... I'd just gotten to Shelby perhaps a month or so before and we were having a series of hurricanes come through.
At the time I was in the apartment that leaked during hurricanes.
One woke me up early one morning, say 4:30, and as I lay in bed I started thinking that as a newspaper photographer, perhaps I should go take some photographs for the newspaper.
I figured I should listen to my scanner some to see what was going on. Then I remembered my scanner was in my car, outside in the hurricane.
I figured I could put on my cloths, but then they'd just get wet.
Yes, I was running around in a hurricane, in my yard, in my underwear.
Anyways, I lay there in bed for a while, now relatively naked AND wet, listening to the scanner whisper sweet nothings into my ear.
Damn, ain't photojournalism romantic.
After a while, I heard of a tree down a couple hundred yards up from Buffalo Creek on NC 150 out towards Chrvll (yes, that's how you pronounce "Cherryville." Vowels are for pssys).
I figured I'd go check it out. So I went out to my car (with my clothes on) and headed on up.
I passed the creek and started looking for the tree. A hundred yards passed. And then a few hundred more yards....
... I figured I'd passed the tree, so I sped up again and kept on driving for the next half mile or so to find a place to turn around...
AND THEN I HIT THE TREE.
Actually, thankfully, just the fluffy bits at the end and I stayed on the road and the car stayed in one piece. Still, it was rather exciting.
So I found a place to park the car, got out with my camera and poncho and walked over to the tree to take pictures of other people hitting the tree. One lady actually went off the road and sat in her car looking pretty traumatized for a while.
At some point I started thinking that maybe it was more my duty as a decent person to warn folks about the tree instead of just taking pictures. Now I carry flares in my car.
Still, I got some good pictures.
After they came and cleaned up the tree and the sun rose I started heading back to the office to offload my shots. Along the way I found a bunch of volunteer firemen from Waco and a tree on a powerline catching fire. These things get old hat pretty quickly.
I got back to the office soaked from one end to the other.
"I've heard it's coming down pretty hard out there," said one of my superiors.
Yep.
Flat up, straight out, hell yeah.
