Tails from Asheville, North Carolina

Many of you may know that RunPee HQ is based in our home in Asheville, North Carolina. Actually, if you’re familiar with the area we live just outside of Asheville in a small town called Swannanoa. Many of you have probably never heard of Swannanoa, or the Swannanoa River, until yesterday. Now, it seems both are in the national news.

I’ll be honest, I don’t know much of what is going on, other than my neighborhood is a disaster. Fortunately, I live up on a hill. Normally my house is about a quarter mile from the Swannanoa River. Yesterday it was about 100 yards.

Just Another Thursday

Thursday was a busy day prepping, for movies. Vera and I went to see The Wild Robot. We came home, I did the Peetimes and then zipped back to the theater to see Megalopolis. At this time it had been raining constantly for at least a day. Not hard, but unending. I got back from the theater and went to work adding the Peetimes. I knew the next day was going to be stormy, and expected the power to go out at some point. Something that happens fairly regularly when you live in the countryside.

Once the reviews were done I started looking more closely at the weather. And it wasn’t good. My big worry is the trees. There are at least eight large oak trees around our house that are close enough to cause anything from cosmetic to crushing damage to our house. I’ve told my wife, if one of the nearby oaks comes down on the house it will go through it like wet cardboard.

A Friday Like No Other

We went to bed. I fell right to sleep, because I knew that the dangerous winds would start around 6am and I wanted to be rested for what was to come. Vera was, anxious, and barely slept at all. The power went out around 4:30 am Friday morning. Around 7am I thought the combination of a saturated ground and the high winds were dangerous enough that we should be as cautious as we could be and stay in the gym where we could use some gym equipment to protect ourselves, maybe, hopefully, should the worst happen.

Vera slept between the workout bench, box thingy, and weight rack. My hope was that those things would protect her should the roof and floor try to get together. I stood by the window and watched the oak trees dance in the wind. Back and forth they went, until one after another they went forth without coming back. In total four trees fell.

Life Is Like A Box Of Movie Quotes

I’m one of those people that can find a movie quote for every situation. One of the memorable movie quotes I love is from Jurassic Park when Tim says, “We’re back in the tree, again.” You remember the scene, right. It’s when Alan climbs up in the tree to get Tim out of the SUV, they climb down and the SUV falls on them.

So yeah, my truck was in a tree. Fortunately, the damage is largely superficial. The front windshield is shattered, but nothing that a little Zip Tap can’t fix. At least temporarily. I spent much of the day cutting away at the branch. In truth, it’s not so much a branch as it is the top of an oak tree that snapped off. If I had parked just a few feet over my truck would have been totalled. (With collision only that would be a problem.)

Once most of the branches had been clipped away with a Ryobi Tree Trimmer tool, I was able to use a come-along to pull the tree away from the truck enough to back up and free my truck.

Going For A Walk

We didn’t have power, but cell service worked well enough that I was at least able to call my mother, who was staying with RunPee Sis in Morristown, Tennessee. They knew we were okay and the house was undamaged. Most importantly, the cottage that I built for my mother was unharmed, even though there’s a maple tree less than two feet from the corner. Seriously, I had to adjust the eve of the roof to go around the tree.

Cell service dropped out around 10 am. After that, there was nothing. So we went for a walk and… Yikes.

On a normal summer day we can walk about a quarter of a mile over to the Swannanoa River, take our shoes off, and wade across without getting more than knee deep in water. To call the Swannanoa River a river is, usually, an exaggeration. It’s a big creek in my opinion.

But Friday, the Swannanoa River did it’s best imitation of the Mississippi River. We watched a trailer float by, and saw cows wondering out of their pen, and then the bridge. Well, I guess it’s not a bridge anymore if it doesn’t connect both sides of the river, right? Three’s a 20 foot gap where the river wore away one of the supports and the deck fell into the river. From what I can tell from the limited news I’ve seen it would be easier to count the number of bridges left than the bridges destroyed.

Perfect Timing For A Vacation

As fortune would have it, we were scheduled to fly out of Asheville Airport on Sunday afternoon on our way to China for a three week vacation. Vera is from China and we try to get back at least once a year, but I haven’t been since right before Covid. But the Asheville Airport is not open and there’s no telling when flights will resume.

We loaded up our luggage and headed for Raleigh, where we hopped to stay with a friend until we could reschedule our flight. Well, I-40 east out of Asheville is closed. And so is I-40 West to Tennessee. And so is I-26 West. The only way out of town is I-26 East, down to South Carolina. I started out with 3/4 tank of gas and hope. Hope that we could make it to someplace with power so we could get enough gas to make it to any airport. In our little adventure we picked up two couples at the Asheville Airport who were stranded. They had a flight back to Fort Lauderdale, Florida leaving from Charlotte. But they had no way to get there. I had a truck, so I threw all our luggage in the back and they crammed four people in the back seat and off we went. It was rather anti-climatic at this point. I had enough gas to make it all the way to Charlotte where I dropped them off at the airport.

My wife worked her magic and we rescheduled our flight to leave out of Charlotte, two days earlier than scheduled.

Right now I’m sitting in Detroit Airport waiting to fly to Shanghai. We were able to get out and start our vacation early. We feel a little guilty that we’re not staying behind to suffer with everyone else in our community. And they are suffering. I still don’t have much info, but from what I’ve heard it’s catastrophic and then some. I’ve heard unconfirmed reports that are astonishing. I hope they’re exaggerations, but only time will tell.

My flight is about to board, so I don’t have much time. But if you can find a place to donate to the recovery effort in Asheville there sure can use your help.

RunPee is in good hands. RunPee Sis and a few other Peeps will keep the Peetimes flowing. 🙂

Back Home

We’re back from China and getting over the epic jetlag. China is 12 hours different from US Eastern.

It’s hard to say that things are returning to normal around here. There are so many bridges out in our area that it makes everything a challenge. Fortunately, we live on the south side of the Swannanoa River, so we have access to 70 and I-40. Much of Swannanoa is in rubble. But the businesses that weren’t flooded are slowly reopening. It will be a long road to recovery that will take years, maybe decades.

On the bright side, it has drawn the community together. Many of you have probably seen news reports of the lackluster federal response. My retort would be: what do you expect from an underfunded government agency? FEMA is like the undrafted backup quarterback on a Super Bowl team that just lost their all-star starting QB. The backup will come in and do their very best to win the Super Bowl for you, but if you’re the coach, you probably think you should have spent the extra money to get a veteran backup quarterback for an occasion such as this. Basically, no one wants to spend money on FEMA until they need them, and then they expect FEMA to show up like a well-funded branch of the military. Sorry, that’s the end of my rant. 🙂

At any rate, I strongly encourage everyone worldwide to connect with your local community before you need them, not after. It can be the difference between life and death. The main lesson we’ve learned is to make sure you have a supply of water, no matter what. You have no idea how important clean water is until you don’t have it. We have manual water filters that we can use to purify river water. We usually only use it for camping, but it’s handy in a disaster as well.

Find a means of communication if power and cell service are out. I know of a handful of people, including ourselves, that have purchased a StarLink dish. We’re not using it every month. Cable is still better and cheaper in our area.

We also have a portable battery/solar panel kit from EcoFlow. It’s not enough to power a house, but it’s enough to power a StarLink and keep our phones and laptops charged. I can also use the battery with my electric chainsaw to do remote work.

I hope no one needs to rely on things like this, but better safe than sorry.