Escaping The White Death

I didn't plan to spend part of this weekend at my mom and stepdad's place south of Richmond. But weather emergencies have a way of changing plans.

I woke up relatively early on Saturday and checked outside. Sure enough, the weather guys were right and there was snow sticking to the cars in the lot. I took a photo, pasted it on Facebook and made a phone call before I dozed off for another hour, with visions of a day of college football and decluttering in my head.

About 9 a.m., I was up for good and turned on the television, watching NBC4's coverage of Snotober. Or Ocsnowber, not sure which one of these will stick. I was falling back asleep again when the power went out. The way these outages go, if the power is gone for more than about a minute, it becomes open-ended. Could be back in an hour, or three, or seven.

With the snow still coming down, I figured Shenandoah Valley Electric Cooperative might just tell us we had to wait for the weather to improve before a crew could be dispatched. And the forecast called for the snow to continue until 6 p.m., so it would be a long, cold afternoon if i didn't take action.

So action, I took. I figured if I could make it over the Blue Ridge before things got too ugly in the Shenandoah Valley, I could head for Prince George, where there would be heat, power and company. So I had to hatch a plan to get out of the house as quickly as possible.

First things first. Stop trying to turn on lights. They do not work when the power is off. So I grabbed the "electric lantern" I have had since the Y2K scare, and put it in the bathroom. The water heater still had plenty of hot water, so I was able to take a quick shower. That thing about the lights? Well, the bathroom fan works the same way, it turns out.

There was plenty of light downstairs, and I only opened the fridge one time, so I could get milk for a bowl of Cap'n Crunch. Coffee would have to wait for Sheetz in Opal. Then I piled everything I figured I'd need for two days into the car and headed south.

As I expected, the first 30 miles of the trip was the absolute worst despite sticking to Interstates 81 and 66. It was a little hairy on U.S. 17 north of Warrenton, but the rest of the trip was uneventful, save for a near-death experience with a pair of snowbirds from Ontario who felt this was a lovely time to travel south for the winter. Those motorhomes don't do well in good weather, so when one of them decided to try to dislodge me from the right lane, I had to hang on tight.

I managed to get to Prince George in time for the second half of the Virginia Tech-Dook game, and the visit went well, I had not seen my folks in a few weeks, and there was plenty of college football to watch and good food to eat. The power was restored in Winchester about 4 p.m., I am told.

But an unexpected trip home can be good for the soul.

Goodnight Irene

Considering the alternatives, I’ll say I’m happy to be high and dry today. Plus, I already got through Snowmageddon last year, so I’m done with disasters, natural or otherwise.

But Irene’s approach the last few days had me thinking about September 1996, and dealing with the remnants of Hurricane Fran. Actually, we had a big snowstorm the previous winter that was followed by serious flooding, so I wonder if these things do in fact run in cycles.

We were about six months into the regime change at the Page News and Courier when Fran struck, but certain things transcend work environments, poor or not, and covering a big story is definitely one of them. I grabbed my camera about 10 a.m. that Friday and walked to the office, crossing the Main Street bridge over Hawksbill Creek and getting a last look at two buildings that would be part of the waterway about six hours later.

At some point, my compatriot at the paper, Jeb Caudell; WLCC news director Jeff Stapleton and I piled into Jeb’s pickup and surveyed the damage just north of Luray. We were probably out for an hour or so, I remember going out to Jim Logan’s place to see how they were doing out there and then not being able to take U.S. 211 back into Luray because the Hawksbill had already left its banks and flooded Bulldog Field. Jeb got a three-inch-long gash on his arm from a Brookside sign he wanted to use to brace himself as he got one last photo before we used Collins Avenue to get back into town.

But we were shocked…and had to stop…when we could see the football stadium below us was under nine feet of water. After taking more photos, we went to Jeb’s townhouse, next to Hardees, which appeared to be one of the few places in town that still had power. Since the cable was out, we thought we’d try to head south toward Stanley and get more photos, but the creek had left us unable to get out of town. The Main Street bridge was underwater and some loose propane tanks caused police to close the bypass, so we were stuck in town.

The next few hours are a blur. With the power out, we had just one working phone at the Page News. Eventually, the creek went down enough that police allowed me to cross the Main Street bridge and get home about 6 p.m. Within another hour, the power was actually back (one of the great things about living on the main drag). Cable was out until Sunday, but it was restored just in time for the Redskins’ game.

Jeff, Larry and I actually went to Baltimore on Saturday to see the Orioles and Angels, having to use Browntown Road as a detour around the South Fork of the Shenandoah River, which had flooded U.S. 340. So it was not until Sunday afternoon that the true damage outside of Luray became apparent to me.

About lunchtime, while waiting for the Redskins game to start, I got a call from Gov. George Allen’s press secretary, Ken Stroupe, a Stanley native. He said the governor would be flying into Page County later in the afternoon and they would keep me up to date on where to meet up with them. They wanted to land the helicopter at Bulldog Field, but it was still under water, so instead the chose to stop at Mountain View Parks, a pair of private softball fields on the north end of Stanley. There, Jeff and I met up with the governor, two Page County supervisors and a pool cameraman from Channel 12. Escorted by a couple of state police cars, we went back into Pine Grove, where the destruction wreaked by the Hawksbill, fed by a foot of rain up in Shenandoah National Park, was amazing.

I took a few photos of the governor walking along a rocky ledge to get to the front porch of one family. By this time I was also getting a little antsy since I was due at the radio station at 6 p.m., even though the transmitter had been without power for the past two days.

When we got back to Stanley, I headed back up Leakesville Road and got to WLCC in time to relieve Larry. Most of the next five-plus hours was spent answering the phone. “Yes, Wrangler is closed. No, I don’t know when we’ll be back on the air.” About 11:30, they got the power back to the transmitter, so we went commercial-free for the next two and half hours passing along boil water advisories, school closings and the number for FEMA. By 2 a.m., I signed off and went by the emergency operations center for one last conversation before heading home.

It was quite a storm, and we had stories in the weeks and months to follow, but there’s nothing like covering spot news. Sometimes I miss the thrill, which is why it was a blast (I’m sorry) when that guy tried to blowup his house in Stephens City about five years ago.

On the other hand, I’m happy to let the folks in D.C. take the lead on this one.

Yeah, I was in Indy for 15 minutes

I’m blaming this on Topper Shutt, although it’s certainly my fault.

Less than 24 hours ago, I drove past one of my favorite ballparks, a place I haven’t been in eight years, but skipped the chance to go to a game.

After spending an awesome extended weekend in Cincinnati, making friends with a bunch of trivia players from across the country, I had a free day before I needed to return to Winchester. What to do?

As soon as it became apparent that I was not going to have to ferry anyone back to town, I figured I’d find a game somewhere on the way home. Of course, most maps are not going to show Indianapolis as being on the way back from Cincinnati, but hey, Victory Field is awesome, I have never seen the AAA Pirates at home (the Indians were a Brewers club in 2003) and, what the heck, I still make the decisions around here.

The run up Interstate 74 was remarkably smooth and I pulled into Indy just after 1 p.m., an hour before the game. Drove past Lucas Oil Field, got closer to the baseball stadium and saw lots of people headed to the park, and plenty of guys who would be glad to give me a place to put the car for five bucks.

I also saw a black sky. I mean, a REALLY black sky.

OK, I got this one figured out. I drove past the stadium and turned onto the road that front the Indiana state Capitol. Having just been in town last year, I remembered where I had parked at a meter, and this would give me a chance to check the radar and make a few phone calls.

First up, check the weather. My phone has a nifty app from Channel 9 that includes a really good radar. When you start it up, the smiling face of chief meteorologist Charles “Topper” Shutt greets you. I had to swipe across the screen a couple of times to get from Washington to Indy. The colors west of the city included lots of red and purple, and some others I can’t properly describe. I was pretty sure one was black. And this IS tornado country. Strike one.

I called a buddy who I often get minor league sets for. “What do you need from Indianapolis, because that’s where I am,” I asked. He needed nothing, just picked up the 2011 set at a baseball card show a couple of weeks ago. Strike two.

I was still undaunted, that is until the wind kicked up. And the rain started to pelt the car.  I started thinking about a trip to Toledo earlier this year, which included two hours in a pregame rain delay followed by no game. And no chance to use the rain check. Did I really want to plunk down $5 to park and another $12 for a ticket to cower under cover for an hour or two, only to find out there would be no game and I was still nine hours from home? Strike three.

I briefly considered a couple of options. Go to the Speedway Museum. Find a mall and wait there for a bit to see if the weather would miraculously clear. But as I got on eastbound Interstate 70, it poured and poured, and I had no idea where I was, so the safest thing was to stay on the road home.

Which is why I cringed a half hour or so later when I found the Indians’ local radio station. They started the broadcast with all of the other International League scores from a handful of games in progress, then went on to the majors, and they don’t do that if they are getting ready for the first pitch.

Twenty miles outside of Indy, still in the pouring rain, I hear the guy say, “They are taking the tarp off the field and they hope to be playing here shortly.” What?

I stopped for a paper, looked at the radar again and somehow all that color west of town had disappeared, draining from the screen the way it did from my face. I’d just gotten out of the worst of the storm and would have to drive back through it if I even entertained the idea of going back. And if I’d go back, who’s to say the game would still be played? So I continued east as the play-by-play guy talked with the official scorer to fill time, putting up with static on my radio every time there was a bolt of lightning. And there was a lot of lightning.

I could still hear the game by the time I got to Richmond, Ind., and the kid for Indy had a no-hitter going into the fourth or fifth. When I got home, I checked the web. He didn’t manage to keep the no-no, but got a 3-0 win over Rochester in a game that was over by 5:30 before a crowd of better than 8,000. Thanks to modern technology, poor decision-making and, yes, Topper Shutt, I wasn’t one of them.