[Mephistopheles Janx]

Originally Posted by Frazod

I was stationed in Norfolk during Gloria in 1985. It ended up changing course and heading north up the Atlantic coast, and we ended up only getting the fringes of it, but for two terrifying days Gloria was a growing category 4 monster that was forecasted to make a direct hit on us. The Navy sent every ship that could get underway to a secure anchorage way up in Chesapeake Bay, but my ship was in the shipyard, the engine was on the pier under a tarp, and there was an engine-sized hole in the side of the ship a few feet above the waterline. So we weren't going anywhere. They let most of the crew leave the ship to flee the area, but I was on the alpha personnel list, and alphas go down with the ship. I was 20, from the Midwest, completely sold on the certain doom and destruction being trumpeted by the weather pricks, and convinced I was going to die horribly in the next few hours and there wasn't a goddamn thing I could do about it. And I remember that day, and how I felt, like it happened last week, not 39 years ago. I have no desire to ever relive it.

And that's why I would never live in a hurricane zone.

HA! That was my first hurricane. It was a Cat 2 by the time it came up my way to New Jersey.