In which I experience three different kinds of natural disasters in one week

Worth noting first off that unlike the people whose lives have been turned upside down by these events, my experiences were more tangential, while still very real.

Event #1 - hey, was that some kind of shaking going on?

Magnitude 5.9 earthquake hits Virginia, and at some point shortly thereafter I turn to my coworker and ask, "are we having an earthquake?' The sensation was subtle but noticeable, a bit like the dizzy feeling one gets from a head rush, or perhaps the spins one gets when drunk.

Event #2 - that seems like one big campfire, oh wait, that's a wildfire.

Joining the Marabellas (dad, sister and significant others) in Yosemite National Park (more about this in a subsequent post) we learn on our second day there that an RV's propane tank has exploded and started a wildfire just a few miles from where we're staying. Later, the power goes out and we begin to speculate about the reasons and the timing - we also begin urinating outside because the plumbing system is fed by by a pump that is no longer operating. Even later, a park ranger shows up (armed) and takes our names before informing us that there's a good chance we'll need to be evacuated and if they come back we should be prepared to leave immediately. We pack things for our escape, and wonder what the fuck we're going to do then.

Luckily, through the quirks of weather and the work of the Park Service, we did not end up needing to evacuate and even got power back, such that we were able to enjoy the last couple of days in and around the park as if nothing was going on. We did get some impressive evenings of smoke enhanced sunsets, and some impressive views of the fire from above (pictures in a subsequent post).

Event #3 just like Planes Trains and Automobiles, minus the train and with less sleeping.

Attempting to return from Yosemite on a flight from San Francisco to Boston ended up as quite an adventure. The flight was canceled due to IRENE! and all attempts at getting back to Boston proved fruitless (if your flight is canceled due to weather the airline has to get you home, but isn't required to do it at any particular time, so it was really looking like it would be 4 days spent in airports hoping to fly standby). They could get us to Chicago, which seemed like a better bet for getting a flight to Boston, and if worse came to worse was within a plausible driving distance, so off to Chicago it was.

Mechanical difficulties kept us on the ground in SF for an extra hour and a half (I think the black box box was having software problems) and so meant getting to Chicago after 11:00pm. All of the United customer service desks in Chicago were closed by the time we got in so we called the airline to see if our chances of getting home had improved. No. This was Sunday night. The earliest they might be able to fly us home was Thursday. And because it was weather related, they owed us nothing, so we were faced with the prospect of spending hundreds of dollars a day for shelter and food, while also spending every waking hour at the airport trying to fly standby. Talk about a shitty vacation. So we went to a Best Western by the airport to get a night's sleep and then resolved to rent a car and drive home.

Rental cars are expensive if A) you want to drive it one way, and B) there is an insane amount of demand to do A. Still cheaper than staying in Chicago for four days, but it meant we were going to drive it in one day, 1100 miles and approximately 17 hours (and this was to the Boston airport so we could get our own car and drive home).

Drive out of Chicago, across Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania and into New York (almost all of which is toll roads, so we're $30 poorer for that) with little problem (2011 Ford Fiesta proves to be both pretty comfortable over long distances and a decent little gas sipper). Soon after driving into New York we see a sign proclaiming 'all traffic must exit at Exit 34a'. Where the fuck is exit 34a? Why do we need to exit? Asking various toll collectors finally found out the why -Irene caused flooding had closed the road, and eventually we learned that exit 34a was just east of Syracuse. Not terrible, that's pretty far across the state, and we assume that the detour will be localized and quickly dealt with. Wrong. The detour involves driving more than an hour out of the way, down I81 almost to Binghamton, and then east on I88 to just north of Albany, and even this detour contains it's own sub detour, around some fallen power lines on local roads. It's now midnight and we've been in the car for 14+ hours with 3+ more to go.

After a recent conversation with someone who had tried one, I drank a 5 Hour Energy so I could make the final leg home through the middle of the night (they really do seem to work, without the jittery stomach rot of too much coffee or soda). Down into the Hudson Valley, over the Berkshires in western MA, and the long slow decent into Boston. There's no easier time to navigate Boston than 3 am and dropping off the rental car, getting our car, and getting home was generally uneventful. We walk in the door at 5:00am, 19 hours after leaving Chicago. It is Tuesday, we were supposed to be home late Sunday night, so roughly 30 hours of our lives has been sacrificed to IRENE!.

And so it was.