Joplin Tornado

My mother was in the killer F5 tornado that hit Joplin last week. She was working at St. John's in Joplin and had about 5 minutes warning to help move her patients to their designated area in the psych unit. She said it hit with explosive force, lasted about 3 minutes and was the scariest moment of her entire life. After it was over the electric doors that lock the psych unit were stuck shut and they had to wait for the fire dept or somebody (she wasn't sure who it was) to come get them. After it hit, the floors above her (she was on the 5th floor) section of hospital were gone and it was raining in on them. It was a harrowing walk over the roof and glass and then down a dark stairwell. As soon as they were outside they were ordered to run because of the natural gas leaks. Along with the staff and patients they all found their way through a mile of rubble to a half destroyed church which they used as a temporary shelter. Luckily, mom, the psych unit staff and all of the patients were fine. During her evacuation to the shelter she was interviewed by the local CBS affiliate and the next morning was even interviewed on our local CBS station--KMOV channel 4! I had just looked at radar about 10 minutes before and texted my mom and sister (who lives in the JPL area as well). I noticed that the cell on radar was exploding rapidly and had a dangerous look about it. I couldn't get a hold of mom, but Lisa (my sister) called her work number and relayed my message to mom not to leave work early (she was scheduled to leave at 6). About 20 minutes later my sister told me that she heard the hospital had suffered a direct hit. We finally got a hold of mom about an hour later and then knew that she had survived, but she was totally freaked out and incoherent on that first short phone call. Listening to the scanner of Jasper county online I kept texting my sister the addresses of the shelters and after a harrowing search (in which she saw lots of death and destruction) she found my mom about 11:30 and I spoke with her again about midnight. She couldn't find her car for several days, but located it on Friday and as you can see in the picture, it wasn't in good shape. It literally looks like it had been driven to hell and back. No way she would have survived in the car and thank God she wasn't in it! I have felt pretty helpless up here in STL, but we are going to help my mom get a new car as soon as her insurace money comes in.

Flight of Passage

Flight of Passage by Rinker Buck is apparently a fairly well known book in the general aviation community. It is the story of two teenage boys who fix up their father's Piper Cub (71 Hotel) and then fly it across the country from New Jersey to California in the summer of 1966. The author of the book is the younger of the boys, who was 15 at the time. His older brother Kern was 17 and the pilot. Overall, I enjoyed the book, especially the flight West itself. There were some classic scenes, that I particularly enjoyed, like the foul mouthed pilots they met along the way such as Robert Pate and "Hank the Stearman Man." I thought some editing of the book would have really helped sales and it's overall popularity outside aviation circles. First, the run up to the flight and the refurbishing of the cub was too long and then the conclusion was lacking something I can't quite put my finger on...but it wasn't satisfying. However, the middle of the book, the flight itself was very entertaining and made the book worth the read. However, I found myself doubting the veracity of the author at certain points. There is nothing wrong with playing with things and exaggerating a little to make a story fit together, to be readable and to get at the actual kernel of truth of a thing without bogging down in detail, but there were a few too many incidents that didn't just quite ring true to me, such as playing chicken with the Greyhound bus full of passengers and forcing it in the ditch...just to name one of the many. But, who knows for sure...I've heard pilots, many of whom I'm related to, tell these types of stories. So, I guess what I'm saying is that this could all be true, but sometimes the truth can be so wild it doesn't ring true. So I will just leave it at that. Getting back to the conclusion...I guess there wasn't enough about how the flight changed their lives and continued to change their lives into middle age and there was WAY too much about the relationship with their father, which became tiresome. Finally, the most baffling part of the story was the fate of 71 Hotel itself. This plane that both of these boys loved was being used as a trainer in Vermont. The author flew the plane again and spoke of how much he loved it, but didn't try to buy it and keep it? That made no sense to me, especially since the older brother is a successful attorney and obviously has the money to buy it and fix it up...so yeah, really baffling and fed into the credibility gap of the book in general. Normally, I'm not so hard on authors, but I think this book had/has the potential to be really great, but needed/needs some help to get to the next level.