We've been on hurricane watch the past several days, along with much of the country as Hurricane Irma churned across the Atlantic, leaving horrible scenes of destruction in its wake. For a while it looked like it had Miami in its cross hairs, but the eventual landfall was the Florida Keys, with a secondary landfall in Marco Island. 85 miles south of Port Charlotte. For a while it looked like three families from the neighborhood were going to ride out the storm in our house. Newer construction, higher elevation, both good reasons. A mandatory evacuation order changed their minds and the neighborhood emptied out except for one couple -- or so goes the best information we have. The storm lost a lot of its strength before reaching Ft. Myers, 25 miles to our south, and moved far enough inland to put our neighborhood into a different quadrant of the storm, lessening its destructive capability even further. We live streamed a Ft. Myers TV station on our devices yesterday, getting better information for our area than we could find on the networks. With nearly everyone losing their power early on, we may have been their only audience. This morning the news started to trickle in -- our next door neighbor texted that he'd been in touch with the couple who rode it out, and our neighborhood fared pretty well. We lost our porch (again, we lost it in Hurricane Charlie in 2003 or 2004), and some shingles and soffits. Our neighbors had similar damage, mostly to their "lanai" structures. (Floridian for porches.) One neighbor had roof damage from a tree. Storm surge appears to have been about 3 feet above our sea wall, which we hope is true. Photos will arrive tomorrow when one of our neighbors who evacuated gets a chance to take some. JB has called the roofing company who installed our new roof last winter, and they have promised to go look at it and fix any damage. He also called a company who builds and repairs porch enclosures, and we're on their list as well. For now that's all we can do. No one was hurt in our neighborhood, as best we can tell, so we're feeling pretty fortunate. We even believe that our house has had its electricity restored.
Mr. and Mrs. Smith have been much, much better visitors. After a trip to the bike shop this morning, GZ has a new set of wheels on his Michigan bicycle. This necessitated a test ride, so an 18 mile round trip to the Port Sheldon Party Store took place this afternoon -- they rode further, of course.
This was my longest ride by a couple of miles since sometime in May, so supper was a simple affair. Cod (feta and dill), potatoes and Jim's vegetables (zucchini and onions with parmesan cheese.) September is a nice time of year to be here, though it never quite got to 70 degrees while we were biking. Still, a very nice ride. It's good to have people here who speak my language and know the same stories that I do. The Grands were here to greet them yesterday and promised to return later this week for more family time. We're all fine.
