Welcome to Tornado Alley

The afternoon following my last post was a bit hectic. After I read a weather report that called for "intense evening thunderstorms," I phoned a bicycling friend in Nebraska City, NE, and he and his wife agreed to take me in for the night, even on such short notice! I pedaled as fast as I could and, with a nice tailwind, made almost 60 miles in less than 3 hours. And I JUST made it. The storms were already dropping tornadoes out of the sky north of town. Sure enough, before the night was over, the air raid sirens went off and we all headed to the basement. We were fortunate to not have any twisters in town but, sadly, a boy scout camp was hit about 100 miles to the north, resulting in some fatalities. In addition to extensive flooding along my route the last few days, I've found a number of buildings in various forms of destruction that local folks will later tell me a tornado had hit "x" number of days ago. Pretty crazy to a Florida boy.

But today the weather is beautiful... clear and not very humid. I even have a bit of a tailwind so I'll have to save some stories until the next library stop... which might be later this afternoon. Maybe I can upload some pictures next time too.