And so it's Monday. The hurricane is over and I survived. We'll talk about why I am so, so grateful, and I'll tell you a little bit of juicy stuff about the storm. You know, that's kind of what we do and welcome to the Michael Rose and the hurricane Milton has come and gone.
And it was quite a thing. Got to tell you, it's the scariest hurricane I have ever lived through and I have been living through hurricanes in Florida since we moved here in 1964. I've never, I've always said, and everybody I know who grew up around here, who lived here much longer than me, and I mean older people, people who have since passed, you know, that I knew that we're old when I was young, have always said that if a hurricane did a direct hit on the Tampa Bay area where I live, that that would be it. I mean, it would be toast.
It would be absolute toast. And we have never had one. We know we've had some interesting hurricanes that have caused a lot of damage. We had one two weeks ago that came up the coast.
It was a hundred miles out, but it was shooting, you know, water back into the coast here like you wouldn't believe in Tampa Bay flooded and people, my friend Jennifer lost her house and all kinds of people lost their homes. All kinds of people were flooded out and then, and that was a hundred miles out. That was a hundred miles out. It was literally millions and millions and millions of dollars worth of damage.
I lost my roof. I didn't lose my roof, but my roof is damaged enough to where my insurance company said it needs to be replaced. And thank God, they're going to pay for it except for $3900, which is my deductible for a hurricane. But you know, we're talking about a $14,000, $15,000 roof.
So you know, you do what you got to do. But when I saw this thing coming and I was watching the track, my son and his girlfriend totally freaked out and said, we got to go. We can go to Tallahassee, you know, my favorite ex-wife said, you know, come with me, we'll go to Lakeland. Lakeland is in the state, but only by about 30 miles from Tampa.
And I thought, no, that's not a good idea because I think, you know, no, I just, I think I'm going to stay right here at my house. And there were shelters around here and there were pet-friendly shelters because I had cats. I still have cats. And so, but the closest one was about 10 miles away.
And I said, okay, well, you know, I can leave the cats in the house and the middle school is walking distance from where I live. And they're a shelter. I said, if it gets real bad, I'll just go to the middle school. And if it doesn't get real bad, I'll just stay here.
And it got real bad, but I couldn't go anywhere. And I will tell you, I've never been through winds like that. I've never. And of course, rain, 24 hours with rain.
And of course, my roof is like me. And there was a big leak coming through my living room and, you know, I had a bucket down or a big bowl down there catching it. And just, ah, I have a sliding glass door. If I were ever to do anything different.
But anyway, before that, I want to tell you how grateful I am to my community, my neighbors and my community in general. I, there's a guy that lives across the street from me. He has a house identical to mine. You know, these are all track houses.
This neighborhood was built in 1973 and ours is the higher end of all of the houses that are in here. Our model is the biggest, you know, and when I say biggest, it's 1,125 square feet, three bedroom, two bath, living room, dining room, kitchen, smoke kitchen, and a one-car garage. It's not a big house, but my bedroom window in his bedroom window is out facing the street. And I saw him out there preparing and I'm going and I'm just getting all the little things that need to be picked up and put in the garage and pots and, you know, things like that.
I just, I'm putting those things in the garage because I'm worried about that. And I see him boarding up his bedroom window. And the next thing I know, without, you know, he's over at my house with a piece of plywood that is the exact same size as the one that he cut for his window. He says, I'm putting this on your bedroom window.
You see that tree up there? That tree's got branches that can fly down and hit you when I'm not worried about your living room. Not worried about my living room, but he says, the bedroom, we've got to cover that. You know, what a nice guy.
I mean, you know, and everybody in my neighborhood was that way. He's helping everybody else, everybody, everybody in town was helping everybody out. The county people were on television saying, please come to our shelters, you know, bring whatever you got, but you know, just bring nothing. We're going to feed you.
We're going to take care of you. We're going to make you comfortable. We're going to, you know, we're going to do this. We're all going to get through this together.
And we have a weather guy around here who's been here forever. And everybody said the same thing. You know, he Dennis Phillips is his name. And Dennis Phillips has led us through tons of hurricanes over the years.
And he has rule number seven and rule number seven is don't panic unless I panic. Well, he looked pretty damn panicked. I have to tell you guys, because he's always, he was always the optimist. This is what's going to happen.
But I have a fun Charlie was supposed to be coming right to us years ago. And I was watching Dennis Phillips 20 years ago when Charlie, about 20 years ago, 19, 20 years ago when Charlie came through the South and it was coming up and it was heading right to Tampa Bay. It was going to be the big one that took us all out. I was still living with that other wife of mine.
I forget her name. Anyway, in my big, beautiful house that she now lives in with her husband. Anyway, anyway, guys, did I just feel a little bit of a bit of no? Anyhow, not at all.
Yeah, maybe I'll, anyhow, am I going to edit this out? No, I'm not. Anyhow, we boarded the whole house up. You know, we did all of that stuff.
And then I'm watching Dennis Phillips and he goes, I got a funny feeling about this. I got a funny feeling. This isn't going to hit Tampa Bay. I got a funny feeling it's going to turn right.
And it did. We went down to Port Charlotte, right? I had lots of friends in Port Charlotte. I mean, lots of friends in Port Charlotte.
And it just destroyed Port Charlotte. I mean, just totally wiped Port Charlotte out. And, you know, he was always an optimist about us and all. And on this one, he said, Nope, he says, I'm just telling you.
This is in the Gulf of Mexico. Either direction is going to be how bad it's going to be, but understand the worst case scenario, you're going to be under hurricane force winds for about four to five hours. Hurricane force winds, chair roofs off, hurricane force winds, destroys mobiles, hurricane force winds, you know, it picks up cars, you know, so man, batten down the hatches type thing. It literally rained for 24 hours.
And I, but no flooding. My street did not flood. My backyard flooding. Zach and his girlfriend take off and they go to Tallahassee, leaving their cats with me, and that's fine.
And, you know, we're all sitting here hanging out together, me and the cats. And I've got to tell you that when the winds were blowing by, when the winds were coming through for hours, I will, for one thing, I've never ever not, I've never ever not lost electricity except the one that came by two weeks ago, we didn't lose power, which I thought was strange. This one, we had 75 to 90 mile an hour winds blowing through our neighborhood. Why we had electricity?
I have no idea. No earthly idea. You know, it was, it was just really bizarre and around, I don't know, 10 30 at night, I still had, I had internet and I'm checking and there were power losses five miles from here. Like a million people out of power, all around and all around our neighborhood.
We kept our power. Now, I couldn't open up the door. If you opened up your door, you could get sucked out. That's how bad it was.
And I have a sliding glass door. And like I was saying before, if I ever am going to do this again, sometime between now and then, I'm going to go get a piece of plywood or two pieces of plywood, whatever I need or aluminum or something big enough to cover my sliding glass door because that when, you know, it would just be gust of wind, it would hit that door and the glass is shaking and the whole door is shaking. I closed my vertical blinds because I said, that's just going to burst this glass. One of these things is going to burst that sliding glass door and at least this will keep the glass from flying into my living room through the dining room.
So I said, you know, I'm going to, but it, for whatever reason, the glass door held. But in the future, I will have that plywooded up or aluminumed up or something. I'm going to have that taken care of. I will close that one up.
I'm not worried about it. And I've, you know, I've got the board now for my bedroom window, but it was scary as hell. And I had not slept the night before because of all the stress and everything and Zach and his girlfriend leaving. And I just had not gotten enough sleep, maybe an hour and a half, two hours sleep and there was no way I was going to bed while the storm, because the storm was going to go into the night.
So it was weird, but the next thing I know, I can feel the winds going down and the rain was letting up. It was raining sideways for, you know, 24 hours sideways rain, just sideways rain. And I felt it. And then, you know what?
It started calming down and about one o'clock in the morning, I went and laid down on my bed and I fell asleep. And I was up at 5.30 in the morning to walk outside at first son to look at the damage. And a lot of trees down, none in my yard, because I only have two trees out in front of the city owns. They weren't down, but my next door neighbor had a tree come down on her boat and another tree come down on a parked car.
And up the next street, you know, lots of trees down. I lost more shingles, no kidding, but they're going to come and replace the roof. And I'm, and a lot of people lost power. A lot of people still don't have power.
I still have power. I have no idea why. I'm grateful. Living without air conditioning would be rough.
And I know it's October, but we're in Florida where it gets hot. Alright, we'll do this all again tomorrow. Have a great day.