Day One of Ian

 We started the day with some strong

feeder bands of rain.

Some wind.

Not much.

Rod and Kyle got all the new shutters up.

They are SO MUCH BETTER!

You can still kind of see outside.

But mostly the light can come in!

You don't feel like you're in a cave.

It really does help.

You can always tell when there's a hurricane.

Our middle yard looks like a Ford dealership.

Hahahaha.

Kyle's F250 to the left.

Kyle's F450 down by the barn.

My Isuzu Trooper (odd man out)

Our black F250

Rod's grey Ranger.

(And around the corner is Kyle's VW Gulf)

We move them to the center because the neighbors on both sides

have large pine trees that historically don't do well.

If something is coming down, its the pines.

So far, so good.

Highest gust 23 mph so far.

That's nothing.

We've had quite a bit of rain lately,

so this morning there was a bit of flooding in the front yard.

And over where we usually park the vehicles.

But they are only predicting about 3" of rain here.

So it won't likely get too much worse.

Nowhere near the house at any point.

We are in a lull.

For probably a couple of hours still.

My friend who lives in Tampa is getting hammered.

They already have a tree on their roof.

The yard is flooded.

There is water pouring in her back door.

They haven't had power for several hours.

I taught her class for her this morning and I will

likely cover for her Friday and Saturday as well.

I'm also scheduled to teach the evening classes this week

so it will be a week of "double dips".

Anything I can do to help.

In the meantime, the spreadsheet we created is

doing ... ok...  if only we could get people to

actually USE it.

Lots of texting back and forth where just updating

the sheet would accomplish the same thing

and then everybody would have equal information.

But its a start.

Kyle and Rod went and helped a family put up

their shutters this morning.

Lots of that going on in the ward.

Good to see everybody helping out.

Looks like we will be doing lots of hurricane

rescue / recovery over on the west coast for a 

few weeks in the near future.

We'll have to wait for the flood water to recede first.

They have a TON of water over where I used to teach.

Bonita Springs / Ft. Myers if you are following Jim Cantore.

The "Windy" app says it will be leaving the state over north Cocoa

up where Rod's brother Tim lives, sometime late on Thursday night.

So we will likely get the worst weather late tonight and through

tomorrow. But still it will likely only be Cat 1 or even just a

tropical storm.

We are safe.

We are dry.

We have a LOT of food and water.

Nothing to worry about here.

The guys are off work.

The airport is closed.

All the airplanes are piled in the hangar.

So they couldn't work even if they wanted to.

So we are sitting around.

Eating.

Isn't that what you do in a hurricane?

Lol.

Actually, I'm going to take a short nap

and then get ready to teach another round tonight.

Love to you all!