Taking the sandy Sandy road home

Hovering in Norfolk for a night, we're sitting in a coffee shop near my temporary home in Ghent. We'd decided to leave this evening at low tide, which was at 5:06PM. The road home is still washed out but they allow 4x4 access intermittently. The alternative is a 2-2.5 hour ferry ride, which is in addition to the regular drive to Norfolk, more than doubling the usual travel time.

The weather's been bad. Wind and rain. The road keeps getting overwash. All day today the road was closed, but opened just a few minutes before 5:00, and we took off, following the lead car through the sand road, next to the road which was buckled by Sandy a few weeks ago.

Justin said, "It's always an adventure with me!"

I could have passed on this sort of adventure, but what do you do once you're in the situation? You go along for the ride.

Right now I have nowhere else to be. No man's land between jobs, licenses, lives. Trying to start something new. Trying to find the path. I'm trying to live day by day, and not stress excessively about what the future holds.

So we navigated the sand road, arriving safely at the end. We'd caught end of the train of cars following the lead vehicle by less than a minute. Our Trailblazer was the caboose.

Driving through the wreckage of the hurricane was rather sobering. Sand piles, garbage, ocean water in the road. I tried to make a video but dusk acted as a wall of its own, dimming out the images. We gawked. But made it through.

Stopping in Kitty Hawk, we sprayed off the truck, pulling sand out of the wheel wells with our fingers, leaving black fingers.

In the morning we head to Ohio to visit my brother before continuing on to Iowa where we'll have the first Thanksgiving with our whole family since 2000. It's Justin's first meeting of my family, and his introduction to the Midwest.

Hoping the road leads us home safely.

Kinda bad dusk pictures of sandy Sandy road:
(well pretty bad dusk pictures) 


Garbage on the side of the road waiting to be collected by the state of NC. 

Just like North Dakota after a blizzard only with snow instead.

This house is leaning and missing its stairs.

Those last 2 houses are leaning and probably condemned, as well you can see the road or lack thereof in the foreground.

The usual road.

Watching Hurricane Sandy

Virginia Beach is opening shelters starting tomorrow morning. Maybe it means nothing. Maybe it means something.

Locals are nonchalant, going about their normal activities, stocking up on water. Justin is at home on Buxton, waiting it out. For once it seems that Hatteras Island is the safe haven. Apparently normally Virginia Beach is evacuated north, but not this time.

Justin said everyone there is acting like it's another day. Which is good and fine especially if you are well versed in ocean weather. For someone like me, it's a different story. I researched the city, trying to determine if I was in a flood zone. I downloaded evacuation routes and figured where I would go if we had to leave.

I put my car in the Westin's parking garage and plan to leave it there to ride out the storm. I had some very old friends who I met in India offer to have me stay with them and I'm taking them up on it- they're stopping by later tonight for me on their way home. It may be overcautious but I always tell my patients piece of mind is serious- don't apologize for needing it. So I am not going to apologize either. Maybe it will be nothing. But with my supreme ignorance in the situation and of the east coast, I'd rather stay with friends and worry less.

Most storms I've been told are nothing. But then there's that rare Katrina or Irene, or Grace, acts of devastation. As long as the hurricane is still swirling, we don't know what will happen. That's the part that's actually scary. And this storm is moving really slow, which causes more problems.

The extreme east coast weather makes me so homesick for the benign northwest, where drizzles reigned and 10mph gusts were considered wind.

I'll keep you posted. I plan to hang out in Chesapeake, VA for the next two days. It's higher ground than here and comes with great company, my surrogate parents. ;)

(21:33 Justin just wrote and said the ocean was over the road.)

Hurricanes, real and imagined

If you click on this link you can see the storm patterns:  Hurricane Sandy.

Which unsurprisingly makes me wonder why we're living on Hatteras Island, 40 miles into the ocean, known as the graveyard of the Atlantic, where ships went down left and right in the past. And where the hurricanes hit ground more than anywhere else on the eastern seaboard aside from Florida.

Justin texted me last night about the storm, sounding scared. He said, " Nor'easterner storm. Roads might get washed out." I didn't quite understand, saying that I had continuing education scheduled for Monday morning and I could leave after that but wasn't planning to return to leave until Tuesday, and I could meet him after that. Wherever he ended up (Greenville? Raleigh?). He said, "You might not be able to leave if you wait too long."

Apparently Virginia Beach gets hit hard too. Maybe those "Hurricane Evacuation Route" signs are up for a reason. I saw them when I first moved to town. They did not comfort me.

Overnight I dreamed nightmares. Mostly of patients and past employers. I woke up early and exhausted.

This last week I scheduled tightly, trying to see everyone and finish as many things as I could before having no place to stay in Virginia Beach. Truthfully, I've enjoyed this month of band practice Mondays, meetings with old friends, thrift stores and a 5k race at the art museum.

I don't understand hurricanes. I understand snowstorms and wind and floods and drizzling rain. I've seen one tornado despite hundreds and hundreds of warnings growing up.

Hatteras had a devastating hurricane last fall which created a new inlet and and left the lower half of Hatteras Island cut off from the upper half. A ferry had to take them across until a new tiny bridge was constructed.

I checked the radar at work and wondered why we were living on an island. There's only 4,000 year round residents on the whole island and from Buxton it's at least an hour drive on a skinny sandbar to get to the mainland. That is if the road doesn't wash out.

On Facebook today, Hatteras Island residents were complaining over and over about the need for a better road. How the government had been mistreating them by making them put up with the inferior quality of road construction.

I wondered, why do they stay. Why not move inland?

The population in Buxton is almost 100% white. The poverty level is much higher than the rest of the state of North Carolina. There are no jobs. To receive proper medical care, they have to drive 1-3 hours away.

All this to live on a sandbar. Where you dig in the backyard and a foot down there's water.

I wonder how much the ocean has to rise before we are under water?

We can only watch and wait and see.

It is not comforting.