After reading yesterday’s blog, where I talked about tornado warnings in our area, someone told me they would never live in a place that has tornadoes. What can I say? There aren’t that many places in the country that don’t have tornadoes, and every place has the possibility of some kind of natural disaster.
I have been in or very close to tornadoes in Ohio, Minnesota, Indiana, and Texas. Millions of people live in those states even though they have tornadoes, and relatively few of those people are ever affected by them. It’s like people talking about us living where we have hurricanes. At least with a hurricane, we can get out of Dodge if we need to. Tornadoes don’t always give you that option because they come up so fast.
But so do earthquakes, wildfires, avalanches, and other calamities. You can run as far and fast as you want, but you can’t hide from Mother Nature. All you can do is live your life, take normal precautions, and enjoy every day. I’m more worried about getting hit by some idiot driving drunk or some kid texting while I am going to the grocery store than natural disasters.
A blog reader asked yesterday why we don’t have an underground storm shelter. One reason is that we don’t have room to put one on our property. And with my luck, if I had one and went in it to hide from a storm, some drunk driver would smash his car into the door and trap me in there.
In other news, several readers chastised me after seeing the picture of my badly sunburned face in yesterday’s blog, asking me why I didn’t listen to Terry and put on sunscreen. Our friend Deb Dlugosz said she couldn’t believe I don’t know to listen to Terry by now. Yeah, I know Deb, you would think I’d learn, wouldn’t you? But here I am, sunburned and peeling all over the place. It’s a good thing you didn’t see my arms and hands!
Bruce Miles read yesterday’s blog and said, “Your luck is sure mixed… missed by speedy tornadoes but zapped by a slow-moving sun.” The story of my life Bruce, I never do anything the easy way. If I did, what would I have to write about in the blog?
Since I’ve been busy writing the last few days, we didn’t have time to go down to Kayaks by Bo in Titusville yet. Hopefully, we’ll be doing that this afternoon. We’ve got a couple of other things we want to do down in that direction, so we can accomplish two or three things in one trip.
And finally, here’s a chuckle to start your day from the collection of funny signs we see in our travels and that our readers share with us.
Be sure to enter our latest Free Drawing. This week’s prize is an autographed copy of my book Overlooked Arizona: Over 35 Arizona Great Arizona Destinations You Shouldn’t Miss!
To enter, click on this Free Drawing link or the tab at the top of this page and enter your name (first and last) in the comments section at the bottom of that page (not this one). Only one entry per person per drawing please, and you must enter with your real name. To prevent spam or multiple entries, the names of cartoon or movie characters are not allowed. The winner will be drawn Sunday evening. Note: Due to the high shipping cost of printed books and Amazon restrictions on e-books to foreign countries, only entries with US addresses and e-mail addresses are allowed.
Thought For The Day – I’m great at multitasking. I can listen, ignore, and forget, all at the same time.
Nick Russell
World-Famous, New York Times Best Selling Author, and All-Around Nice Guy!
Dig an underground shelter in Florida? We don’t know the word basement and we have no hills. You dig a basement in Coastal Florida you hit water.
I moved to North Georgia from Cape Canaveral for a time, and my best friend’s four year old little boy came for a visit. We took a drive to Athens and we had to go up and down pretty good size hill. From the back seat I heard this little voice call out in wonder, “this is the biggest bridge I’ve ever seen!”
In his flat Florida world the only roads that went up were to high bridges crossing rivers. It still tickles me when I think of it.