Hurricane Dean

Ever since mid July I’ve been following the tropical waves coming off Africa.  The first one that all the mets (meteorologists) got excited about was a “blob” which actually formed in the southern Caribbean.  That ended up being Tropical Storm Erin and gave us cloudy skies and rain from Monday through today.  So I’ve been watching Dean since he was a blob off the African coast.  I’ve been hoping all those armchair mets were wrong but very many of them were right.  As of now, Dean is tracking directly for us, though at the 11pm update he is now being tracked a bit to our south.  Like Akumal.  Sorry, Jonna and Mimi.

We’ll evacuate, of course; if for no other reason than the uselessness of frightening the kids silly by sitting through a Cat 5 hurricane.  If we have the means to take our home with us, it only makes sense.  So I guess I get my wish, and we hit the road, but man oh man, I SURE didn’t want it this way.  We’ll probably leave on Sunday but I’m really completely unsure where we’ll go.  We could even go into Belize.  We’ll of course, take our internet with us and our generator and will update everyone via this blog.

We spent today getting our neighbors’ palapas ready; the boys evacuated paperback books and plants and we tidied up and packed up a LOT of the crap we’ve had out.  Since we still have no back door we’re planning on taking off the one door we installed and simply letting the water flow through.  We’ll store everything up ontop of the recamera/bodega and hope it doesn’t get blown away if the roof goes.  Such a quandry.  Do we keep it low (enclosed in cement) and risk water damage or put it high and risk wind damage…

Tomorrow we install the plywood I got today over our newly installed window and make ready to leave.  Jamie spent the day replacing the brake controller and making sure the van to trailer wiring is good to go and that is a HUGE load off my mind.