A Little Shopping and A Near Disaster

Rantoul, IL
73 deg. cloudy, SW wind @ 7 mph.
Forecast today = high temp. 90 deg. Mostly cloudy, hot, humid, SW winds @ 10 to 15 mph. 40% chance of t-storms this afternoon and evening.

It was muggy right off of the bat yesterday morning, and by about 9:00 Jim had started up my front AC to keep it cool inside of me. I wasn't too hot under my awning though, so Jim spent a good part of the morning sitting outside, listening to my radio and puttering around.

Around noon, Jim and Linda were talking about what they were going to have for dinner, and it was decided that they would have taco's, but then they realized that the lettuce wasn't good any more. So......Jim took CLT and headed over to the IGA store and bought lettuce, paper plates, paper towels, TP and beer.

When Jim got back, he said that the people over at the grocery store were acting crazy. The people in the parking lot were driving their cars like they were late for an appointment, and a lady in the store actually came down one of the isles with her cart, and bashed into the side of Jim's cart as he was going down the end row!!!

Well Jim and CLT made it back here without any mishaps, and then after a little while, Jim decided to take a nap.

Now, before he took his nap, he had thought about going outside and rolling up my awning, as the clouds were starting to build to the West and they were forecasting possible rain. But, because the sun was still shining on me and it was really hot outside, he decided to leave it out for awhile yet.

So....he took his nap.

OK!! OK!! You folks with RVs are getting ahead of me!!

Jim woke up from his nap, and it had gotten cloudy, but everything was fine.......for about 5 minutes!!!!

Then, the wind started picking up, so Jim hurried outside to roll up my awning. Well,, by the time he got out there it was blowing pretty hard, but he was afraid that if he left the awning out, it would get damaged, so he started putting it away. Just after he had removed the end braces and was ready to roll it up, a big gust of wind came along and ripped the awning strap right out of his hand!!!

The awning fabric blew up in the middle like a giant sail and the roller tube smashed into the side of me. Then, because of the spring tension on the roller tube, the awning fabric was rolled onto the tube while the tube was still up against the side of me!!!

Talk about noise!!!!

By this time, Jim was just standing there trying to figure out exactly what had happened and what to do about it, but it had gotten so windy that he couldn't do anything, so he came inside.

Needless to say, he was very upset and figured that the awning was ruined.

In fact so did I. :-(

Well, it wasn't until about 8:00 in the evening, when the wind finally died down and Jim went out to see if he could do anything with the awning. As you can imagine, the pull strap that is used to pull the awning out was all wrapped up somewhere inside of the awning, so he couldn't just roll it out like usual. He finally went inside and got Linda and between the both of them, and with the use of some straps that Jim hooked to the awning arms up by the roller, they were able to get the awning pulled out.

OK, OK, I know the suspense is killing you!!!!

The awning seems to be OK. :-) It was starting to get dark by this time, but from what he and Linda could see, there wasn't any damage. He rolled it up and down a few times and everything seemed to work right, so he rolled it back up and put his ladder and straps away.

As he was putting his ladder away, Louise hollered over and was asking what was going on, so Jim and Linda told her what had happened. Well, they ended up going over to Paul and Louise's and talking for awhile, telling them all about it. Come to find out, the awning on an RV on the other side of the bath house, had gotten completely ripped off of the RV by the same wind, and a few others in the park had been damaged!!!

So......I guess we were lucky. It could have been much worse. When my awning fabric blew up like a sail, it did hit my TV antenna, but only bent one piece of the antenna a little, and, unless more shows up when Jim puts my awning back out again, that's all of the damage I had.

So.... looking back on it, what should Jim have done differently? Well, he probably should have rolled my awning up when he first saw the clouds building to the West. Here in the Midwest, storms can blow up quickly, and before you  know it, it's too late. It may have been a mistake to try to roll the awning up with the wind blowing as hard as it was, but it's very possible that the awning would have been damaged or ripped off of the side of me by the wind if he hadn't.

I guess the lesson is.......If you see the clouds building, don't take chances. roll up that awning and put away all your outside stuff. It doesn't take that long to do, and it may save you a whole bunch of grief and money.

Oh, by the way, Jim and Linda did have those Taco's for dinner, and both said that they were very good. ;-)

Did you know that awnings were first used by the ancient Egyptian and Syrian civilizations? They are described as "woven mats" that shaded market stalls and homes.