Fri, Jun 7, 2013

STATS
Departure: Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
Arrival: Tucumcari, New Mexico
Miles: 371 miles Travel
Time: 7 hours (time change: gained an hour)

Every once in a while, life surprises you. It throws you a curve ball, you swing and miss, and you think you're out. Then, out of nowhere, you’re beaned in the head with a fastball, and you find yourself on base. (Probably with no memory of how you got there. But that has nothing to do with my subject for today.) No, I wasn’t playing baseball today. It’s a metaphor. (What’s a metaphor, you ask? It’s for Bambi and his friends to romp around in.) Sorry. Old joke. I’m tired.

We drove out of Oklahoma City this morning, heading west on Interstate 40. We had driven about a half an hour, when we saw a whole grove of trees (looked like oaks) that no longer had top branches. There must have been twenty or thirty trees, all with no tops. There was a lot of rubble on the ground below them; obviously that’s where the top branches went. Near these trees was a building that looked like it had some damage to it, too. Then we saw a sign on the freeway that told us where we were: El Reno, Oklahoma—the site of the massive tornado that killed several people on May 31. We were looking at some of the destruction it had caused. It was a sobering sight. We discovered tonight that the length of the path was 16.2 miles; we were looking at the very end of it, maybe a quarter of a mile or so. It was amazing—in a terrifying sort of way.

We began wondering where we would have been on May 31 if the leveler had not broken and we had not stayed in Nashville for a week and a half. Of course it depends on how long we might have stayed in Nashville. It’s impossible to say with any certainty, but it’s reasonable to guess that we would have been driving through El Reno very close to the day the tornado hit. It’s very likely that, at least, we would have been caught in the storm that spawned the twister. Life can be funny that way sometimes. You think something bad just happened to you (broken leveler), and you find later that it prevented you from being in a much worse situation (tornado).

Now we sit in our RV in Tucumcari, New Mexico, in the middle of a severe thunderstorm, pondering the universe and wondering if it was just coincidence, or if there is something else at work here. Some call it karma, some call it God, some call it hokum. Me? I like to think I have the luck of the Irish.

The thunderstorm that rages outside my RV right now has winds that are rocking this motorhome almost to the point of blowing over. But I know one thing: this RV wouldn’t be rocking as much IF I HAD MY LEVELERS!