I was as surprised as anyone to find out I had more than one skill

Click the pic and say aaahhhhh.

In an effort to find out why I'm still coughing I determined there's a tickle in my throat, so I looked in the mirror, opened my mouth and took a picture of my throat... And I think I can see what could be causing my cough!

Having survived  many hurricanes in my decades of living in Miami, Florida, my prayers go out to those living in the Port Charlotte, Fort Myers, area, which I'm very familiar with seeing as how my sister lived there for many years, because it looks like they're going to get the eye of the hurricane

My experience is most Floridians do not like to evacuate and will stay with their homes no matter what. Some will hunker down, and others will have a hurricane party with all the neighbors. I was mostly a "hunker downer," but a lot of times, I had to work, hurricane or no hurricane, especially when working as a civilian at Homestead Air Force Base.

A couple of dozen of us were considered "mission essential," and we would have to stay and try to keep the base from being washed away during a storm. All the airplanes capable of flying would have already been flown out to other bases, and the only planes left would be a handful that needed repair, couldn't fly, and would be left in hangers for protection.

South Florida has canals all over the place that drain water from the land, mostly the Everglades, into the Gulf of Mexico or the Atlantic Ocean. Most of these canals have large gates that can be opened and closed electrically near where the canal will empty into the ocean, preventing the saltwater from entering the freshwater canal.

And as a way of preventing hurricane storm surge from building up on Homestead Air Force Base, the little canals on the base all fed into one big canal that emptied into Biscayne Bay, and this canal not only had large gates that could be opened and closed there was also a really big pumping station that would pump the water in that canal out into Biscayne Bay which would keep the flightline and runways from going underwater.

I had a regular job at the base that didn't involve pumping canals, but the military likes for folks to have more than one skill so my secondary skill that was put to use during a hurricane was to keep those huge pumps running so Homestead Air Force Base wouldn't be flooded, and that worked really well for many years.... Until it didn't !

Theboondork