Storms

I've come across many storms so far and as I sit here in my home working on my computer whilst a torrential downpour is flooding the streets outside, I am suddenly reminded of my experiences of other storms like when I was in Germany and luckily decided not to go for a walk in an open field when suddenly a devastating hail storm riddled the area with huge chunks of ice that I could barely fit in one hand. Or in 2009 when I met my first typhoon and drastically underestimated it. As a Western Washingtonian, I am no stranger to strong winds, flooding and such so maybe I can take this opportunity to list out my top 3 storms that I've been through.

The third most memorable storm would probably have to be the ice storm that happened back home about 7 or 8 years ago. I can't remember exactly what year it was but I do remember having to prepare for it and work in it. Snow had fallen a few days prior and we had to clear all the snow from all the buildings at the farm. We were running equipment across the barn yard and sometimes slipping and sliding but always being as cautious as possible because machinery like the feeder wagon and the front-end loader are pretty unforgiving if they slide into anything. I remember one time I was walking over some compacted ice that had been driven over numerous times thus making it super slick; I had a call on my cellphone and by the time I answered it, I was one the ground. I didn't even recall my own descent. We had the feeder wagon hooked up to the 4240 which sadly couldn't pull the wagon up the hill which was the last obstacle until the silage pits. So, we had to gently get the loader's bucket under the back corner of the wagon and help to push it up the hill. It probably wasn't nearly the worst ice-storm ever but the reason it was so memorable is because it was so gorgeous. Skies were clear, the atmosphere was silent and everything glistened so beautifully. I took a picture with my flip phone but it did it no justice.

Number two is my first typhoon during my first visit to Taiwan. The weather in Taiwan is so hard to get used to if you're from Washington. Rain comes like a freight train; one moment everything is totally sunny and dry then you start to hear and sense something approaching you. Then a wall of falling water is suddenly dousing absolutely everything. Never go outside with something on your person which you can't afford to get wet, because it will get soaked in less than a minute. Also, just look at what the local people are doing, they will warn you that you need to get under cover immediately. Usually by saying, "cats and dogs!!!" in English because they can see that you're a foreigner. But my uncle told me (likely using sarcasm which I didn't pick up on) that Taiwanese don't cancel work or school for anything less than a missile attack from China. I thought that seemed strange but I had no idea what to believe so I figured that was true. And wouldn't you know it, the whole family went to Taipei for a doctor's appointment and left me at the house and not one day after they left, a huge typhoon stuck. I didn't watch TV because I was too stressed out about finishing my homework, so I put my papers and important stuff in the plastic saddle bags and went out into what I figured to be a really rainy day. The streets were empty and motorcycles were preemptively laid on the ground. I was dodging debris and getting soaked all the way to the university. I parked the motorcycle near the gates which were closed. The security guard couldn't keep his eyes off me nor could he comprehend why I was even there at all. I asked why nobody else was here, he simply asked me if I noticed that there was a typhoon going on around me. I said "yes" because by the time I reached the university I had come to that conclusion and explained that my uncle said that was no reason to cancel school. Naïveté is something that we grow out of because of experiences like this one. So I turned around and went to my friend's apartment where we tried to see if the wind was strong enough to lift us off the ground by using a really big sheet. Our conclusion was no, we were too fat.

The most memorable storm was in December of 2007. This was the worst storm not only because it was a 100 year flood which caused a lot of damage on the farm property and the property of many of the neighbors but also because it was the year that my best friend died. I remember that even west Olympia was submerged and a famous steakhouse on highway 8 was washed out; I drove pass it less than an hour before it was washed across the highway and into the median. My brother and I still had to go to school at SPSCC and we picked up Scott who lived just up the hill from us. He couldn't drive out of his hill because too many trees and too much debris was blocking the road so he met us at the bottom of the hill. As bad as that was, my brother and I had to park at the neighbor's house and use the 4850 John Deer (or as I called it, "the S.S. John Deer) to access our house. It was like sailing a ship through rough waters especially with an especially strong current which ran directly over the middle of our gravel driveway. With all that turmoil going one, it made it hard to grieve properly for the loss of my friend. He died so suddenly in a car accident and it was like being shocked emotionally, I just couldn't react properly. There was no time to pause life and deal with it but then again, how can you ever actually deal with something like that? I still don't know if having to tend to the storm at that time was a good thing in that is was a distraction or a bad thing because it stole my attention away from a life event that was obviously much more impacting. One things for sure, I'll always remember that time of my life as if it were yesterday.