His Name is Earl

And he's headed our way, and I assume everyone has battened down the hatches or is in the process of doing so. Yes, there is a certain cavalier attitude that is popular: "I'm cool; cat-4 hurricanes don't scare me." And then there's reality. Someone asked me yesterday while watching me help d-i-l prepare for the storm ("You're an Edgartown girl now, it's time for you to learn how to operate a hurricane lamp), "Should I be worried?" My response was, "Worried, no; prepared yes." 

You know the drill: boats out of the water or moved to safe harbor; tie down anything that has the potential of blowing away or through your window; storm windows down; fill the tub with water for personal use, fill clean containers for drinking (unless you prefer standing in line and getting into a fist fight over the last bottle of water at Stop and Shop); hurricane lamps prepared - trim the wicks, clean the mantle, fill with oil; batteries for the portable radios; get the board games out of the closet (remember board games? Game of Monotony, anyone?) and stock up on reading material. 

And a thank you to my friend Yaakov who reminded me about the Town of Edgartown's official web site where you will find official hurricane preparedness guidelines and be able sign up for a free alert system that will send a text message to your cell phone if an emergency arises, which reminds me -  don't forget to keep the cell phone charged in advance in case we lose power (well, you could re-charge on your car charger by driving around the island a couple of times, but this is not recommended during a hurricane), which also means of course that your portable land-lines (the kind that plug into the electrical outlet) will not be working either, so it would be good to have an old-fashioned, tethered phone connected to the land line.

As for me, I'm on high ground (at least I think this part of town is at the top of a hill - I know I do a lot of huffing and puffing when I ride my bike on this stretch) - not that I was running from the storm, mind you (not scared of hurricanes, nah nah nah nah), but I had a couple of appointments to tend to - and will be riding a down-draft back home on Sunday.

 The calm before the storm?