September 2017
As we began the new school year, and Kim's "senior year" (her last year of work) we had made reservations to fly to Kansas for the weekend to see the grandsons and go to Jeff's Kansas Jayhawks football game vs. Central Michigan. But the weekend prior to our departure (on Wednesday) the most recent tropical depression morphed into Hurricane Irma and had dead aim on South Florida. Our plan has always been for a "big storm" to RUN. If it was an east coast event we planned to head to the west coast and Kim's parents' condo in Englewood; if it was a west-to-east or a south-to-north event then we'd flee to Sue & Dan's home in northern Georgia. But with an anticipated arrival sometime over the weekend, we already had the flights to Kansas so it became our "escape plan." From the time we arrived I was following the storm via the Internet live streaming news broadcasts from home. It's the first storm since we've been here that I was genuinely fearful of. As the projected path shifted more westward and when it actually made landfall I knew we were going to get terrific storm weather, but not so much that I'd worry about the house being gone, just hopefully minor damage. So we were able to enjoy the grandsons, the visit, the game and that all provided a good distraction to what was happening at home.
We had planned to return to So Fla on Sunday but with the storm hitting Saturday we knew that would never happen. So we moved the return flights to Tuesday. Thanks to Southwest and their policies this was all an easy online process and at no extra charge. Then as it became apparent what was going on I had a feeling we would have to stay longer. My original plans had been to fly to Ohio on Thursday and visit my family and then we were going to Jeff's next game when they visited Ohio University just ninety minutes southeast of Columbus. So I altered my plans to fly directly from Kansas to Ohio on Wednesday and Kim stayed through the following Monday, the 18th. Here's a photo virtual scrapbook of our two week adventure......
