Debby and us

Sunday June 24, 2012
Lithia Spring Park Site 25
Lithia, Florida

 

 

I wake up to the rain on the roof.  Sounds soooo nice.   Not much encouragement to get up and go out to run.  So I don’t.  I read instead.

 

 

 

 

 

But then my guilty conscience gets the better of me.  I stick my head out the door.  The rain isn’t nearly as strong as it sounds on the roof inside the coach.  Somehow I can never remember that even though I lived for years in a farmhouse with a tin roof. 

 

 

 

Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t like to run but running in the rain actually is my favorite if I could be said to have one.  Let me qualify, that’s if the rain isn’t too cold or too strong.  I get on my gear including, out of habit, my walkman so I can listen to a book on tape which usually makes the time go faster for me.  But I don’t listen to it, I don’t need it at all today.  I don’t need a hat either.  Just let the rain wash over me.

 

 

 

 

Out I go and I have a GREAT time.  The rain and the temperature are just right.  I’m not in favor of Tropical Storms and certainly not if they decide to turn into Hurricanes and come my way but Debby has so far only sent me this nice rain and I’m thankful. 

 

 

 

 

 

I don’t get hot, I don’t sweat, I don’t have trouble with the air soup because there isn’t any soup just rain drops and there isn’t any heat.  It is the easiest run I’ve done in a LONG time.   If I can arrange for the rains in Florida to come overnight and last until say 10am, I’ll run in them all the time.

 

 

 

 

After I finish with my 5 miles I come back but I’m not ready to come in.  It is just too nice outside.  Besides I’ve seen a hawk right down on the post next to the outdoor shower at the spring and David has seen him too when he was on his walk. (He took an umbrella)  So I think there is a chance I can take the camera out and maybe get a picture of the hawk.  Or not.  I don’t care.  I’m just not finished being outside yet.  And besides I want to walk the path from the boat dock to site 40 and see what all this rain has done.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I get some pictures of the park in the rain and the rising waters.  The hawk is on the fence  this time but flies up into a tree before I can get a good focus on him. None of the shots I take of him from below are good enough to print.  Oh well I saw a drenched hawk close up and he looked seriously wet, just like me.   The ducks I’d seen earlier are also gone.  DARN!   I like being wet with these guys.

 

 

 

My last stop is the natural spring where I find the water is really up and the grasses are getting submerged.  It looks much more flooded than the public spring.

Eventually the rain picks up and I am totally soaked to the skin so I begin to get chilly.  Chilly, in late June in Mid Morning In Florida. AMAZING!  I walked over but I run back to the coach. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

David takes a picture of the happy drowned rat.  No need to shower.  :-)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We have a delicious scrambled breakfast and hash browns.  We talk to Carrie and my father on the phone….free Verizon minutes on week-ends.
Then we do the final touches on the financial aid applications for housing during the stem cell transplant.  I thought I was finished with all of that when Carrie finally got out of the education game.  L

 

 

 

 

In the afternoon I drive up to the pharmacy to pick up a prescription for omeprazole.  David is having some stomach troubles due to the chemo drugs and taking these before he eats helps.

 

 

We have the weather radio on but don’t hear anything alarming.  Mostly just coastal rip tide warnings.  The tornados seem to be to the north of us unfortunately they are around the spot we will be moving to next week which is concerning.  So far Debby has been very nice to us.  Hope she doesn’t change her mind.  And hope she travels away by the time we have to move.

 

 

 

 

We have beans and rice and beautiful red chard for dinner.  Local weather is much more specific and shows every county touching the gulf has 4-9” of rain. 

 

They show tornado damage, flooded streets, giant waves.  They say another 2 days of rough weather.   Thank goodness we are on the far end of Hillsborough County and away from the Bay and Gulf.  Boy are we lucky this didn’t happen while we were at the beach.

 

 

After dinner the rain is still heavy.  Someone comes down the drive in a car, honks, comes up to the door and says a tornado is coming and they are leaving.  We haven’t seen that at all.  Not on the weather radio or the TV.  No winds or anything here.  We think he is foolish to be driving in this weather.  We go out into the rain and move the boats, the bikes, the car away from the coach.   We keep watching and listening.  If it it looks as though it is coming here, we are possibly the only RV in the park, the other two were a pop up camper and a truck camper, and possibly the only people in the park other than the one house for the on site Ranger up near the station.  We will go to the bathroom which is the only building with no windows. 

 

But we never see anything that shows our area on the map for a tornado.   There are a lot of them touching down with damage and continued flooding in areas closer to the gulf.  We continue watching the radar until all the cells have passed to the north of Tampa.  This reminds us of last year when we were running from tornados in Oklahoma and sitting in shelters.  Ruby was damaged by hail, we crossed the Mississippi in Nashville the day before they closed the bridge due to its flooding.  Very scary.

Now the rain gets very heavy.  It almost sounds like hail.  Things have changed, we watch a very red area on the radar moving right through Lithia.  But luckily we have no winds.  Just nearly deafening rains.  We can hardly hear the weather. 

The rain stops just after 10:00.  We are very lucky.  Our day ends not with a hurricane but with tornados passing us by.  Even the rain has stopped…….for now. 

Tomorrow is David’s last pre-stem cell transplant visit with his Moffitt hematologist Dr. Ken Shain.  We are hoping the flooding and damage we are seeing on TV in Tampa doesn’t prohibit us from keeping that appointment.  But I guess we won’t know until morning.