North Chattanooga Storm of the Century
A lot happened this past weekend, most of which we didn’t plan for. On Saturday morning, I went on a run with a buddy I met through my wife’s work and his friend. On our run along the Tennessee River, we talked about video games we’ve been playing lately and, when they asked me, I told them all about Kingdom Come Deliverance, a historically accurate game set in 15th century Bohemia where you play as a blacksmith’s son whose village is attacked by Cuman mercenaries who kill your parents and steal the last sword your father ever made. The rest of the game you are trying to find the lost sword and avenge your parents death but, it’s so much more. You also have to manage your character’s hunger and sleep, maintain your equipment and repair your armor, bathe at at bathhouses, sharpen your swords with a sharpening stone (doing it wrong dulls your sword) and lots of other things that make the game very real to life. Some people think it’s boring and cumbersome; I think it’s brilliant. Further on our run along the river we passed the BASF chemical plant and probably breathed in toxic chemicals. Jokingly, I said: “guys, we should hold our breath so we don’t get cancer.” I’m pretty sure my new friend didn’t breathe, an extraordinary feat while running if true, and we laughed about it. I, on the other hand, accepted that breathing these toxins would probably cut my life by a minute. That’s the price we pay for plastic I guess. Passing the chemical plant also reminded us of the chicken plant right in the heart of downtown Chattanooga and how there are these fancy condos literally right next to it. It’s basically on top of the chicken factory and it must smell horrid. Like, some people’s balconies just overlook a chicken factory. Imagine how insane it is to buy that for like 500k. It got me thinking about how there’s probably people out there who are really into chicken factories and daydream about having one of those condos. They walk outside with their copy of Food Manufacturing, take a sip of their coffee and a big deep breath, taking in the smells of American industry coming from the factory with a smile on their face. They tell everyone they meet how Chick-Fil-A isn’t possible without such places. They don’t buy room plugs at Bath and Body Works because the smell from that factory is free. Look, there’s 8 billion people. Some of them are bound to be obsessed with chicken factories. There’s a market for these condos after all. It’s more likely these buyers can’t smell or never go outside but, I believe the weird chicken factory lovers are out there. They’re walking our streets right now. Anyways, 2 miles past the BASF factory we eventually turned around and headed back (yes, we passed by the factory twice and now my life is now 2 minutes shorter). We ended up doing about 6 miles. It was a lot of fun and we talked about doing it again soon. They’re trying to get me to do a half marathon with them. Hopefully we pick a different route next time that doesn’t pass a chemical plant twice. Walking back to my car, I got a text from another friend of mine who wanted to go play soccer. I ended up meeting him after lunch. Talk about a regrettable idea after running 6 miles. When I was finally home for good around 3pm, I just collapsed on the floor. Every time I do that our cat Ginger is always so concerned. I can’t tell if she’s concerned for my well being or just worried if she’ll be able to get her next meal on time. It was an exhausting morning but I gelt very accomplished.
On the floor in my living room, I got an emergency alert. It said we were under a severe thunderstorm warning for like 15 minutes with winds up to 80 miles per hour. I usually pay attention to these alerts and I’m always checking the radar, keeping my wife informed. I’m basically her personal weather man, but I was tired this afternoon. Also, why would I get off the floor and pick up things on the porch if it’ll be over in 15 minutes? I need my rest. Well, this time the extreme weather alert wasn’t an exaggeration. We did in fact get 80 mile per hour winds and it blew everything I failed to pick up on the porch in our yard. The shelf outside with all the heavy things we never use blew over. It was like a tropical storm passed through. The alert was surprisingly spot on. Perhaps the Government was testing their weather control machine. Towards the end, we lost power and when my wife got home from work, she told me she saw some downed trees. We decided to go on a walk to assess the extent of the damage in our neighborhood, something we always enjoy doing after a storm. On our walk, we realized the damage was worse than we thought. We saw more downed trees, some of which were very large. We didn’t see any that fell on a house but quite a few fell on power lines. Someone sent us the power outage map. That’s when we realized we might be out of power for a while.
Realizing we probably weren’t cooking tonight, unless we wanted to cook with our camping stove, we decided to see if our neighborhood pub, Tremont Tavern, still had power. It was a treacherous journey where we encountered another downed tree in the road but we eventually made it to Tremont and, to our amazement, they had power. Our refuge from the storm where we met another couple, on a date night, who were also from Louisiana, moving to Chattanooga a year ago. It’s always nice meeting fellow Louisianians in Chattanooga.
Disclaimer: This is Ashlynn at Tremont a few months back
After our dinner, we walked back home. It was dark by then and the sound of chainsaws cutting downed trees could be heard in the distance. We joked about all the exited men who bought a chainsaw against their wives wishes could now put it to use. The night sky and moon clearer than usual since there wasn’t much light pollution and the storm cooled the air some. It was a pleasant walk back to the house. Back at home, we decided we didn’t want to sleep with no A/C, so we called up our good friends Laura and Jon who had power, packed a few things and evacuated to their house. We thought for sure we’d have power back by Sunday. The linemen were already out working. We were wrong. After it was all said and down we didn’t get our power back till Monday morning. On Sunday, we put some of our food in an ice chest to try and save it but we still lost some food that I’m still grieving (I’m so sorry I didn’t save you chicken thighs). Thankfully, the whole ordeal wasn’t nearly that bad since we have good friends who let us stay with. I’m glad we have them. I also want to thank all the emergency workers that responded after the storm and hard working linemen who got our power back on. It was a unique weekend we’ll never forget.