This is Becky. You’re stuck with me this week. Mike is out helping others with their storm damage, and I have to say I’m thankful for that. He doesn’t have to help with our storm damage. Our prayers were answered.
It didn’t look that way at first, though. We thought we were in for real trouble when Sandy approached the shore. We don’t know a heck of a lot about these things so we thought that if the eye was going to pass over us, as was being predicted, we’d get the worst of everything. But, I guess that’s not the way things work. To the north they got wind. To the south they got rain. Here we got an eerie kind of calm.
It was really weird. The wind was blowing so hard you couldn’t stand up in it and then, all of a sudden, it stopped. We had nothing but a gentle breeze. The bitter cold bite of the wind turned into a damp, wet blanket. It was like a warm spring day. It made you want to go outside and enjoy the weather. I’m not kidding. It was that nice.
I’m told that the eye of a storm like that traps the tropical air inside it and that’s what causes it to turn so warm. I don’t know for sure except that it happened. Of course, shortly after that everything returned to hard, cold winds and miserable conditions.
We were lucky. Our power was only off for about 12 hours. Just to the north of us things were much worse. The power went out on them almost immediately, and I guess in some places it’s still out. As a new mother, I can only imagine the mess they’re in. I’m sure they have moved somewhere else.
What else could they do? You can’t stay in the cold without heat for days on end. We were going to move down to my parents in Virginia if the power hadn’t come back on when it did.
The water to the south of us is just as bad. They’re flooded and in some cases can’t even get to their houses. What a disaster. I really feel for all of them. It’s something that was unexpected and that all the planning in the world couldn’t prevent. When a big storm like Sandy happens, you’re at its mercy.
The shore up here is almost destroyed. I can’t believe how something that big and that beautiful can be reduced to nothing in a matter of hours. We’re about an hour away from it but I don’t know if we’ll go for a while. It’s just too painful. I know Mike is really upset by it all. He’s lived here all of his life. The shore is a part of him.
I have to say, though, that our prayers were answered. We all survived no worse for wear and what little damage was done to our house can be repaired. I only wish everyone else up here could say the same thing.
Mike Iaconelli’s column appears weekly on Bassmaster.com. You can also find him on Facebook and Twitter.
