From Jonas to Olympia

We will be leaving Atlantic Beach tomorrow, and this morning we are experiencing a storm worse than the one last weekend, as if the beach wants to give us a little souvenir to remember her by.  The palm trees are horizontal, deck furniture was in danger of disappearing into the sky and flying out over the Atlantic a few minutes ago (before I grabbed them and whisked them inside), and the handles of the sliding glass doors are shaking and vibrating with an unnerving forcefulness.  This is the eastern-most edge of Winter Storm Olympia, I understand, which here is producing violent wind and rain and west of here produced an as-yet-unknown amount of snow and ice (we will tune in to the Weather Channel in a few minutes to see how much).  Which is why we did not leave Monday.

On our Winter Escape we went from Jonas, which we escaped just in time and which pursued us to Clemson nearly four weeks ago, to Olympia - how did we go through so many names within such a short span?

I sure don't remember Kayla, Lexi, Mars, or Nacio (how the heck do they come up with these names, anyway?)   Maybe it would be better not to name every storm that comes along.  It seems like we are having a much worse winter when all of these strangely-named creatures are stomping across the country like rampaging giants.

The rain started coming in yesterday afternoon, and we both wanted to get in one good run before hitting the road tomorrow.  So I played with my iPhone all afternoon, going from Intellicast to Weather Channel to MyRadar (my favorite weather app, which simply displays very specific and animated local radar for every region of the country).  Finally I spotted what I thought was a window between the big green splotches of rain drifting in off the Atlantic from the south, one after the other, like enemies approaching in some weird video game.  I made it to Fort Macon and back, and just as I turned into the driveway back at our condo it starting to spit some rain, just enough to cool me off a little (the temperature was nearly 60).  Martha was not so lucky; she left about 30 minutes after I did and I passed her on the road.  By the time I got to the room, grabbed the car keys, and headed down the road to fetch her, it was really coming down.  So I suppose our little grey Honda CRV was her knight in shining armor, as I flung the door open and she gratefully wrapped herself in a blanket!

 
Isn't it nice to get back to a warm and cozy place after such a run, take a hot shower, put on comfortable clothes, pour a glass of wine?  The little rewards of life are so much more pleasurable after facing adversity.