Trip

I just got back from a week-long trip to Georgia, where I participated in the University of Georgia Mens' Glee Club Reunion on Saturday (I had helped organize the event over the past year or so). It was enormous fun to see old friends, and to sing together in a concert on Saturday.

A few highlights from the trip:

• We were trying to drive back into Arkansas on Sunday. In the early evening, we started seeing a lot of weird lightning to the north and the south, flashing not to the ground but across the clouds. Then, I started to notice that while the sun had not quite gone down yet (there was a patch of blue in the sky), there was an enormous cloud dead ahead that was pitch black.
  
  We stopped for gas. The wind was the strongest that I have ever felt. My 6-year-old son thought it was hilarious: He had to run in place just to stay in the same place; if he stopped moving, the wind blew him practically off his feet.
  
  Anyway, something didn't feel right. I quickly turned on the radio, and the first station I found had an announcer saying things like, "There has been a tornado that has touched down in west Memphis," and "someone has seen softball-sized hail," and "whatever you do, get out of your vehicle."
  
  Needless to say, I didn't much feel like continuing to drive straight into the pitch-black cloud. So we turned around and backtracked some 25 miles to Jackson, Tennessee, where we spent the night. There were weather sirens going off.
  
  Don't get me wrong: I don't think we were ever in any danger. I never saw an actual tornado, and where we were, all we got was some fierce rain for a while. But here's an article from the local newspaper on the damage done in Tennessee that night.
  
  
  
• Interesting corporate mottos that I saw on the road:
  
  -- On an 18-wheeler heading west: [Acme] Caskets: Dedicated to the Dignity of Life. Life?
  
  -- On a billboard for a regional bank: "[Acme] Bank: Where Banking Comes Together. Together with what?

I have a couple more observations that I'll put in separate posts.