Saturday, June 23, 2007

3 Monsoons & a Tornado

Yet again, it's been a little while since I posted. I'm rife with excuses - which include being away & preparing for a move, which is what I wanted to share. I have literally traveled through three monsoons and experienced a very real, yet very figurative tornado. Let me set the scene:

Last weekend we were in Canada for my step-dad's graduation & a family reunion. It was all a lot of fun and hopefully I'll get a chance to post on the photo album some pictures from the trip. On the way home we stopped in Syracuse for the night and a day and then ended up at home Sunday night. Then I rented a car and headed out to Columbus, OH for my examination before Presbytery.

The examination went very well. While I was bumped in the docket from before lunch until after, all of the questions asked of me were very cordial and it seemed like no one was fishing or baiting me into anything. None of them waited around for a follow-up to clarify and after I was asked a second time my opening question, this time by an older gentleman who was either out of the room or just missed hearing it the first time, they moved to arrest questioning and within about five minutes I was asked to return with applause where they had accepted me unanimously. But that's where the fun began...

I headed out after coffee with my Sr. Pastors and maybe that's where I should recap. I drove 4 hrs (Cambridge-Syracuse, NY) Saturday, 4hrs (Syracuse-Princeton, NJ) Sunday, 7 hrs (Princeton-Columbus, OH) Monday and now am embarking on a return - 4 days and 22 hrs of driving after it would be all said and done - or so I thought...

I headed out of Columbus, where it had been mostly a sunny & warm 20 hrs (little rain in the morning). But now, I headed straight into monsoon #1. I could see 10 ft in front of the car with the wipers going full speed, driving 32mph - putting a slight damper into getting home in 7hrs. It cleared up about an hour later and traffic picked up as well. But by West Virginia (I was traveling 70 to the PA Turnpike) I hit monsoon #2. Not quite as bad as #1, but when a transport truck passed me, making my visibility nearly nil, it was pretty insane. Wipers were still on full speed and it was a little stressful. But again, things cleared up and within an hour it looked like I had finally hit the other side of the storm. This of course was not quite to be. Because somewhere around the time I got to Philly or just outside, monsoon #3 hit and lasted until I got home. Again, not quite as bad as the first one, but the wipers were going full speed and the water shooting over the median from transport trucks making me hyrdoplane precariously close to other cars.

Those were my monsoons - but I survived. Then the tornado hit - our movers (packers) came yesterday. AMAZING! This was pretty much everything I prayed for when we moved in here three years ago. I just wanted someone else to pack & move us. It happened. We have to live in box city for the weekend until the movers load the truck, but if that's the only problem we have, I'll be excited. They were one in about 4 hrs - three guys and a ton of boxes and four hours (plus their lunch & breaks) later and almost everything was packed. There's a few minor stuff left for us to do (food & some clothes & bathroom stuff - we have to be here a few days ourselves still) but they did a fantastic job.

I may post once before we leave, but at the rate I've been posting, the next post might be from Ohio...

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