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My Encounter with Hurricane Floyd, by Wayne Pickering,

Hello again everyone!

After boarding up the house and buying 3 days supply of food and water preparing for Hurricane Floyd, it was mandatory evacuation time. Well, I knew that a mountain is one of a hurricane's worst enemies for sucking the energy out of it. Comparing this to where I live here in Ormond by the Sea which is just a little north of Daytona Beach, the Continental Shelf in Miami is very close to land whereas it's several miles out to sea here where I live and it acts very much like a mountain and very, very few hurricanes have ever hit our area because of this most fortunate geographical design. Notice that Southern Florida is very prone to these natural disasters.

So bearing this in mind, I took a chance when the Sheriff's department was pounding on my front door and I was laying on my trampoline in the back yard soaking up a few rays (the sun was just right as it usually is before something like this happens, for some reason) by not evacuating or even answering the door for that matter! Then later that night around midnight when the hurricane was as it's worst threat to the area and the ocean was as turbulent as I've ever seen it even to where it was washing up on the main ocean highway = A1A (Ocean Shore Blvd.), I decided to do a freaky sort of thing by going down to the ocean with the winds gusting to 35-40 miles an hour and go out into it up to my knees (that's as brave as I wanted to be a that moment) and ate a pound of hand picked organic Muscadine Grapes! Now I can say I did it. Let me tell you that those 35-40 mile an hour winds were no slouch. I can't even imagine what the 145-155 mile an hour winds would have been like!

Well what else was I going to do since I was totally out of power for 2 days and I was the only one on my street who had enough sense to stay home. I felt it would have been once in a lifetime thing to experience. The next morning I went down to the beach again and the rain in itself was a bear. But the waves at that time were bigger (some 20-25 feet) than I've even seen them other than when I was on a ship in the ocean on my way over to Viet Nam for my 1st of 3 tours over there (the 1st one being on a ship then the other 2 on land in the Mekong Delta = South Viet Nam on the Navy Seal Support Team) where they were sometimes as much as 50 feet in turbulent weather.

I feel it would have been foolhardy not to have boarded up the house, because after this was over, the trees and other debris that was all over the place was intense. And I could hear the stuff ramming against the house throughout the night, as I lay there listening to the incredible winds right outside my bedroom window. Kind of made it hard to get my full night's rest of which I'm so accustomed to getting. It took me over 6 hours to get the bulk of the debris off the roof and the yard not to mention the entire pruning I had to do after it was over. I'm very grateful for the limited damage as I knew it could have been really something if I was living somewhere else in it's path. And I'm also very grateful for all the phone calls I had from friends who invited me to stay with them and were concerned for my safety.

By the way, being without power for over 2 days really made me appreciate flipping a switch and the lights come on. I burned quite a few candles and with friends like Mike Staley, who kept me informed to the "T" as long as he could before he evacuated, I was on top of it all. I've never had a TV and I never listen to the radio and of course the newspapers are good for the bottom of my birdcage so the many concerned, loving friends I had calling me to keep me informed was also a true blessing!

Well now the last of mangoes are in for the season and I have to go and get back to my routine. CYA!

Wayne "The Mango Man" Pickering -

Wayne "The Mango Man" Pickering, N.D., Sc.M.
Nutritional Performance Coach + Life Management Consultant
Triathlete + 1996, 1997 nominee for The Healthy American Fitness Leader Award

c/o The Health Aquarium, P.O. Box 26-3030, Daytona Beach, FL 32126-3030 | Phone : 904-441-4487 (800-325-DIET), Fax: 561-382-8487 Pager : 904-820-7259
http://www.wayne-pickering.com, E-mail: mangoman@wayne-pickering.com
Celebrating 22 years as an Author whose work has transformed people's lives in 36 countries. He's a Florida State Licensed Nutrition Counselor who is approved for Continuing Education by the Florida and Alabama.

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Count beginning November 5, 1999