Twister

Storm Warning

I was hit by a tornado once. I usually utter this statement around a campfire or dinner table following the interruption of a warm Midwestern day by a warning siren or an earth-colored storm. It’s surprising how many folks have seen the dark hues of twister-inducing clouds without ever having actually experienced firsthand the raw fury of a funnel – which usually seems to touch down in the next town, county, or state, leaving only its ominous potential in the memory of a retreating front. My own experience with a twister began with a jar of peanut butter during an epic bicycle ride across the United States.

It was late, past midnight, and my buddies—Patrick and Rodney—and I had been riding our bikes for a good four hours. The weather was hot and muggy, yet a lot better than the 106-degree day we’d spent loafing around in pools of sweat in a small town Minnesota park. We’d taken to riding at night four days prior in North Dakota, when the crushing heat made it clear that the only way across the Great Plains on a bicycle was when the moon pushed the thermometer beneath ninety.

Six months earlier, we’d made a pact that we’d ride from Seattle to Maine. An admittedly nutty idea while sober, it sounded brilliant during the college keg party at which we’d cooked it up. To ensure our commitment would not soon fall prey to a clouded bravado, we quickly drummed up $14,000 in pledged donations for a hometown charity to wed us to our goal – only to be delivered upon completion of 3,600 miles.

Which is why, instead of maybe throwing our pedal-powered steeds in the back of a pick-up truck or a passing train car to bypass a gnarly day, we were bound to ride, thick or thin, through Mother Nature’s whims. When we reached North Dakota’s western edge, she had turned on the broiler. So rather than jump face first into an oven, we rode third shift across the darkened pavement of the heartland – a tolerable way to work through the humid miles – until each night at around 4:00am, when the falling temperature worked its way to the ominous “dew point.”

It was at these moments that this little studied meteorological term would manifest itself in a pent-up display of its grand importance – as the random temperature on a given day at which vapor becomes water. On a tame Ohio morning, one might find the dew point’s work in the form of sparkling droplets on a lush green lawn. On the Great Plains, however, it made its nightly entrance via thundering clouds that rose like spirits from the dark landscape, riding spider webs of lightning that rolled in from the horizon with a mere thirty-minute warning at best. It was at this time that we’d strike for low ground and weather the storm, then rise with the sun in search of another small town park to whittle away the daylight hours.

Day one of this routine was relaxing, then exhilarating. Day two was tolerable, then exciting. Day three saw my last change of clothes soaked in sweat and any vestige of rest lost in a puddle of my own perspiration – and this was before the storm set in. Day four saw half-hearted jokes returned with middle fingers raised from wet grass. By the time I had run out of peanut butter during a midnight lunch break atop a soft mulch pile in a hardware store parking lot, all patience was lost.

“Hey, Rodney, you got that second jar of peanut butter in your saddle bag?”

“Come on Freshwater, that thing’s in the bottom of my pack…”

“Dude, I’m hungry.”

“Alright already, if you insist, I’ll tear this thing apart and get you the stupid peanut butter!”

“Oh wait, never mind, there’s still some in the lid from this upside down jar.”

But it was too late. Rodney had already emptied out half his bag for naught and the fight was on. I can’t remember exactly what we shouted at one another, just that the words jarred front porch lights and decelerated a passing car. We caught ourselves, looked around, then at one another: “Man, we need to go to sleep.” In silence we then rode out of town, until we came upon a rest area in the highway’s grass median, threw up our tent, and passed out.

I don’t remember the storm’s approach, just that we’d awoken standing up as a gale-force wind pulled our tent from the ground. Patrick was actually still asleep, shaken awake by Rodney’s and my “What the?!!” as we threw our bodies full force into the nylon floor to bring it back down to the earth. A loud crack and the tent’s poles exploded, as fabric shrunk like saran wrap around our bodies and a freight train began to charge over our heads. Louder and louder it roared. Rodney, having the misfortune of the screen window glued around his face, was our eye into the storm: “IT’S LIKE RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK, MAN!!! YOU’RE NOT SUPPOSED TO LOOK!”

Still louder and louder it grew. Images of a blade of grass flying through a telephone pole blew through my head as I wondered if, this time, my time had come. Any second it could hit, another second, then another. I heard a, “Ross, man!” hurled through the wind. “I’m really sorry man!”…“Me too!” as an “I love you guys!” shot from Patrick’s side of our destroyed tent. More seconds. What would we do?

“The brick outhouse! The brick outhouse! We gotta make a break for it!” Patrick tore open the tent and the three of us clawed our way through a river of water into the storm; breaking into a crawling run for the privy door, which, through the grace of God, we were able to pry open, roll through, and bolt shut. Then we looked up. Hell’s Kitchen was brewing through the skylight in the ceiling. Patrick gazed into the hole in the ground, wondering if it was worth it to live or die. Rodney pondered Patrick’s dilemma, then burrowed into a corner with a “Dude, if we die, maybe it was meant to be...” I grabbed another corner and Patrick quickly staked out his own.

Time carried on in a surreal mix of the immediate moment and minutes ticking by. At some point the roar petered into silence and exhaustion turned to sleep. A few hours later we were awoken by the latch’s click and a towering figure behind a large belt buckle and ten-gallon hat. “You boys alright?” Sure. We’re alive.

We inquired about the storm. “Oh, it’s gone… But not before it turned the Fargo Dome into Fargo Stadium.” Registering this feat of nature, we rose to inspect the aftermath in our own camp. The bikes, weighted by 70 pound packs, were miraculously still there – unscathed by the timber that had come crashing down all around them. As ironic were the many other trees that stood idly in the morning breeze, their branches bearing no witness of the 180 degree turns they’d taken in the storm’s winds.

We collapsed under the sun’s crisp rays, a feeling of rebirth lightening our bodies and our minds. Eighteen hundred miles under our belts and eighteen hundred left to go. Yesterday, our goal seemed to have burned up with the plains. Today, it was reborn with a new life of possibilities.

(7/11/08)