Whew…
That about describes it – what an eventful couple of days! I drove back from Lake Mary this morning…it took about four hours thanks to bumper-to-bumper traffic on I-4, but I was just happy to be going home. You know, maybe it’s just me, but it kind of redefines the meaning of irony when you evacuate across the state to evade the hurricane and yet, hours later its changed its course and is still coming straight for you – talk about pushing that idea of being followed to the Nth degree. Nonetheless, I can’t put into words how happy I was to hear that the Tampa City Center was back up and running this morning, and that this adventure was finally coming to a close!
Well, at least for me. Between TV and the Internet and the local newspapers, I’ve been fixed on all of the pictures of what happened over in Punta Gorda and it’s become very clear to me that everyone in the Tampa / St. Petersburg / Clearwater area was extraordinarily lucky yesterday. I know that things were pretty bad in Orlando – saw a lot of the damage first hand on the journey home, as we had to drive around trees covering one of the freeway on-ramps that hadn’t been cleared yet – but just seeing how hard they got hit on the coast, I can only imagine what the damages would’ve been like had Charley came ashore in Tampa instead. I don’t care what the fools said about how evacuating our area was a joke – it was something that had to be done, other cities would’ve done the same thing, and in the end we were just very, very fortunate.
So now I’m home, trying to unpack and clean up and try to enjoy the rest of the weekend, but right now I find it hard to really feel burdened by even the most mundane of tasks when you know that people a hundred miles south of you wish that they could be doing the dishes or unpacking their clothes. Welcome to Florida…
Glad to hear you’re okay. 🙂