blown away it's a little disappointing when turns out to be just a little wet and sloppy. I'm just saying....