Hurricane Wilma

This brings back memories. I was going through pictures on my SD cards today.

Christine says that if I ever say "Let's fly in early, so we can see the hurricane", she will ignore me.

That is what we did. We had booked a cruise with our singles group for Halloween week, flying into Ft. Lauderdale. Well, our flight was supposed to arrive on Sunday, but we found out they were closing the airport on Saturday due to Hurricane Wilma. In all of my wisdom, I called Christine and said, "Let's move the flight up to Friday, so as not to miss the cruise".

She agreed.

Well, Friday came and we flew into Ft. Lauderdale. It was a beautiful day. We spent it on the Atlantic Ocean, our hotel was only about 50 yards from the ocean. Saturday and most of Sunday were just as wonderful. Hot sun, beautiful ocean. We got to know many of our cruiser friends. There were many people in our hotel. We walked up and down the beach and went to many of the clubs in the evening with friends.

I had never been to Ft.Lauderdale, but had heard of it from all of the times as far back as high school. The stories were all about beaches and parties.

We kept getting updates on Hurricane Wilma. It was supposed to hit Key West, the southern tip of Florida. Earlier it showed pictures of the damage it caused in the Caribbean; it was tearing up many of my favorite islands.

Sunday evening, the wind picked up. We could feel the sand stinging our legs when we walked back to the hotel from an organized party we attended. We went to bed Sunday night, and the next morning, even with my poor hearing, I could hear the wind whirling around our hotel . It was like the worst rain storm you had ever been in, and it was circling our hotel at 100 miles per hour for 6 hours. The noise was overwelming at times. Christine told me to get up. So, I did as she always says. We went downstairs, the elevators were out by now. We were on the 4th floor, good exercise.

Everyone there was visiting and talking about the storm. It was so cool to watch from inside the safe hotel. We ate breakfast and visited with many of our cruising friends. You can see pictures of the storm behind Christine.

We went back upstairs, watched the storm, and took pictures. I told Christine that I was going to lay down, nothing I could do. That did not fly, you can't be in bed..... what if!!!! It isn't safe. I had to get up, and we walked down the stairs; just as we hit the bottom floor, the window blew out at Christine's feet. I didn't even know she could move that fast!! The storm had really picked up, we were in the center of Wilma, it had changed course and was coming directly at Ft. Lauderdale.

Then, we had no power. Luckily our hotel had a generator. It ran limited things. It didn't run elevators or bathrooms. We found out what it is like not to have regular bathrooms. You had to take your trash can and fill it with water out of the pool to flush. No showers. After the storm stopped, the next two days I would go into the ocean to bathe. The reason we were there for two additional days was that there was Marshall Law on the strand, and we could leave, but we could not come back. The port was damaged and shut down, so our cruise ship could not come in. Two days of living without power was interesting. We got to know our cruising friends quite well. There was nothing to do but walk around during the day to look at the devastation, and sit around and talk at night (and party).

Finally, two days after we were supposed to leave on the cruise, we were taken on a bus to Miami and that is where we embarked. We all laughed that the water level on the ship went down when we got on... all of us needed a shower! Strangely enough, we have been on many cruises since then....