When I decided to come to Islamorada, the only thing my mom told me was that at this time of the year, Florida was having hurricane season.
Never really thought about something like that and never really been scared of it, I didn’t even thinking about going through one of this tropical storms or hurricanes. But I did it twice and everybody told me that this is a great story. So I want to tell you the stories about these two hurricanes (storms).
The first, named Kathrina, went through the Florida Keys in the night. This was after my first week, when I lived with Anthony in the house near the canal to the sea. We didn’t even know that a hurricane was announced to hit the Keys. The day before the weather was still great (sunshine all over). And even in the evening the weather was ok. It started raining a bit, but none of us thought about something like a hurricane.
While we were sleeping, hurricane Kathrina hit the Keys. But after we woke up in the morning, we slowly realized that something must have happen last night. When we went out of the house to get breakfast, we saw all the fallen trees around the house and in the neighborhood. Happily The Race Club van in front of our house wasn’t hit by one of the trees! But no chance for the little storage house to the left of our house. A big tree hit it right in the middle!
The second hurricane named Rita took a bit more time to get trough the Keys. This time Anthony already left, but don’t worry, Michelle was by my side! This time there was really no chance to miss that there was a hurricane. All the TV-stations talked about nothing else all day after the incredible devastations Kathrina had left in New Orleans.
As all these hurricane news coverages scared us a bit this time and as it really looked like a big storm, we almost left the Keys. But in the end we decided to stay and join one of the famous hurricane parties. We put all the shelters on The Race Club house and left to stay at a friend’s house (where all the living space is upstairs) for the hurricane just in case of flooding.
And once more the hurricane didn’t hit Islamorada hard. It was all down in Key West this time. We only had strong winds, a lot of rain and some flooding in the neighborhood.
Thus, we had a free day (no workouts!) and learned one thing about hurricanes:
Surviving hurricanes is easy…
…it’s the south Florida’s news coverage that kills us!
This is a piece I wrote for the Race Club where you’ll find the original diary post “Welcome to the Evacuation Capital of the World” as well as many others.