I'm Back

So after 3 months hard work my experiment has finally come to an end. Thus everyone can look forward to regular updates once again on my blog. I'm probably not in the right state of mind to right much of anything, but I'll share a short story from my drive back to Ann Arbor.

I decided to take all the data and personally drive it from Memphis to Ann Arbor because I don't trust anyone else touching it (the 3 months of work now would be completely wasted if the data was lost). I originally planned on driving one set with me while shipping a backup separately, but since I wasn't sure exactly which drives had what data I opted just to drive everything myself. I was a little nervous about this because if I got in an accident or something everything would be lost, but hey I'm a good driver. When I went to leave Memphis I heard there were tornados to the north so I decided to cut east over to Nashville then head north. My hope was that the storm would die down somewhat and I would just get some rain. I was over 200 miles into the drive without a single drop of rain when I got to Elizebethtown, Kentucky. Instantly the weather went from calm to severe. I knew it was bad when I saw the rain moving horizontally and lightning hitting so close that it practically blinded me. Luckily I was right at an exit and was able to pull off the highway and right into a gas station where I parked around a corner from where the storm was coming from. All I could think was that this is unbelievable, I've never been in such severe weather in my life yet the one time I'm carrying irreplaceable cargo it finds me. After sitting there for about 20 minutes I decided to go inside the building and try finding out the status of the storms. When I went inside the gas station had just lost part of its roof from the storm, but the damage wasn't too major. They said for that spot the worst of the storm had passed by, but there was a good chance of a flash flood now that would last for the next 3 days. I decided to try to push on because I didn't want to get stuck in some town for 3 days. It was relatively calm for about another 40 miles, but than I got hit by another severe storm (I heard the gusts were between 70 and 100 miles/hour). At this point I conceded defeat (I was really trying to get back so I could go to the Michigan football game with a bunch of buddies from out of town). I checked the Weather Channel in the morning and found out that there were a total of 36 tornados that hit along the path I was driving, and even though the one I drove into at Elizebethtown wasn't a tornado the Weather Channel talked about how bad that storm was. I then finished up the drive in the morning/afternoon on Saturday. I didn't make the game, but it is still pretty sweet to be back in Michigan.