Member-only story
Bored in a Hurricane
How I learned about my favorite hobby
In mid-Fall, 2016, I was interning with NASA at Cape Canaveral. This was an eventful period,marked with peculiar events, including the SpaceX Falcon 9 explosion in early September, and the divisive 2016 presidential election. Even with all the commotion of living in Florida, and the awe of working at NASA, no event was quite as memorable as Hurricane Matthew.
At NASA, they make the interns take hurricane preparedness classes,taught by only the most cavalier Floridians. They like to joke, “If there is a hurricane, look at a Florida native and see if they’re freaking out.” When Hurricane Matthew was announced to be making landfall, most Floridians were ambivalent. For one, they knew hurricanes. For another, the hurricane was initially declared as a category three, but was far from landfall. This gave the brewing storm ample time to grow and become stronger.
Either way, Kennedy Space Center ordered an evacuation. We were told not to come into work for the next several days. At the time, I was living in the lovely beachside town of Cocoa Beach. Cocoa Beach sits on a barrier island by the Atlantic Ocean; there was little doubt that the city would be rocked by the hurricane. I packed my belongings, stacked important items high on shelves, and headed more inland to a friend’s home in Port Saint John…
