That Time I Was in The Atlanta Journal Constitution

Honestly, it doesn’t feel like it’s been nearly 2 years ago.

Hurricane Irma was coming. Category 5. Harvey had just devastated Houston. And here comes an equivalent storm to hit my small town in the Tampa Bay area. It was the kind of storm that buckles your windows, rips off your roof. Caves your garage door in half. It was the same kind of storm that leveled The Keys, Puerto Rico, Labelle. Stronger than the storm that brought New Orleans to its knees.

I wasn’t staying. No way was I subjecting my family to that. With one of our rescues battling stage 4 lymphoma, I couldn’t risk the inability to prepare his food.

So we evacuated. I packed up important documents and left everything behind that I feared I may never see again. The reality of those storms is exactly that. You could return to a pile of rubble formerly known as your home.

Fast forward several days. Irma followed us up through Georgia and killed our power. So we found ourselves in a Starbucks, taking advantage of Wi-Fi so we could work.

There I met a young lady named Ellen. Ellen’s father lived less than 10 miles from me back home. She inquired about his area after overhearing my conversations over coffee. I made a few phone calls and got her an in-person status update on her dad.

Turns out Ellen is a journalist for AJC. The largest and most well-known paper in all of Georgia.

So Ellen wrote a story on those of us who were riding out the storm. Enjoying our day despite the lack of power.

After the article printed the next day, I was surprised by how many people contacted me about it. Apparently, it’s one of the more popular papers in the SE US. So I guess it was a big deal my story was in it. Cool beans!

In case you are wondering, I made friends with Ellen. I met her husband and 2 kids and we’ve kept in touch and seen each other afterward.

And that, kids, is the story about that time I was in the Atlanta Journal Consitution.