Published at August 17, 2008
in General.
So far this summer, there has been a thunderstorm blowing through town on about half of the days. They usually come between 2pm and 5pm and last anywhere from 15 minutes to a few hours. The wind has reached speeds of probably 25-30 mph that I’ve seen, and some pretty heavy rain has come down.
All of these have been mostly fun, except one that took down a boat that we have here. It’s back up and running now, but I now know that a sunken boat creates a whole bunch of work to recover.
Anyway, word is that this storm, called Fay, is going to tear right up through the middle of Florida. That’s where I’m at, the middle of Florida. It’s been hitting 50 mph so far, and who knows if it’ll steer left or right of Clermont, where I am, or go right down the middle.
I guess I should go fill up on gas and buy some water and candles and what not. I’ve been in one situation before where we had no power for 4 or 5 days, on the mission in Rochester, NY. That was also due to a wind storm. That got pretty annoying rather quickly.
The funny thing about this storm is that this is the first week at the camp since I’ve started working here that we’ve had nobody scheduled to come ride. What a convenient time for that to happen, as the water should be horrible probably from Monday through Wednesday. My only real concern for the storm is that I have concert tickets to go see Stome Temple Pilots Tuesday evening, which is supposed to be the worst part of the storm right here. Hopefully I make it there and back!
I’ll try to keep this updated, that is if I have power!
And now for an ordered list (because I’m curious of what number I’ll reach) of what has occurred in Billy’s life over the past 30 hours at my dream job:
- Bailed water out of a sunken boat and got it on a boat lift for the remainder of the storm.
- Went home teaching. (It’s a Mormon thing, basically, visited some people.)
- Got up early to tend to said sunken boat and inform the boat owner of what had happened. (The length of this sentence takes away from the un-awesomeness of this one.)
- Organized some liability release forms so our campers could go into Orlando and ride at the cable park. (Work which should have been done by our un-awesome office manager.)
- Figured out a way to repair another boat which had overheated and melted some plastic joints involved in running the engine. (The overheating happened more like 54 hours ago, hence not in the list). This process included three trips to Ace Hardware.
- Replaced the melted plastic parts of second said (how do you say that properly?) boat and began to troubleshoot original overheating problem.
- Ate a sandwich while waiting for a call from the boat shop, it was delicious.
- Answered some emails and voice mails which were neglected by aforementioned office manager, who is on a 5 day vacation…a vacation which was made known to the camp owner and staff on day one of the vacation…yeah, not awesome.
- More boat work, came to a point where more parts were needed, will resume that tomorrow when the parts arrive.
- Helped Ben move his repaired couch back into his house.
- Finished cleaning up the now un-sunk boat and put its seats, lead (to make the wake big), and fat sacs (same idea here) away nicely.
- Got in a functioning boat with Ben and many campers and went wakeboarding…back to really awesome!
- Put that boat away.
- Looked for my shirt and sandals in the dark, since I was down to just shorts at this point.
- Sat and talked with a couple Kiwi (from New Zealand) coaches, venting a bit about the day, having some good laughs.
- Came home, sat down at my computer, hit some keys.
Lots of un-awesomeness, but ended in awesome, yay! If you’re wondering, I found the sandals, not the shirt.
Florida’s summer weather is different than any other place I’ve lived. In just the past couple weeks, the weather has been what most call summer-ish, so I’m going to base this on what’s happened so far in that time.
The days start out pretty calm, very humid, sticky, and warm. All those make for great morning wakeboard sessions. Then like clockwork, between 2:00 and 4:00pm, the wind gets a bit of a chill to it, then picks up by about 20 mph and the lake gets horrible. Typically lightning, thunder, and sometimes rain are involved. I guess afternoon storms are the norm here. So we’ll usually bring the boats in to the shore and hang out at the camp anywhere from 20 minutes to a couple hours. After the storm has blown over, the lake is usually very smooth again, and the day ends with a great sunset and a calm lake.
The coolest part about all of this is that when we bring the boats in, sometimes us coaches just play in the rain doing stupid stuff like little kids…while we’re on the clock. Like last week we soaped up the trampoline in the rain to see if we could jump up on it and slide all the way across. Then we went to the water and flew a big flat tube (the kind you lay out on to relax on the lake) like a kite. Good times, good times.
Yes, I am getting a new phone! The bad news is that all my contacts are in my old phone, which is at the bottom of Lake Minneola, FL. That means I’m in need of many phone numbers, so if you know of any phone numbers, feel free to give them to me! I wouldn’t suggest putting your number in the comments here, but if you read this blog and know me, chances are you’ve already seen one of my other requests for numbers or you have my number and can send me a text or some other message to let me know your number. That was a long sentence!
My new phone has a high-tech hands free system, pictured herein.
