biggerboat's building boondoggle blog

sorry to hear about that, hang in there

Yeah, good luck. Hope you're able to get somewhere safe.

Good luck. I hope you stay safe.

Milton is now a Category 5 storm and 90% of the spaghetti models have Tampa taking a direct hit, which oddly enough hasn't happened in over 100 years. Yeah. Getting the hell out is paramount. Stuff can be replaced, lives can't. Thoughts and prayers for you and your wife.

Glad you decided to get out, Boat. Hope you can stay safe. GL

We're at a good place. Nowhere near the coast or any rivers. Cinder block house. All good.

Took us over 4 hours to get here. Usually an hour and a half.

Gas is an issue. Every gas station we saw was either empty because they ran out, or had 50 car lines. I filled up before we left so we should be good.

I really doubt we'll be able to get back before Saturday, if that.

Did you put your boat on the roof of your house before you ran away?

Hehe, it's as high on the lift as it can be and tied down.

The latest storm track has it going a little further south. This could be huge for us but of course better for me means worse for someone else .

Do you have cameras at your house so you can keep an eye on it til the power goes out?

Yeah.

Wobbled a bit to the north again. A few miles will make a huge difference in storm surge.

Seems like just crazy talk. They'll have to let residents, workers, utility people in in droves.
For now, I'm planning to be out there 10/23-11/8 to finish the work my guys skipped because of this. Hopefully things will be close to business as usual by then. Also hoping my storage buildings are built on higher ground, lol. I have close to 200 55" TVs in storage between Brandon and Fort Myers.

Spent some time yesterday watching guys remove a huge tree that was right above the house we are riding the storm out in.

It was quite an operation. They had a guy in a bucket truck tying a harness hanging from a crane to the tree, then chainsawing it. They lifted over the house next door where 2 guys cut it up. Then a guy with a tractor hauled the debris away.

It really was amazing watching this. Those guys were a well oiled machine.

This was a really big tree.

Tree gone.

Now they are taking down some big oak limbs.

They hate shade!

I did tree work one summer when I was in college. Worked up from doing clean up to cutting stuff up on the ground. Dangerous stuff. Guys up in the trees were just nuts.

First and foremost, best wishes to the Boats.

I see guys up in trees walking around the neighborhood. I do some of my own trimming, but nothing like those people.

Back up, this sounds like a story that needs telling.

I have 2 crews installing TVs for advertising in Tmobile stores and they were supposed to start in Fort Myers today followed by Tampa when they finished there. All the TVs were based in a warehouse in Miami, which is too far to be driving daily to restock, so I had them go pick up all the TVs with a box truck a week or so ago and stage them in storage buildings where the work is. Then Milton popped up, lol. They finished the Orlando market yesterday and instead of having them wait around to see what happens we are just skipping Ft Myers/Tampa and they moved on to Atlanta/Richmond/Norfolk. I guess I'm going to go out and do the skipped stores myself in a couple of weeks and hope the TVs weren't inundated.

Edit: When I'm there I'll have Sundays free if you want some free labor BB.

In the UK, we just had a live from Florida "Hurricane of the Century News Special" 90 minutes long programme on Channel 5.

Maybe a tad too early, I thought, but I guess that was the only time slot they had for it.

That's a less fun story than I'd hoped for. I was thinking mark had a top-secret second life.

OK, derail over.

Saw at lunch Milton should be down to cat 3 by landfall.

Does it seem as if hurricanes' landfalls happen inordinately at night?

Always at night.

Lights just flickered where I am.

Storm surge at our home is still a huge if. Probably won't know until tomorrow.

On one hand it's good there is time to prepare for a hurricane, but the wait is excruciating.

I'm second guessing my decision to spend days with my alcoholic mother in law instead of riding out a major hurricane.

have to get that timber from point a to b, might as well use a machine to do it in bulk so the crew breaking it down is out of harms way while the loggers keep felling big limbs.
free wood chips and firewood for the neighborhood

sending nothing but good thoughts your way bb
and i suggest you take advantage of mark's gracious offer
he's like the cajun navy, but more of a cable army
either way the results are generally admirable