Tales from the refugee road…

Life would be a whole lot easier if hurricanes would make up their minds earlier, then let all the social media outlets know what’s going on. Our little family caravan has been in three different hotels the last three nights, scooting along hither and yon based on where the latest guess of where Florence will dump the huge load of water she has dragged across the Atlantic these last couple of weeks. We didn’t have a reservation at the first hotel we stopped at in Augusta, GA; having left a half day early to be on the leading edge of the refugee wave. We know what it's like to worry about the gas gauge nudging empty, crawling along with thousands of others on bumper to bumper four-lane highways, short tempers and crazy people in the driver’s seats. Once in a lifetime was enough.

The decision to leave early was a good call, and we landed in a nice hotel after an easy drive. But it cost well over $100 / night. The next night we moved to the hotel where we had reservations for a week, one where the cost was modest. Unfortunately, the accommodations were far more modest than the price suggested, and when the forecast put Augusta well within the flooding and tropical force winds it didn’t seem a good place to stay. There was no inside hallway so the door faced the outdoors. Even closed air, sunlight, and insects had easy access around the edges. Rain would surely just pour into the room when the weather folded, and the families would either be jammed into one small area for the duration or isolated from each other with no inside access. The windows were paper thin and not well mounted. It wasn’t hard to imagine a wind gust driving them right across the room. We decided to bail and head further inland.

The new destination was Chattanooga, about a 4 hour drive away. But the youngest member of the crew, the 8-month-old, went into full volume protest the minute we left the parking lot. She has no clue what is going on; all she knows is that her routine is upset so, so is she. She didn’t settle down even after nearly two hours on the road, Mom and baby both needed to stop. The next exit was Madison, and that’s where we landed.

This hotel has inside access, it also has a toilet that runs continuously, the phone is broken, there is no elevator to our second floor, the ice machines don’t work, there was no toilet paper on the roll or in the room, and the advertised internet connection isn’t. All ours for just shy of $100 / night after taxes and fees. Normally I would bail on such a place, but the little ones don’t really care about any of those things and they are just not up to making four moves in four days. So we will ride out the storm here.

How long that will be is still an open question. It looks like the brunt of the impact will be north and west of Beaufort, SC. There seems a pretty good chance that the boats will come through, so we will have homes when we return. Power, flooding, and road access will determine when we head back. Until then we will settle in here and make the best of it.

I was an airplane driver for decades, and put about a quarter of a million miles on motorcycles while wondering around the country. I have spent more than my share of time in hotels. There have been good ones, bad ones, and average ones uncounted. But it seems to me that, on the whole, “average” has dropped several notches in the hotel industry, while the price of “average” has gone way, way up. I would love to list names and addresses' of the hotels in question with the idea that if no one complains nothing gets fixed. But I don't have that much faith in the "customer service" side of America's economic system any more. I would love to believe that companies have some commitment to providing the best service they can at a fair price. But what I know is that their main, perhaps only, concern is how much profit they can make. I fear the cost of fixing things, if they were fixed at all, would fall on the people who work here instead. Costs to fix the facility would be found by reducing the workforce, cutting pay, cutting benefits (assuming there are any), while increasing the work load. That was my experience even in the high end world of aviation operations. I can't imagine hotel workers are fairing any better.

All and all I would much rather be on the boat. I just wish the hurricanes would cooperate a little more.

Pain Killer and Caffeine Crisis

We loaded up the compact rental car and left last Friday after work, taking advantage of the holiday weekend to visit family in PA. It was supposed to be a week-long visit with us arriving back at the boat on Sunday a week. By Tuesday morning it was clear that we needed to be back in Florida as quickly as possible. It was a 15 hour run back to Kintala, with an arrival of around 0200 Wednesday morning. Pain killers kept the rental car kinks at bay, and caffeine made it possible to keep on going.

Image courtesy of NOAA/CIRA

While we were on the road Daughter Eldest and family had prepped and packed. Deb and I boarded Kintala as quietly as we could so as not to wake sleeping grand kids (3) and an exhausted Mom and Dad. A few hours later dawn arrived. We helped them load the last stuff in the van, shared teary hugs all around, and sent them northward. We didn’t know then, and we don’t know yet, if there will be anything left of the life we had made together this summer at Snead Island.

One of a long long line of red lights averaging 35mph

With the kids on the move out of harm’s way I joined the crew working to get boats hauled, blocked, strapped down and stripped while Deb started getting Kintala ready to be pulled from the water. The initial plan was for me to work the day, spend a last night on the boat, haul it Thursday morning, and head out to catch up with Daughter Eldest at the hotel in Atlanta that we had booked before leaving PA. But she called a few hours later with news of traffic already slowing to a crawl, and suggested we get while the getting was good. Boss-not-so-new understood, encouraging me to punch out to help Deb and, a few hours later, moving Kintala to the head of the line for getting hauled. We stripped off canvas and solar panels, lines were secured, the anchor got dropped and tied to a nearby post, hurricane straps were ready to tie her to stakes driven deep into the ground, and all ports, hatches and holes were taped shut. By 1900 there was nothing left to do but give her hull a last pat, wish her good luck, and get on the road ourselves. That last 36 hours had seen just 4 hours of sleep, and there were miles and miles yet to go.

Traffic traffic everywhere and this was 2 days early

Pain killers and caffeine.

Daughter Eldest and family couldn’t make it to Atlanta. They bailed in Valdosta to a hotel they had booked from the car. As it turned out we couldn’t make it to Atlanta either, and so crashed at their hotel room around 0100 Thursday. After a few hours of sleep Deb and I headed for Atlanta while Daughter Eldest and family spent one more day in Valdosta. Rt. 75 was an on-and-off parking lot with a couple of wrecks strewn here and there just for ambiance. The day ended earlier than the last few, but sleep came hard. Not enough pain killer, too much caffeine.

This morning we moved to a second hotel, the one we had originally made the 5 day reservations at when we thought we were leaving Florida a day later. Plans change when one is a refugee. And there are tens of thousands of us at the moment. Though the original thought was that we could leave here to return to Florida, that may not be possible. At the moment all predictions are pretty grim. Sunday or Monday we will find out if there is anything to return to and, if so, when returning would make sense. One tries not to hope too much, but giving up hope is hard as well. The future is, right now, up to the largest hurricane ever recorded in the Atlantic.

And it doesn’t care.

In spite of it all we have been extraordinarily fortunate. We were working at a boat yard when this thing blew up, and our boat has as good a chance of surviving as any. We are refugees. But we run in an air-conditioned car with music and internet access. When it rains we are dry. There are funds in the bank for gas, food, and hotel rooms. Should the worst happen, we have a support network of friends and family who will help as we work to rebuild what has been lost. There are many, many people not nearly as fortunate as we, and our hearts go out to those who have taken a much harder hit.

Everything stripped and taped over

We are just one family of the thousands and thousands who have fled but, for others, running to safety really wasn’t an option. Cruisers are, at heart, wanderers. Moving because of weather is part and parcel of how we live, as is just picking up and heading off  because we feel like it. But we don’t live like most. Picking up and leaving is not a part of most people’s hearts, even in the face of Category 4 hurricane. So we have friends and co-workers who are in the strike zone. They will board up, hunker down, and hope for the best. I hope their luck holds, but I fear they are in for a ride they may boast about later, but never voluntarily take again.

In any case I suspect there are more pain killers and caffeine to go before this is all over.