August 08, 2007

I Has A Tornadoz

filed under: Idle Chatter

This morning Max pottered into the room at around 4 a.m. and tried to get me to get up and play with him. I was only half awake, and didn't notice that he was only half awake, which he proved by peeing half into the toilet and half on my toes. While I was likewise relieving myself (with, hopefully, better aim), he trudged into the living room and flopped on the couch. I went and lay down with him, and after a few minutes he decided the couch was too crowded and lay down on the floor instead. Fine by me. And we both knocked out cold again.

Around 5:45am I was awakened by a truly stupendous clap of thunder, which sounded like it was extremely nearby. You know how thunder in the distance is all rumbly and bass-heavy, whereas thunder up close is more like a crack? Yeah, like that. It sounded like God's front window just got a baseball through it. There were more to follow, strobing through the windows and shaking the panes with more thunder.

Huh, I thought, and went back to sleep. Max slept through it.

Turns out, there was either an actual tornado or at least "tornado-like winds" within a couple dozen blocks of us. Knocked over trees, ripped off some roofs, and dropped 3.5 inches of rain in a half hour, thereby flooding not only our basement (predictable, really) but the entire New York City subway system.

tornado.jpg
[photo ganked from Flickr user tmbg37]

Lisa, who left for work before I was even awake again, called to report that the F train was not running. I debated various ways to get to work, and eventually decided to walk. It's a five mile walk, but I've just been reading Bill Bryson's A Walk In The Woods so that seemed like nothing special.

I wasn't the only one with that idea:

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I brought a change of clothes, which is good, because the heat was climbing towards 90 with 100% humidity, so I might as well have been taking a schvitz and my t-shirt was soon soaked through.

After an hour of walking, somewhere around the middle of the Brooklyn Bridge, I started to feel the distance. Here's where I was headed, which looked very far away:

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I made it in 80 minutes total, door-to-door (deducting 10 minutes for Max's drop off at daycare and requisite bagel stop at the Perch Cafe), which amounts to five 16-minute miles. With nothing to compare it against, I've decided that's not too shabby.

Not a bad way to break up the routine of the work week, all in all, but there's still something unsettling about a surprise dawn tornado-spewing thunderstorm cropping up over Brooklyn.

Posted by rjt at August 8, 2007 12:34 PM
Comments

I chose the Hour And A Half On The R Train That (Oops!) Is Going To End Up An F Train route. I had a seat next to a really cute guy, though, so it was mostly ok.

Posted by: beeg at August 8, 2007 01:50 PM

So--your Aunt Bev, who knows stuff like this because Fitness R Us says that 15 minute miles are considered stiff training for walkers. Pretty impressive, even if you weren't walking on concrete in 100% humidity and carrying a change of clothes!

Posted by: Procrastimom at August 8, 2007 09:34 PM

It was frustrating to aim for an hour 15 and hit an hour 20 instead - that was the critical 5 minute difference between 15-minute miles and 16-minute miles. I was motivated to leave a little early in the morning and walk it a couple times a week (imagine the fitness! Fitness R Me!) but today, after only doing it once, my hips are sore. Which both motivates me to get better at it, and motivates me to never do it again. Hm.

Anyway, the update is that it was officially a Category 2 tornado, the first ever in Brooklyn. Wicked.

Posted by: rjt at August 9, 2007 10:46 AM