Cabin Fever

I was raising parakeets for sell to pet stores when I was a teenager.
Heard the Santa Ana's were coming in, I pulled all the birds inside in
a temp cage (60 plus birds). The outside cage, 10'X12' by 8' high got
picked up by a gust, thrown over a 6' fence and landed in my driveway
out front, crushed. Thing never touched the fence. Had a "fire sale"
on budgies.
Frank Reid

On Dec 30, 4:52*pm, Frank Reid © 2008 wrote:
I was raising parakeets for sell to pet stores when I was a teenager.
Heard the Santa Ana's were coming in, I pulled all the birds inside in
a temp cage (60 plus birds). *The outside cage, 10'X12' by 8' high got
picked up by a gust, thrown over a 6' fence and landed in my driveway
out front, crushed. *Thing never touched the fence. *Had a "fire sale"
on budgies.
Frank Reid

WHAT??!!

No crushed Frank?.....no lacerated Frank?.....no mangled Frank?.....no
broken Frank?.....no bleeding Frank?.....no tossed, dragged, upended,
splayed, skewered, pummeled, bruised, blistered, burned, impaled,
knouted, clubbed, abraded, whipped, drowned, dunked, denuded,
disarticulated, flayed, fried or fibrulated Frank? Nothing more than
a discommoded, disgruntled and mildly dismayed Frank?!

Well, ****, even *I* can beat that......sorta.

While in Key West, long about '72 or thereabouts to pick up movies
(back in the days of actual movie projectors, I was volunteered to be
the MPO {Movie Projector Operator} while at home on leave from duty on
the USCGC Androscoggin), I was walking down the street and lo and
behold, there were five......FIVE!.....waterspouts (that's aquatic
tornadoes, for you landlubbers) traveling in a line.....nicely spaced
at a few hundred yards apart.....about a mile offshore. My mandible
hit the pavement not just once, on seeing the waterspouts, but a
second time when it became evident that no one else on the busy
thoroughfare paid them the slightest heed. Must be a common sight
there......or maybe one of us, or a lot of us, had recently scored
some very good or very bad drugs.

In June of '84, the tornado that ate Barneveld missed me and my
bicycle by about 24 hours......I was obviously too fast for it.

In August of '92, the tornado that ate Wautoma missed me and my car by
about a minute and a half, and/or a hundred yards.....it can be
confoundedly difficult to sort these things out sometimes. I had seen
bad weather approaching while enjoying a late supper at Hardees and
decided to try to beat it out of town. Half a mile later I pulled off
onto the shoulder because of high winds, pelting rain, and zero
visibility. Of course, I didn't know at the time that there was a
tornado.....thus explaining how my breeches managed to remain
unsoiled. I didn't find out until an hour or so later when I called a
friend to tell him about my day of fishing on the west branch of the
White River, which flows through the outskirts (such as they
are.....or were, then) of Wautoma. He said, did you see the
tornado?

Huh?

I went back the next morning.

Ouch!

If memory serves, it took the better part of a year before the
detritus in and along the stream was entirely cleared up. Broken off
stumps of trees are still visible here and there to this day.

So, in retrospect, I guess maybe I have experienced winds in excess of
75 knots while on land.......just didn't know it at the time.

giles
who surveyed the damage left by the Kenosha county tornado about a
year ago.....but was nowhere within thirty miles when the damage was
done. go figure.

Okay, you know there had to be a Frank story (though, your's were
pretty good, but not up to my professional standing).
There I was at Lowry AFB in Denver back in 19mmumblemumble... It was
tech school and we had to march across base for Commanders Call (the
commander gets everyone together and tells them that their rooms are
pig pens and donate to the United Way). Massive thunderstorm and no
buses available. We're marching, a loud noise starts up and half the
flight dives into the rain swollen ditch. Those of us from So Cal,
Maine and Western Oregon look at these idiots in the ditch like
they're crazy (well, they were).
The guys in the ditch scream "Tornado!" We kinda crouch down in the
road and they hollar at us to get in the ditch. We gingerly climb in
(how bad coud a tornado be vs a dirty uniform?). We finally gingerly
lay down (we're Air Force, not Marines) in the ditch and cover up.
Never saw the tornado.
We climb out after the noise goes away. The tornado hit the side gate
about a couple of hundred yards away. The porta potty sized gate
shack is gone. One guard was found dead, shredded by the glass from
the liquor store across the street. The second was found on the on
the roof of a local building two months later by a news helicopter.
Frank Reid

On Dec 30, 8:41*pm, Frank Reid © 2008 wrote:
Okay, you know there had to be a Frank story (though, your's were
pretty good, but not up to my professional standing).
There I was at Lowry AFB in Denver back in 19mmumblemumble...

That's not fair! You got missing body parts and dead people and
flying debris and broken bones and possessed lawn machinery
and.....and......and all I got is a lousy waterspout.

giles
it ain't fair.

On Dec 30, 9:04*pm, Giles wrote:
On Dec 30, 8:41*pm, Frank Reid © 2008 wrote:

Okay, you know there had to be a Frank story (though, your's were
pretty good, but not up to my professional standing).
There I was at Lowry AFB in Denver back in 19mmumblemumble...

That's not fair! *You got missing body parts and dead people and
flying debris and broken bones and possessed lawn machinery
and.....and......and all I got is a lousy waterspout. * * *

giles
it ain't fair.

Well, it was sterilized by all that alcohol.
http://www.motivateusnot.com/demotiv...e_close_to_you
Frank Reid
(by the way, google: My god, she not wearing her seat belts)

On Dec 30, 8:41*pm, Frank Reid © 2008 wrote:

There I was at Lowry AFB in Denver back in 19mmumblemumble...

When, exactly? I taught electronics there from '58 to '64.

cheers

oz, but left, as I couldn't make E-6

"Giles" wrote in message
...
On Dec 30, 8:41 pm, Frank Reid © 2008 wrote:
Okay, you know there had to be a Frank story (though, your's were
pretty good, but not up to my professional standing).
There I was at Lowry AFB in Denver back in 19mmumblemumble...

That's not fair! You got missing body parts and dead people and
flying debris and broken bones and possessed lawn machinery
and.....and......and all I got is a lousy waterspout.

giles
it ain't fair.


Hi Giles,
He's got good stories (Hi Frank).

Here's mine.
One Christmas break I took the kids to a caravan park on the banks of a
favourite river I fish (Alexander on the Goulburn River in Victoria.) We had
a ball for the first 3 days, sunny, hot and cool nights... 5min fishing,
throwing rocks, exploring, swimming in the river, lilo (one man blow up
mattresses) races, etc. On the 4th day just after lunch we were getting
ready to go for another swim when it started to cloud over a bit with a few
drops of rain. Kids were putting the towels back and were going to wait for
it to pass. I convinced them to try swimming in the rain - it was still hot
and we were going to get wet anyway ( You could see them working thru the
logic.). We get to the river 60' away when the rain drops were getting
bigger and bigger causing the kids some concern, so I jumped in first. As I
surfaced, the tempest hit.

The kids were back in the cabin by the time I got to the bank. After
reassuring the kids we sat on the veranda watching the storm. 30 sec later
it hit full force. It lasted 5 min maybe, in this time we watched clumps of
branches fly by horizontally (never seen that before), trees with 8'' trunks
being uprooted in front of us, a stand of Weeping Willows across the river
being stripped of about 1/3 of their leaves and 14" diameter branches ripped
off, the cabin being peppered with branch clumps and then shaking and
visibility dropping to about 50'.

Then calm, apart from the stifling humidity, you'd think nothing had
happened.

Had a walk around the caravan park to see if anyone needed help, and mate!
6' diameter trees were uprooted! Cars crushed, caravans rolled and crushed
and the only injury was a small cut on a lady's arm. This Cyclone cut a path
about 700' wide and maybe 80 miles long, falling trees knocked out the water
pump, power lines, toilet block, the common room and the septic pump at the
caravan park so we went home seeing it's path cross the road 40 miles away.
The park was closed for one month, losing about 25 trees (100') and the
other half had to be trimmed to make them safe. The severity of the storm
sunk in when we saw a 8' wide tree blown over.

The kids still check the sky before they swim in the river.

Rob.

Ps. This rarely happens here, common up in the top end of Australia and we
call them Cyclones, but not as common as your Tornados.

Pss. Frank, I told the kids about your incident with the snow blower... my
son wants to know if we can get one too!

"Frank Reid © 2008" wrote in message
...
On Dec 30, 9:04 pm, Giles wrote:
On Dec 30, 8:41 pm, Frank Reid © 2008 wrote:

Okay, you know there had to be a Frank story (though, your's were
pretty good, but not up to my professional standing).
There I was at Lowry AFB in Denver back in 19mmumblemumble...

That's not fair! You got missing body parts and dead people and
flying debris and broken bones and possessed lawn machinery
and.....and......and all I got is a lousy waterspout.

giles
it ain't fair.

Well, it was sterilized by all that alcohol.
http://www.motivateusnot.com/demotiv...e_close_to_you
Frank Reid
(by the way, google: My god, she not wearing her seat belts)

Impressive!

Op