Years ago, I sat down and had a talk with my Mom. It went something like this, 'if there's ever a crisis at home I don't want to know about it. Figure out how to contact the ship, arrange for me to get off in the next port, wait as long as possible to give me the bad news!' The thought of finding out a loved one is injured, sick, or gone when I'm 6 days from the next port gives me anxiety I can't begin to describe.

Here's the catch, I'm not sure this would work anymore! I mean, hello Facebook! My friends would start offering me condolences before my mom had a chance to pass the news!

When I heard about hurricane Iselle my first thought was, 'oh god my house is totally gonna flood' and my next thought was, 'I really hope I don't get any bad news at sea!'

There was a day (not that long ago) wren sailors left for sea and talked to their families six months later. While I'll be the first to admit I'd miss the interwebz something fierce (and all of you!) I can see how no contact could be extremely less stressful.

The good news for my family in Hilo is that my step-dad is 'little builder boy' he's also 'likes to build rock walls guy' and in this case I can say 'dude with foresight and a vision'. A few years back the rock wall in our side yard started to bulge a bit. So my step-dad reinforced it by building a 'hurricane room' into the corner of the yard. It's basically a triangle that shores up two walls. He used lava rock and poured a concrete slab (seriously laced with rebar) as the roof. Inside he built shelves that would house his tools or in the case of a natural disaster would work as bunks. Even though all these years it's served as a storage shed we've always called it 'the hurricane room'

When I messaged my Mom she said, 'oh yeah we're fine! We've got the generator hooked up and are sitting in lawn chairs in the hurricane room!'.

Phew. No emergency notifications on my end (yet...Julio is right on Iselle's heels)!

Thanks for all your best wishes!

(p.s. They were also being guarded by a fierce dragon...do you see him?! It was one of my step-dads spoils from our road trip! Hahahaha! He had it shipped all the way to Hilo!)