Ice doesn’t last that long in a cooler, so deciding when to get ice to keep food fresh in the event of a hurricane blackout is an exercise in timing.
The nearby Kwik Stop announced on our neighborhood Facebook group that they’d be open, so they were the first place I went. Unfortunately, they’d sold all their ice yesterday, but it gave me a chance to enjoy the decorative taping done by the neighboring shop:
Tap to view at full size.
I appreciate that they’ve embraced their Florida vape-ness:
Tap to view at full size.
There was a good chance that Kwik Stop would fail me in my quest for ice, but that’s why I had plans B, C, E, F, and G in place*. Plan B was enough — good ol’ reliable Florida Drive-In, where you don’t have to leave your car (or often in my case, bike) to shop:
Tap to view at full size.
I got my ice, took this selfie for the record, and then headed home to finish hurricane prep:
Tap to view at full size.
(Some of you may be wondering why there’s no plan D. That’s because that one has a flaw. Plan D is not a sane plan, or to put it simply: D’s nuts.)
Here’s the overhead view of Hurricane Milton as seen from weather radar at 2:44 p.m. Eastern (UTC-4). As you’ve probably heard, Milton is HUGE:
Tap to view at full size.
The hurricane’s still hours away from landfall, so the weather, as seen through our security cameras, doesn’t look bad…yet.
Tap to view at full size.
Tap to view at full size.
Tap to view at full size.
The cameras are now our eyes and ears outside because the view from our windows is completely blocked. Despite how it sounds, that’s a good thing — it means we’ve deployed the “hurricane kevlar,” as we call it:
Tap to view at full size.
We used to have 1/2″ and 3/4″ plywood sheets with pre-drilled holes that we’d slip onto bolts sticking out of our window frames when a hurricane came. The bolts weren’t the most aesthetically-pleasing thing, and the plywood took a lot of storage space and was a real pain to set up and tear down.
Tap to view at full size.
A couple of hurricane seasons ago, we’d decided that we’d had enough of the plywood approach and started looking at other hurricane-proofing solutions for the windows and went with hurricane fabric: impact-resistant panels with mounting brackets held in place by screws going into holes embedded in the window frame or wall. During non-hurricane times, plastic plugs go into the screw holes.
We have a panel for every window in the house, and the whole set fits in a closet. It would take me a whole afternoon (and ideally, another person to assist) to cover the windows the old plywood way; I can now do the job solo in about an hour with the panels.
Here’s a demo of hurricane fabric in action:
Unpleasant as the replacement costs would be, you consider your windows expendable in hurricane country. What you really want is something that will prevent hurricane projectiles from entering your house (and more gravely, entering you.) We’re counting on the hurricane fabric’s combination of strength and “give” to deflect whatever the cat 3 or cat 4 winds decided to hurl chez nous.
…and by that, I mean, being completely ignorant of the larger world outside the U.S. and too lazy to double-check with a real map. Romania doesn’t share a border with Türkiye; the “Romania” on their map is actually Bulgaria. Romania is the next country to the north.
(Also, they can call the country east of Germany “Czechia” — “The Czech Republic” is technically correct, but so is “The French Republic,” and most people just say “France.”)
Gaddis, pictured above, was the employee at the Florida Department of Environmental Protection who leaked the state’s rushed-under-cover-of-secrecy plans to build golf courses, hotels, pickleball courts, and more land developer-friendly conversions of Florida’s state parks, which are natural protected lands. His leaking of that information and the Florida government’s rushed timeline led to the outcry that led to the postponement of those plans.
Here’s what Gaddis told the Tampa Bay Times:
“It was the absolute flagrant disregard for the critical, globally imperiled habitat in these parks,” Gaddis said in an interview Monday morning. Gaddis said he was tasked with making the proposed conceptual land use maps that depicted the golf courses and other developments. Two proposals were especially egregious in his eyes: The Jonathan Dickinson State Park golf course, and the 350-room hotel at Anastasia State Park.
“This was going to be a complete bulldozing of all of that habitat,” Gaddis said. He recalls his hand, hovering over a computer mouse, shaking with anger and frustration as he was told to rush his maps from senior leadership. “The secrecy was totally confusing and very frustrating. No state agency should be behaving like this.”
Unfortunately, doing the right thing sometimes means doing the career-limiting thing. For his heroic actions, he was fired. Here’s his dismissal notice:
While he was technically fired for “conduct unbecoming a public employee,” it’s the rest of Florida’s Department of Environmental Protection who are truly guilty of unbecoming conduct, for doing the exact opposite of what the Department is supposed to do.
With much secrecy, little notice, and almost no time slated for public feedback, Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis announced a plan to put golf courses and pickleball courts in Florida’s state parks.
Art by V. Steiner. Click to see the source.
The state’s original plan was to hold public meetings on one day only — tomorrow, Tuesday, August 27th — where members of the public would have three minutes each to voice their opinions.
Eric Draper, who served as the director of Florida’s state parks between 2017 and 2021, said it appears the state’s environmental agency is skirting the legal process and the parks system’s own internal operations manual for updating park management plans.
“This appears to be something that has been planned in secret, and it doesn’t appear to have involved the hundreds, if not thousands, of people who are volunteers in the parks, the citizen support organizations, or the many people who have been involved in helping to create and develop Florida’s award-winning park system,” Draper said in an interview with the Tampa Bay Times.
Before the environmental agency formally introduced its proposed changes, staff should have convened a citizens advisory committee made up of other state agencies and people who are working at state parks, Draper said. That advisory committee should have then met and held a public hearing.
Public golf courses and other facilities, including the removal of the Hobe Mountain Observation Tower, an existing park entrance, staff residences and more.
