Wild, Crazy Day Yesterday.
After staying comfortably overnight in Dodge City, we spent the first part of the day having a remote SDS session at the hotel where several chasers gathered to watch Justin Teague's and his chaser patner's (sorry, old age and brain farts caused me to forget his name...dammit) incredible tornado video from last Saturday. There were plenty of stormgasms to go around. It was INCREDIBLE video!.
We then headed towards Greensburg and along the way stopped by Mullinville to marvel at the M.T. Liggett Gallery. It was quite a sight!! We then took a sombering tour of Greensburg. While it was good to see the rebuilding efforts, it was sad to see all of the debris and destruction that still remains. What a monumental task they are undertaking.
After that, storms started firing. We didn't take the bait on the crappy stuff near and north of DDC. We latched onto the cells exploding around the Greensburg area. After playing around to the east of it and on the slippery dirt roads, I ignored David's empassioned plea to head north to the paved highway for abit too long. The storm beat us to the intersection and pusnished my vehicle with hail to the size of baseballs. One such stone found it's mark and smashed my windshield on the driver's side. Ouch. The vehicle overall though endured minimal damage with only a few more nice dents to note. It's a badge of honor. :-)
Anyway, after escaping the really brutal hail core (likely softballs or even larger just to our west), we kept in front of the storm long enough to witness the mutli-vortex tornado near Pratt. It was pretty incredbile with all of the wild, snaking vortices and incredible broad rotation the filled the entire sky above us. That was worth to effort of getting a new windshield (which was already due to be replaced from several rock chip cracks). Awesome stuff!
The storm soon gusted out and weakend, so we decided to head to Wichita. We searched around for places to eat and finally landed at Carlos O'Kelly's. I had eaten at the one in Hays and thought it was awesome. So, we decided on that. When we pulled into the parking lot, lo and behold, I saw the Outlaw Chaser truck!!! What a wild coincidence! We had dinner with Randy Hicks and his wife along with a few others in their posse. It was a great and fun dinner!
We ended up back at our favorite motel here in Tankawa, Oklahoma where I write this blog. We are waiting to hear about the status of David's van while I ponder my options today. Alot of it hinges on what we hear back from the dealership. If the news is good, then I might wander down towards Childress today for my last shot at chasing before going back to work tomorrow. I'm not excited at the prospects, so I might even just head back to Amarillo. I'll let ya'll know later today what my chase status is.
I've got tons of pics, but just no time to process and post them. They are coming!!
And lastly, my rant about idiot chasers. After breaking off the chase, we were headed down a very narrow two=lane road with no shoulders whatsoever. It was dark and poor light contrast with strong winds buffeting the vehicle. All of the sudden, I see this idiot on the wide of the road with he and his equipment right on the edge of the pavement.
My mirror could have smacked him the head had I not swerved. He was wearing dark clothing which made it impossible to see him until I was right on him. Had I swerved a few inches to the right, I would have at least run over his legs as he was kneeling at the time ith his feet very near or on the white shoulder line of the road. A few more inches and I would have killed him. So, if you are reading this, you freeking idiot, you are welcome that I was paying attention and spared your life. Even idiots have guardian angels. If you had somebody pass you and blare their horn and yell obsenities at you, then you know who you are.
So, once again to all of the dim-witted embeciles out there that don't have a clue...GET OFF THE DAMNED ROAD!!! Why in the hell is that such a difficult concept to grasp? That doesn't mean a couple of inches either. Try several feet. A few chiggers is better than recovering in the hospital or laying in a wooden box.
Okay...I'm done. Time to hit the shower and resolve the issues of the day.
We then headed towards Greensburg and along the way stopped by Mullinville to marvel at the M.T. Liggett Gallery. It was quite a sight!! We then took a sombering tour of Greensburg. While it was good to see the rebuilding efforts, it was sad to see all of the debris and destruction that still remains. What a monumental task they are undertaking.
After that, storms started firing. We didn't take the bait on the crappy stuff near and north of DDC. We latched onto the cells exploding around the Greensburg area. After playing around to the east of it and on the slippery dirt roads, I ignored David's empassioned plea to head north to the paved highway for abit too long. The storm beat us to the intersection and pusnished my vehicle with hail to the size of baseballs. One such stone found it's mark and smashed my windshield on the driver's side. Ouch. The vehicle overall though endured minimal damage with only a few more nice dents to note. It's a badge of honor. :-)
Anyway, after escaping the really brutal hail core (likely softballs or even larger just to our west), we kept in front of the storm long enough to witness the mutli-vortex tornado near Pratt. It was pretty incredbile with all of the wild, snaking vortices and incredible broad rotation the filled the entire sky above us. That was worth to effort of getting a new windshield (which was already due to be replaced from several rock chip cracks). Awesome stuff!
The storm soon gusted out and weakend, so we decided to head to Wichita. We searched around for places to eat and finally landed at Carlos O'Kelly's. I had eaten at the one in Hays and thought it was awesome. So, we decided on that. When we pulled into the parking lot, lo and behold, I saw the Outlaw Chaser truck!!! What a wild coincidence! We had dinner with Randy Hicks and his wife along with a few others in their posse. It was a great and fun dinner!
We ended up back at our favorite motel here in Tankawa, Oklahoma where I write this blog. We are waiting to hear about the status of David's van while I ponder my options today. Alot of it hinges on what we hear back from the dealership. If the news is good, then I might wander down towards Childress today for my last shot at chasing before going back to work tomorrow. I'm not excited at the prospects, so I might even just head back to Amarillo. I'll let ya'll know later today what my chase status is.
I've got tons of pics, but just no time to process and post them. They are coming!!
And lastly, my rant about idiot chasers. After breaking off the chase, we were headed down a very narrow two=lane road with no shoulders whatsoever. It was dark and poor light contrast with strong winds buffeting the vehicle. All of the sudden, I see this idiot on the wide of the road with he and his equipment right on the edge of the pavement.
My mirror could have smacked him the head had I not swerved. He was wearing dark clothing which made it impossible to see him until I was right on him. Had I swerved a few inches to the right, I would have at least run over his legs as he was kneeling at the time ith his feet very near or on the white shoulder line of the road. A few more inches and I would have killed him. So, if you are reading this, you freeking idiot, you are welcome that I was paying attention and spared your life. Even idiots have guardian angels. If you had somebody pass you and blare their horn and yell obsenities at you, then you know who you are.
So, once again to all of the dim-witted embeciles out there that don't have a clue...GET OFF THE DAMNED ROAD!!! Why in the hell is that such a difficult concept to grasp? That doesn't mean a couple of inches either. Try several feet. A few chiggers is better than recovering in the hospital or laying in a wooden box.
Okay...I'm done. Time to hit the shower and resolve the issues of the day.
posted by Steve Miller TX at 5/27/2008 09:13:00 AM
3 Comments:
Oh Steve, they make caskets out of many different materials these days... let's not limit their options... Looking at the Spotter Network, I am sure it is just awful out there, wall to wall chasers. I can't even imagine how bad it really was. Glad you're ok. Congrats on the window... yeah.
Question: how can we view Justin Teague's videos too? Admission charge? Hope not!
Actually Dew, there were alot of chasers, but 99% of them were not causing any problems at all. I don't mind the congestion too much, but the idiot behavior lights a fire under me.
Now I hear of incidents where a particular tour company is intnetionaly blocking off dirt roads to allow their clients freedom to deploy and roam the entire dirt road. When I encounter these pricks, they had better be prepared for a major encounter complete with video cameras rolling. They WILL be exposed eventually.
In reality, the tour companies are rapidly becoming the main source of the problems out there along with the DOW entourage. Based on the incident I blogged about as well as the others, if we eliminated tour companies and the unnecessary DOW entourage, I have a feeling we would rarely hear about incidents.
To any of the more responsible tour operators out there, you had better find out who the bad apples are amongst your competition and expose them somehow and even report them to authorities. If you don't, things are gonna get real bad for ALL tour company operators real fast.
Tampa Dave: We were lucky to have stayed at the same hotel with them and met up the next morning. :-) I'd check with him to see if, when and/or how he'll release it to the public. It's definitely worth the price of admission!!!
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