Trip 06: Roanoke, VA

We flew into Roanoke on July 5, the first of our long mid-summer trip.  It was hot and humid when we arrived, and we went straight from the airport to our event site (seeing the world, one parking lot at a time!).  We were able to block everything off early, and reached our hotel at 10:30 that night.

Sunset was gorgeous, but should have warned us what we were in for...

I will quote from my journal to describe how the event day started:

3:00 am.  Alarm goes off. Thunder and lightning occasionally.  No rain.

3:02 am.  Matt texts me from Seattle to say he just arrived home from game night.

3:28 am.  Leave hotel to go to site.

3:31 am.  Start site set-up.  Watch lightning move closer.

4:30 am.  Finish set-up.  Media arrives.  Prep for media.

4:50 am.  Lightning storm directly overhead.

4:55 am.  Media on hold due to lightning - they can't put up their broadcast tower.

5:00 am.  Rain starts.  Set up rain flies on tent.  Media is supposed to be starting now; still on hold.

5:30 am.  Media cannot broadcast in lightning.  Media leaves site.  We leave site.

5:45 am.  Reach hotel bed.  Sleep.

7:00 am.  Wake up.  Round 2.

7:15 am.  Leave hotel to go to site.  Rain's stopped.

7:30 am.  Team meeting, minor course corrections.

8:00 am.  Break out journal, chips, and pop.  Wait for...

9:00 am.  Event start.

I would like to say that this is a typical schedule, except usually we don't get to go back to the hotel for sleep because of thunderstorms.  Still, we hadn't seen anything yet.  The event ran just fine, and ended around noon.  Just as we started to take everything down, the skies just about split and rain just poured down.  I really don't think I've ever seen it rain that hard before in my life.  We were soaked through in seconds - and it takes us about two hours to strike our course, usually, so imagine how wet we were at the end!

Oh, and the lightning came back too, just as we were taking down our 10'x10' tents - you know, the ones with the huge metal support poles and metal struts.  I've never been so close to lightning before.  The hair on our arms was standing up, and we could hear the crackle in the air before we saw the bolt hit.  One struck so close that the four of us standing outside the trailer working on the tent all jumped about ten feet, ducking and moving away from the tent as we did.  First time I've heard a few of my coworkers swear, right there!  We realized we basically had two options: 1) run like little girls, or 2) finish tearing down the tent so we could run like little girls in vehicles.  We chose option 2!

The vehicle seats were still soaking wet the next day when we got ready for our drive, and it was barely five minutes from the site back to our hotel room.

Of course, by that evening the storm had spent itself out, and our whole crew rented a taxi to head toward the old market.  It was J's birthday the next day, so we went out for barbecue together.  I finally found my hush puppies, something I'd been looking for the whole time we'd been in the South in June!  They were ridiculously tasty and worth the search.

I know, I have my priorities straight while traveling!

-Beth