Flood of 2009

Six Flags Amusement Park

Downtown I-75\85 Connector

Rainfall totals: white = 15+ inches

While I was finishing up the blogging on our road trip and dealing with my newly diagnosed Bells Palsy, Atlanta was being flooded by rain.

It had been raining pretty good for a couple of days and there were some flash flood watches on the television when Derek asked if we were going to be flooded like in New Orleans. I told him that we don't get flooded like that. I was wrong. It kept raining...a lot...every day for 8 days.

Our immediate area was never in any danger, but there were neighbors with water damage in their basements. It seems that even fairly minor drainage problems were exposed by the sheer volume of rain. This week there were many houses with rotten carpet and other debris at the curb for garbage pickup.

School was closed for a couple of days so Helen and the kids got an unexpected holiday. There were a number of bridges closed near my office which resulted in some bad commutes for several days.

And, of course, all the soccer and tennis matches were postponed and now have to be squeezed into an already overbooked schedule.

There are many images of the flood on the internet. Here are some good ones where I pulled the above pictures from.

Bells Palsy

I woke up Friday a week ago, washed my face, looked in the mirror and noticed there was something not quite right with my face. I thought maybe I just slept funny and it would go away. I went to blow my nose and couldn't keep my lips tight enough to force the air out my nose. Hmmm, something's not quite right.

I went downstairs and Helen was getting ready to leave for work. When she saw me she immediately asked what was wrong with my face. I gave a twisted smile and we laughed and then she started tearing up and said that I needed to go to the emergency room right away. I told her what was done was done and I felt fine otherwise. She left for work and I continued to try to pinpoint what exactly wasn't working.

Helen got to work and told some coworkers about me and they told her to go home and take me to the emergency room. So she called and said she was heading home. I knew she couldn't concentrate and wouldn't be able to work. I told her that I had figured out that I couldn't close my right eye so I probably was going to go to the doctor.

We had a conference setup with Adam's teacher in the morning to address his poor spelling and I insisted that we go to that first since we had to get the kids to school anyway. So we went to the conference and then went to my primary care doctor. Helen was freaking somewhat and I told her if she was going to go with me then she was going to have to calm down. The doctor saw us right away and immediately put us at ease by telling us that I was not having a stroke. He told us I had what is known as Bells Palsy, a viral infection that attacks the facial nerve. 80 to 85 percent recover fully, usually within weeks or months.

As with any medical condition there's so much information out there, a lot of it contradictory. It seems like once you get into the medical system you're screwed one way or another. Take one pill for the condition and another to alleviate the side-effects of the first pill. Then there's the whole alternative medicine side with chiropractic, acupuncture, herbal concoctions, etc. Get me out of here.

It's not terrible. There's no effect on my movements. I've had a little pain behind my ear, but nothing debilitating. The main problem is not being able to close my eye and the blurry vision. My right eye alternately dries out or waters up. I have to manually close it every so often. I tape it shut at night or when it gets tired. My speech is somewhat affected, eating can be messy and requires a napkin at all times, and who knew how many facial contortions are required when shaving.

There are all kinds of stories out there about people's struggles with Bells. I thought this was a good one.

Road Trip 2009: Day 17 of 17 (Tampa/Home)

Tampa to Atlanta (home)

Montu Coaster

SheiKra Coaster

Sunday June 7, 2009

It was Helen's birthday and the last day of our trip. We knew we had a long drive ahead of us, but we wanted to spend some more time at Busch Gardens before we left for home.

We started with the Montu roller coaster. Derek was hesitant at first, but with surprisingly little encouragement he decided to ride it...and he loved it. After that, he seemed game for all the rides, even Sheikra with the 90 degree vertical drop. Helen wouldn't do that one.

We had a good time and got to ride plenty of rides. Before we left Derek was saying how he wanted to go back to Busch Gardens instead of Disney World. He's at the age where the rides matter more than the other things and at Busch Gardens there were plenty of rides with very few lines. We stayed into mid-afternoon, which meant we didn't get home until late.

We had a great time on our trip. It seemed like multiple trips with the stay at Disney World. The kids are great travelers. They entertain themselves with their mp3 and Nintendo DS players and an occasional movie, although they may be getting too big to share the back seat comfortably. They love staying at the different hotels and eating at different restaurants. And they seem to genuinely enjoy learning about things and having new experiences. They enjoy things like the Edison Winter Home just as they enjoy the theme parks.

Road Trip 2009: Day 16 of 17 (Ft Myers/Tampa)

Fort Myers To Tampa

Edison and Ford Winter Estates

Banyan Tree

Derek, Mr Edison, and Adam

Listening to the guided tour

Looking for mangos

Mina Edison's Moonlight Garden

There was a museum with lots of Edison's inventions

The lab

Sunshine Skyway Bridge spanning Tampa Bay

The bridge has a hump in it that made it feel like a roller coaster going downhill

Busch Gardens in Tampa

Saturday June 6, 2009

We spent the night in Fort Myers so it was only a short drive to the Edison and Fort Winter Estates. The kids loved the huge banyan tree in front of the museum entrance. It was a beautiful day to walk the grounds as we listened to the self guided audio tour. We were given a map with numbers on it. You just had to punch in the number on the audio device to hear the information. The kids had fun searching for new numbers all over the grounds and then they were cute as they punched in the number so they could listen to the information.

The grounds are filled with wonderful trees and plants. The staff warns you not to eat any of the fruit. They said that mango's contain urushiol, the chemical in poison ivy. We had not heard that and thought they were just trying to scare us, but found out later that it is true that the mango peel contains urushiol. We were asking one of the staff horticulturists about various things and then asked about the mangos. She winked and said that if we really wanted some good mango's that we would find them on the Ford estate next door. With that tacit permission, it was game on. I ate a number of mangos while walking around and we filled our pockets and back pack with mangos and ate them for days afterwards.

We really enjoyed the grounds and learning about the accomplishments of Edison and Ford. It was one of those experiences that makes you wonder "what am I doing with MY life." We bought a number of inspiring books for the boys from the book shop. We started that tradition last year when we bought books about Davy Crockett at the Alamo gift shop for the boys and wrote personal messages in the books to each of them to commemorate the trip.

After Fort Myers we headed north to Tampa and crossed over Tampa Bay on the Sunshine Skyway Bridge, a truly wondrous sight. We made our way through Tampa to Busch Gardens. We were hoping for one of those buy 1 day get the next day free deals and we were in luck. We had a bit of a rough start finding change for a locker to store our backpack (some mutterings about we would never have this problem at Disney), but then got it going. We started off at Gwazi, a dueling double wooden coaster. It was fun, but it knocked us silly. Adam was beside himself with laughter. He couldn't hold his head up at times against the force, but it didn't seem to bother him. He wanted to ride it again immediately, but we were too beaten up. We all loved that there were minimal lines and we got to ride a lot of rides in a short time. A nice change from the crowds at Disney.

We closed the park down and found a hotel nearby for the night.

Road Trip 2009: Day 15 of 17 (Everglades)

Homestead to Fort Meyers through the Everglades

Everglades National Park

The park engulfs the southern section of Florida and extends into the barrier islands

Adam and Derek learn about fires in the Everglades

Neat exhibit with all the stakeholders in the ongoing water control debate voicing their side

Rain makes its way from urban areas in north and flows south through everglades (slow moving rivers of grass) to the ocean

Water looks black, but it's actually crystal clear and you can easily see the wildlife

Endless sawgrass prairies interspersed with hardwood hammocks

Looking for alligators

There's one!

Everglades Alligator Farm

Snakes!

Little

Bigger

Biggest

Feeding time - dead rats!

Air Boat Ride

Our driver

Snake Show

Who needs cucumbers when you have Ritz crackers?

Every kind of fruit you could ever want

Naples Sunset

Friday June 5, 2009

We spent the night in Homestead, a gateway city to Everglades National Park, so it was just a short drive to the park in the morning. We started at the Ernest F. Coe visitor center (map) where there are all kinds of neat exhibits. We learned that the Everglades is huge, the 3rd largest national park in the continental US, but the park still only represents a small portion (about 20%) of the Lake Okeechobee-Everglades Basin. We learned that people have been trying to tame the Everglades for a long time by draining it and redirecting its water for farming and urban development, so that now it is nothing like it was when James Audubon visited in the late 1800's and there were so many birds that they darkened the sky. We had kind of expected the Everglades to be more "swampy" and maybe it was in other areas that we didn't visit, but the areas we visited looked more like the Midwest plains with grassy fields that seemed to extend forever.

I had downloaded a car audio tour podcast of the Everglades and we listened to the podcast as we traveled through the park. After spending some time in the park, we drove back out of the park and went to nearby Everglades Alligator Farm to ride an air boat. The place was a definite tourist trap, but it was still a lot of fun. Touristy or not...riding an air boat through the Everglades is a blast! The boat ride was very loud and you couldn't hear the person next to you even if they were yelling. Good thing we had ear protection. The kids loved the 360 degree turns that our driver did and how everyone got wet. The alligator farm also had other exhibits like alligator feeding and snake handling. The kids loved the place.

After the alligator farm we drove to nearby Robert Is Here Fruit Stand where we sampled various fruits, checked out all kinds of other fun things they had, and got some delicious fresh fruit smoothies. The smoothies were so good that we got a couple more for the road.

We took Hwy 41, which runs east\west and goes through the Everglades to Naples on the western coast of Florida. We saw plenty of deer and enjoyed the scenic drive, but never saw one of the elusive Florida panthers we were were on the lookout for. We arrived in Naples around sundown and were treated to a beautiful sunset. We drove around Naples and thought it was very nice and tidy. We then headed north to Fort Myers where we found a hotel to stay for the night.