Twenty years ago today Hurricane Ivan came ashore, straight up Mobile Bay. It came ashore as a Category 3 hurricane.
I woke up at that morning to go to work. My power was still on. The drive got treacherous pretty quickly. Visibility dipped. A 20-minute trip turned into almost a 40 minute drive, but the worst was yet to come for our area, which was a good 250 miles inland. That far away from the coast, hundreds of trees were down and power poles snapped. Miles and miles of power lines were on the ground before the worst had even arrived. Early on, the state broke its power outage record, with Alabama Power saying three-quarters of their customers were in the dark. We couldn’t communicate with people down on the coast.
Whole forests down there were snapped, shredded and felled by 100 mph winds down there. The eastern part of Mobile Bay took a wallop. In Gulf Shores, they had eight feet of water on the main drag. Everything almost a mile from the beach was underwater. A handful of people waited out the storm on the battleship, the USS Alabama which is a museum in it’s day job. One wind gauge on the ship broke after registering a gust of 105 mph, another recorded a 112-mph gust. “You could feel the whole superstructure of the ship move when a big gust would hit,” one of the men that worked there said. The USS Alabama weighs 85 million pounds, and she was shuddering.
Up in Birmingham, we reported the hell out of that hurricane. I was still relatively new in that newsroom — my last newsroom — and this was just the second big national story we’d had in my first few months there. So I was showing off a little, maybe. But it was important. Before the next day was out, the estimates were already rolling in that there was more than $10 billion dollars in damages and some places would be in standing water and without power for weeks. I think I worked about 15 hours that first day and something just short of that the next day. I was calling everyone I knew and reporting their experience online. Back then, I knew a lot of people all over the region. I was calling the parents of ex-girlfriends: Do you have power? What happened where you are?
Only al.com eligible for a Pulitzer. This was 2004 and it was all so very new. But in 2005, Hurricane Katrina went to New Orleans. Our colleagues at our sister company, The Times Picayune and nola.com won two Prizes, and they deserved them both and more.
We were writing a lot more than a blog. We were putting together multimedia stuff as it came in. We were running a weather central microsite complimenting the wire copy and the NWS content. We were moving fast and doing creative things and telling a statewide, regional story. We didn’t win a Pulitzer, but we were paving the way, 20 years ago today.
I had a 35-mile ride on Friday. Almost thwarted just six or so miles in. I bunny hopped a railroad track and caught the rear wheel on the far track and popped the tube, right after this lovely little spot.
So I stood in someone’s yard, taking the wheel off the frame and the tube out of the wheel. I fiddled with a new tube and finally got everything ready to pump it up. I carry a pocket-sized hand pump. All hand pumps have a limitation. They just won’t push enough air pressure to let you do much more than get safely home. And that’s when it works well. But my pump is 11 years old, it was probably cheap when I bought it, and they don’t even sell the thing anymore.
It works … some of the time. Earlier this summer, for example, it really didn’t. In that yard today, it didn’t. After I limped a bit farther down the road and stopped in a field to try again, my pump decided to get its act together. I had a good stiff tire and did the whole ride I’d planned out. Just a bit later than I’d expected. But the views were wonderful nonetheless.
I did the last few miles in the extended neighborhood. Enjoying this view on a perfectly quiet road, soaking this in. This is why I enjoy riding in the evenings.
(If that’s not the nighttime video, just refresh the page and scroll back to it. There’s an autoplay function here I can’t turn off right now.)
I had a nice and easy 20-mile ride today. Easy, and somehow I found myself sprinting along a road at 36 mph, which is about where I max out these days. I’m not even sure why I did that, and I felt it for a good long while thereafter.
But before that, corn stalks!
It’s a nice time to be outside, so I’m spending a lot of time outside.
I also had a swim on Saturday. The pool was chilly, but that makes you go faster, they say. I think if there’s anything to that it’s just because you’re trying to get out of the water. But there was a comfortable 1,720 yard workout. That’s a mile, which sounds like a lot, but it isn’t, not really.
Today, I had another mile swim, and it was a bit faster, but still slow. But fast for me, because i was trying to get my laps in before the chill set in. The thermometer said it was 76 degrees.
And so I begin to wonder, what is my tolerance? And how many more outdoor swims can I have before we find out?
Quite a few, I’m hoping.
