I have Google back-up for the pics on my phone, and the Google AI puts togther albums and send me a message; yesterday it sent me pictures for “three years ago on this day”…

In 2022 I had driven down to Ft. Myers (as a volunteer) to help clean up after hurricane Ian:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=al8yTiCVfro

That video shows the storm surge when Ian made landfall at a Catagory FIVE storm on September 28, 2022. That storm cheated havoc, in a 50 mile radius above and below Ft. Myers.

Just the WIND from hurricane Ian caused lotsa damage:

I had reached out to a Methodist church just outside of Ft. Myers; they said there were a ton of trees down, so I loaded up my Chevy with extra gas tanks and my electric chainsaw…

Good times!

Gas stations were not operational as far as 30 miles north of Ft. Myers, but my hybrid Chevy Volt could go about 50 miles on a gallon of gas, so the extra gas that I carried with me kept me going.

The pastor of the Methodist church invited me to stay at his home, and I gladly took him up on that offer.

That pastor did not know me from Adam, but I guess he trusted me because I was coming there to volunteer. I found his info on Facebook, so he might have looked at my profile to check me out.

So many homes had been destroyed that the hotels were booked. There was also a National Guard presence all over the area, so they were booking out local hotels as well.

The power was down sporadically, so if a traffic signal was down a National Guard soldier would stand there and direct traffic. As I drove south to Ft. Myers I saw utility trucks from all over the Southeast headed in the same direction… some from as far North as Pennsylvania and New York.

Just driving down I could see billboards totally destroyed from the wind damage. Trees were leaning in the direction the wind had blown at 140+ mph. Most folks have no idea what 140mph wind feels like, I can tell you from riding motorcycles how powerful the wind becomes over 100mph. At 140mph or higher it feels like the wind was going to remove me from the motorcycle. My fastest run on my Kawasaki was 190mph, and I was holding on with most of my strength, with my chest touching the gas tank.

As you can see from the video link above the storm surge was up to the roofline in several places.

The church pastor sent me to several homes with downed trees, so for most of my time in that area I was running my electric chainsaw and cutting huge trees into smaller pieces, in the Florida heat. I burned through 3 chains, and stopped at Lowe’s to buy extra batteries. Got a nice tan, worked until I was bone-weary.

I’ve done some varied volunteer work; water filters in Honduras, donating blood, Habitat for Humanity in Dade City, my trip to Ukraine right after the Russian invasion in April 2022 (probably the wildest one so far). In my college years I was a volunteer firefighter at station 23-2 in Ewan, NJ.

(Getting on the flight to Warsaw, to get over the border to Ukraine, April 2022)

These were all adventures, unique memories. Of course, I’m married again, with 2 little girls in kindergarten who rely on me. No Ukraine trips now.

When I went to Ukraine my oldest daughter Claire thought I was being a selfish asshole because I could die over there. She was mad at me for awhile, even after I got back.

Part of this volunteering is my attampt to feel good about myself, maybe because at some level I think I’m NOT a good person and helping people out pulls me closer to that which is good and loving.

Part of it is sheer boredom along with that self destructive part of me that wants to get really close to DEATH without jumping over that wall.

I feel like I understand Evil, but I don’t want to BE evil, if that makes sense.

In the last few weeks I’ve been organizing the security team at our little local church. That’s another volunteer role as well, making sure a maniac doesn’t shoot up the place while everyone is singing hymns.