Hurricanes make strange bedfellows. For instance, I shared lodgings with two dogs, six feral cats and an iguana. And, of course, our two generous hosts.
But back to that later.
My husband and I had reservations to fly to Chicago on Friday afternoon, so on Thursday, when it looked like Charley was coming this way, I tried to head off the travel consequences by switching to the 7 a.m. flight. It was full. Then I got a brilliant idea to fly out of Orlando and changed our flight to Saturday at 4:45 p.m. While the agent was doing whatever agents do while you're on hold, I reconsidered. Who knew if we could even get to Orlando?
Since I was first concerned with the trip, I was late getting our evacuation plan in order. We're in zone blue or green in South Tampa - I can't tell which from the map. Either way, we had to go. We have an evacuation plan. It's to stay at any of the three hotels at or across from USF. I called, and they were all full.
It seemed futile to start calling around for hotels. We didn't want to go far. We would want to get back to our house fast either to pack for Chicago or view the rubble. So the next question: Who do we know who lives north of Kennedy? The whole NOK thing took on new meaning. Suddenly our northern friends, or lack thereof, were enormously important. Did we have any? We did. I called one, who said we could come on over.
We got there about 9 or 10 Thursday night. They live in West Tampa. We had never been to their house or, in fact, figured out exactly where it was. We knew they loved animals and helped out with strays, and I knew I was allergic to dogs and cats, but I never put the two together. At first it appeared there were only two dogs, but that's because the cats don't like visitors. We learned where the various cats who didn't like us were likely to be, and I asked if there were any other animals who might not like us hidden around the house. Our hostess said with a perfectly straight face, "No. The iguana lives outside."
Our host mentioned a couple of times how safe we were because even though the Hillsborough River was down the street, they were uphill from it. I let that go, but Friday morning, after a good night's sleep, I went outside. The river is right at the end of the block. I was getting nervous. I am the kind of person who, when it storms, fears the foundation of my house is being eroded and the roof will blow off. What evacuation zone did he say we were in? Take a look at the map in the paper. They weren't sure.
"The green color is too close to the blue. On newsprint you can't tell the difference," he said.
"They should put names on the streets," she advised.
I looked at the map. We had turned off Armenia several blocks above Columbus, but I hadn't counted the exact number. I learned we were about six blocks south of MLK. It was hard to make out the colors indoors, so I took the map out into the front yard where the neighbor across the street was boarding up his windows.
We were clearly in zone blue or green. Same as our house in South Tampa.
By that time my husband had talked to friends in Northdale, who had invited us up, and since they were clearly home free in a white zone, we set out.
First, though, my husband had to stop at his favorite taco restaurant, Mi Mexico. You'd think they were giving tacos away, the lot was so crowded. Inside, the place was full, too, with weather people on the TV scaring us in Spanish.
When we got to our friends' house on the golf course in Northdale, our host was on his way out to play golf. The course had closed, he said, so he could play free.
He got rained out after a few minutes, and we were all glued to the TV. When it looked like it was all clear, we turned around and out on the course there was a whole group of guys playing, I assume, for free.
The drive back was a lonely one. Almost everything along Dale Mabry was closed, but there was one beacon of civilization still operating, with a half dozen cars in the parking lot at 7 p.m., early, you'd think, for Mons Venus.
Sandra Thompson, a writer living in Tampa, can be reached at tampa@sptimes.com City Life appears on Saturday.
