Skip to main content

Goodnight, Irene

    Hey, everyone. Many years ago I was working at a weather station and we had a very interesting visitor. He was a member of the Hurricane Hunters and he was on a recruiting trip. He hoped to find some crazy people to voluntarily fly through the walls of hurricanes for the purpose of taking readings. I raised my hand because A. I loved the weather career field.
            B. I was young and adventurous.
            C. I thought it would be cool.
      The guy looked at the wedding band on my raised hand and shook his head.
"Sorry, son. We don't take any married guys, for obvious reasons."
      Well, that was okay because then, as now, my wife is more fun than flying through the wall of a hurricane and at times she is as peaceful as the 'eye'. It may get really stormy around her in the morning, when she reads this.
    When hurricane season rolls around I still like to get the coordinates of these storms from The National Hurricane Center in Miami and plot them on a map, much as I used to do for the status boards, back in the day. By the way, there is an app for that. I'd rather just grab a grease pencil and plot it.
    As Hurricane Irene lumbers northward toward the East Coast of the United States, I think back on weather stuff. I remember being in the Delaware Bay when a tropical storm rolled in, back in the 1980's, I think. I was in a concrete box at a plant and had to ride it out.
      I remember tracking a hurricane on radar as it approached the gulf coast, watching it spawn a line of tornado infested thunderstorms.
    I remember sitting on the beach at Jekyll Island as a hurricane approached, watching the sea and sky change as tourists behind me were packing and moving out.
    The weather career field is terrific. If you love a good storm, that would be a great job for you youngsters. Someone reading this may be the next Jim Cantorre.
    Oh, yeah. About that title. Many decades ago there was a popular song called Goodnight, Irene. It went something like this, Goodnight Irene, goodnight Irene, I'll see you in my dreams. I'm pretty sure that the singer was not thinking about a massive, destructive and totally unfeeling monster with only one eye, but one never knows. For my part, hurricanes are beautiful, in a way, merely because of the intense interest which they generate in me. Maybe tonight, I'll see her (Irene) in my dreams.
     From the author's green retreat, far from the ocean, I'm CE Wills.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Shadowgun: Crushing The Driller On Level 4

      Hey, everyone. Let's talk about the game called Shadowgun, the I-Pad game with which I have a love-hate relationship. Most of you who made it past the evil Cyber Lobster are doubtless locked in a death struggle with the Driller at the end of level 4. At this point you have been in the cave for a long time. The Driller breaks through the rock wall and chases you through the tunnel as you try to shoot out the green lights which slows the Driller down. If you are slick enough to shoot out all the lights and emerge from the cave, a rolling door crashes on the Driller and crushes his aggravating carcass. I have tried and failed to beat the Driller at least 250 times. I hate the Driller to the heights and depths my soul can reach. I hate it like a plague. I hate it with intensity of feeling. I hate it like a rich man hates taxes. Excuse me, I got carried away.       We had a big dinner here at the green retreat and my friend Trevor was ...

Faerie In a Glass Jar

    Hey, everyone. Sometimes gaming can be high-pressure. Take tonight, for instance. I was playing the excellent puzzle game titled 4 Elements #2. I have already done a review of it so I won't attempt to do so again. You have to match symbols and use 'power-ups' to get molten lava to flow around a board and bring life back to a faerie world. Cool. That's what I do. I'm into it. There are also a variety of mini-puzzles such as hidden objects and even putting together a jigsaw puzzle. Hey, when I get in trouble I call Carley.     Anyway, tonight, Carley wasn't around when a crisis struck. I was confronted with a faerie in a glass jar. She was crying for help. She said that she was running out of air. Every minute or two she would rattle the jar. In order to free her, I had to find all these objects and use them. Like there were some missing books. Then there was the pieces of a torch. When I found them I could light all the candles. I found the pieces of ...

You're Aiming the Missile Where?

    Hey, everyone, out there in game-land. The number 1 game on the friendly neighborhood app store is Call of Duty: Strike Team . No wonder, because it is a terrific game. The farther I play, the cooler it gets. But before I get to that, what are all these numbers indicating on my gun? Has to be some sort of ammo indicator for the clips, I guess. either that or some of my compadres has trouble doing his math homework. Whatever.     Hey. Check out the picture of me hitching a ride on an enemy truck so that my team can infiltrate a missile silo. Do you like the face mask? I bought it at a store called Fashions by Bane. Ha, ha. (Batman Reference) On this mission, my team was assisted by a Russian Spetsnaz squad. How's that for detente, comrade? These Spetsnaz guys make everything fun. What I mean is this. We shoot bunches of enemies and get into the bowels of the silo. We get to the gantry where the missile is (Pictured above) and we see that the rad...