マイアミ日記　徒然なるままに・・・

Evacuateing in 2004

We have a typhoon season in Japan, like here, but fortunately I've never evacuated from a typhoon in my life. On Sep. 1st, my husband told me about a hurricane named Francis. He said the hurricane was very serious and we should leave Miami. When I heard that at first, I couldn't understand how serious it was; also, we lived in a hotel before moving into our apartment. But in the afternoon, he called me from his office and ordered me to prepare to leave from the hotel. We loaded our luggage into our brand-new car and left with my husband's company's buses that they chatered. We were very luncky, because his company prepared hotel rooms in Atlanta.
The first 2 hours were great driving. But after we passed the frist Turnpike service staion, the traffic became so bad we stopped. I wanted to go to the bathroom, but we skipped this service staion because we wanted to go as far as we could. In fact, turnpike was bumper to bumper traffic, and it took 1hour to travel 1 or 2 miles. Remember? I wanted to go to the bathroom. There are service stations on the turnpike every several miles. We believed we could reach another one soon, but actually it took 3 hours.
While driving for 3 hours, I got into a panic because I really had to to use the bathroom. When I saw next service staion, there was such a long line to enter the parking area. I couldn't hold it any longer, so I got out of the ar and ran to the bathroom. Maybe you can imagine, people were making a line for the toilets. And believe it or not, I couldn't see the end of that line. I tried another bathroom, but they said they didn't have any water for using the bathroom. When I stated to prepare for the worst, I met my husband's co-worker. She told me her bus had a toilet. So I finally got to go!
We reached Atlanta at 7:00 pm the next day after leaving from Miami. We drove for almost 30 hours, and this trip is the worst trip in my life. This experience is a traumatic one; when we have to drive a long distance, I always think of my toilet planand don't drink too much water. Also, when I know a hurricane's coming, I think of our flight from Miami to somewhere north or west, and I pray the hurricane doesn't come to Miami.

ジャンル別一覧