The Breathing Hills

 

As it turns out, Helene wasn't without some modicum of kindness. Although all storm projections had her tracking from the Florida Coast, where she made landfall east of Tallahassee as a Category 4 hurricane, and rapidly traveling north straight toward Atlanta, instead she tacked somewhat eastward and crossed into South Carolina somewhere north of Augusta.

For some reason, storm-force winds are stronger on the east side of hurricanes, and tornados are more likely to spawn on the east side of a hurricane than the west. Atlanta was on the favorable west side, and was spared the fullest force of the storm.

Not that we didn't have torrential rains, flash flooding, and downed trees. We did. But I live in a pile of bricks up on a hill and it would take a deluge of Biblical proportions to flood my home, and not even the east side of Helene dropped that much water. But we still did get 11.12 inches of rain in the past two days, and Peachtree Creek and its tributaries jumped their banks and rapidly spread over low-laying areas. Some people in homes just a mile away from me had to be rescued by police in inflatable rafts when floodwaters entered their homes and cut off their route to escape. 

I rode the storm out in a hotel near Winder, Georgia, closer to the storm's actual path but still west of the eye. When I got home today, no trees had fallen on my pile of bricks, and my power was still on. The clocks weren't even flashing, indicating that there wasn't even a short outage or significant surge.

I can't claim I stuck with my diet during the whole Helene affair. Yesterday, driving east to avoid what everyone thought was the probable path, I stopped at a Chick Fil A for my first fast food since last March. I had a premade Publix' turkey sandwich for dinner last night, and gorged on the hotel's buffet breakfast (cheese omelet, home fries, sausage, and biscuit) for breakfast, not knowing if the food in my fridge would still be edible when I got back home (it was). But after six months of strict dieting - and loss of 45 pounds - I think I could allow myself a one-off, emergency splurge.

I have stuck to my alternating walking and meditation schedule, though. Wednesday, a walking day, I got in 5.6 miles before the rain started (and that rain didn't stop until about 10:00 am this morning). I was shooting for one more mile, but turned away due to the weather. Yesterday, a sitting day, I got 90 minutes of meditation in my hotel room, sitting, as best I could, on a small chair in the room. Today, I went for a walk after I got back home, but the floodwaters blocked my path as I got near a tributary to Peachtree Creek, and managed only 3.7 miles, my shortest walk since May 12. I did see this unusual phenomenon in the floodwaters, though.