Highway to the Danger Zone

After a day and a half vacation at my "city home" in Little Rock, I decided to head back to the old grinding stone... I knew my fearless leader (Matthew) missed me! He even called me at 6am Monday morning to tell me so. Thanks brother.

So after a lovely lunch that didn't involve fried food or hamburgers, I packed the pups in the trusty jeep and headed south. About the time I was entering England my mother called to tell me the mayor had already notified the hospital that there was a 90% chance of tornadoes in DeWitt that afternoon. I also checked out weather.com and the radar on my phone and knew that it wasn't looking too pretty... I was driving right into the thunderstorm; highway to the danger zone!!!

I went through a small hail storm in Allport but made it home safe and sound. Apparently, my mother had sounded the alarm to everyone else in my family because when I pulled up my brother's family was here, my mother had cleaned out the closet under the stairs and we were ready for Tornado Watch Party 2011. We had flashlights, weather radios, and couch cushions all ready for our "safe place". My papa's wife also called from Little Rock to say he was by himself, and he had left the phone off the hook. (haha, this happens ALL the time) So I hopped in the truck, went to his house and invited him over as well!

So the all-AufderHeide Tornado Watch Party 2011 commenced... My brother suggested we make hurricanes (like they do in Louisiana for hurricane watch party's) but the only thing in my mother's liquor cabinet was some peach snaps, probably from 90's. I passed. We feasted on leftover hamburgers and switched back and forth from Ned Perme to the Weather radio. Finally, we realized our watch party was a little over-kill so we just put in a movie then called it a night!

While I'm very thankful that we didn't have any serious damage there are two down sides to all these storms: 1) I'm trapped at my mother's and can't do all my necessary duties at the flying service. As you can see from the picture above, our gravel road is under quite a bit of water, as are the other surrounding gravel roads. Most of my creative juices flow at the airport, so sorry for this kinda lame post. 2) I am VERY disappointed that my old jeep did not sustain major hail damage or just get blown away in general. I left it outside of the garage all night for those two very specific purposes! My papa gave me my jeep in December of my senior year in high school... That's right, I said HIGH SCHOOL! And while we've had alot of great memories and traveled down lots of highways and into many danger zonesm 190k miles later, I think it's time to trade her in... I was just kinda hoping the storm would force me to do it!

*Shout out to Nikki for helping me title this post!