Thread Drift

[ny biker]

Wow NYBiker. That's terrible! I wonder if there's something going on with her bone density? Or whether she was just really unlucky. Either way, .

I do think there are bone density issues. She's over 70. (Did I also mention that she rode more than 5000 miles last year despite the injury? Kind of incredible.)

[Pax]

It's so weird, I keep feeling kinda froggy (spirited), like maybe, once we're home to IL, I'll actually start getting my behind out of the house and doing physical things again! I think it's all the packing and lifting and moving, it's making me feel capable.

[Crankin]

You will be so much happier when you get there. I picture lots of movement in the future!

[Pax]

I sure hope so, Crankin. Being trapped indoors 24/7 while sucking on inhalers 4x's a day for the last five months has made me alternately feel like a caged animal, or a depressed lump with nothing to look forward to.

[Crankin]

We had an F1 tornado in my town last night. It didn't touch down on my side of town, but it was scary as hell being awoken by the emergency alert on our phones. Apparently, only one other person in my office took it seriously enough to go down in the basement, like we did.
There is damage, not terrible, but damage on 2 streets.

[ny biker]

A few years ago when we were on a family vacation (in NH) a tornado touched down on Long Island in the town where my sister lives. I don't ever remember any tornadoes on LI before then. Fortunately it was minor with just tree damage, no damage to homes or businesses and no injuries. But it happens so rarely in that part of the country, I guess many people don't take it seriously.

I recall a tornado in southern NJ when I was in college in Philadelphia. The dorm where I lived was a 24-story apartment building -- I think I lived on the 15th or 18th floor. There were three similar buildings in the middle of an area with no other buildings, and that was surrounded by short buildings -- stores and rowhouses. So you could see for miles from the upper floors. One day I was standing in front of the window in my living room looking out at a bad thunderstorm, thinking how odd it was for the sky to be that shade of green and boy it really is windy out there. Then common sense kicked in and I backed away from the window. Later I learned that the same storm caused a tornado that broke windows at the Cherry Hill mall in NJ.

A couple of years later I moved to the Chicago area for grad school, where I rented an apartment over a restaurant. One day there was a tornado warning and I realized I had no basement to go to. If I had had to seek shelter, the best I could do was to sit in my closet. Fortunately I never had to resort to that.

Here in the DC area we actually have storms with tornado watches more often than you'd think, and a few have touched down in the suburbs with serious results. Again I have no basement to go to, since I live in a 2nd floor apartment. So my options would be the walk-in closet in my bedroom or going down the stairs in the main hallway past the building entrance to the basement level. The two main floor apartments have finished basements with doors leading out to that hallway, so I could try to knock and ask a neighbor to let me in. Or just stay in the hallway and hope for the best. One night before I went to bed there was a tornado watch, so I put my bike helmet and some flashlights in the walk-in closet in case I had to run in there in the middle of the night.

The worst storm damage in my area since I've lived here (more than 15 years) happened because of straight-line winds during a thunderstorm. Lots of trees were damaged, not just limbs blown off but trees snapped in half, and a bunch of cars parked in a lot down the hill had their windows blown out.

These are just some of the reasons that I avoid being outside during thunderstorms.