LinvilleGorge

1916 was legendary. Entire communities got erased from the face of the Earth. Small streams that I trout fish in that are entirely wadeable rarely getting your belt line wet were nearing the 100' mark. One hurricane came through and stalled and dumped a ton of water. Then a week later another hurricane came through and it was just unimaginable. 1940 was the flood I was always told about by my great grandparents. They would've been mid-20s at the time. The whole "bottom" was underwater. "The bottom" being the Catawba valley through Morganton proper. This was basically a 1940s level event for us. Back then all those areas were agriculture fields. All the river bottoms were. It was the only flat land around, it was fertile from the routine flooding, and people knew they had a tendency to flood. These days it's all commercial and retail.

When I saw him in college I always thought he looked like he'd be the bad version of Sam Darnold.

Everyone knew it was going to be bad. I think a lot of people are always going to assume it won't be THAT bad. I knew it wasn't going to be 1916 in terms of water levels bad but I didn't expect it to be this bad myself. I was expecting 2004ish. We got more like 1940ish. It got really bad really fast toward the tail end. Had it not stopped when it did it was gonna get apocalyptic pretty quick. If these new storms forming come through here it's gonna get apocalyptic.

I knew the owner's son. They were reeeeeeeednecks. Like the good fun kind. I have stories I'll decline to share publicly about the fun we had during the development of the course and the early days of the course. Played it many times. IMO new ownership has ruined it. They shrunk all the greens to postage stamp size. The designer was threatening to force them to remove his name from it but not sure he ever followed through.

Ugh. That sucks bad but I'm not surprised.

Did I mention that the helicopter traffic was insane?

The biggest problem is David Tepper, Bryce is just the primary symptom.

This is the parking lot at Western Piedmont Community College. The power companies are using it for a staging area. They're absolutely busting their asses. They deserve a lot of credit. Still expecting to probably be out of power here at the house for several more days at least but we're fine. Generator is humming along.

I'd shop him to contenders with need at the deadline. He's playing well but he's a headcase. That's why the Steelers were happy to ship him off for a 6th. I'd honestly rather have good draft compensation than sink big guaranteed money into a guy who might be a taking time bomb. I'd definitely keep him through the season and take the comp pick afterwards if we were developing a young QB but that's just not the case.

That sucks. Probably a pretty good chance we've seen the last of him on an NFL field. He was already starting to talk retirement and he'll have a grueling rehab ahead of him coming off of two seasons where he was barely able to see the field due to injuries. Bro, your body is telling you it's time.

Just got off the phone with insurance adjuster. They're going to use every bit of fine print to deny coverage of everything. That tree down that is going to take out the fence when the limb holding it up snaps? Well, it hasn't actually hit the fence so that won't be covered. So I just need to wait for it to finish falling? No, you have to mitigate that. I've noted you saying that it hasn't hit the fence yet so that unfortunately will not be covered. You driveway? That was caused by a flood. Not covered. What about the portion of the driveway that wasn't flooded that was just eroded by runoff? Still a flood, not covered. Cool. I'm cancelling every bit of insurance I carry that isn't required by my mortgage company for the house and the state of NC for vehicle liability. I won't pay an additional dime. Gonna be awesome paying these rate hikes on the backend of this for nothing.

The majority of the flood waters around here have receded to like once a decade level flooding. It's full on into cleanup and recovery mode here. Morganton is fortunate in that the downtown area is on a hill. If it ever floods Noah is gonna get cruising around in the ark again. It's the surrounding outskirts down in the river and creek bottoms that got wrecked.

Yep, we suck. But at least it's a watchable version of suck which is a massive improvement over the Bryce Young era.

Now? All of them.

There was a massive convoy coming up I-40 yesterday and they have Chinooks flying in to drop off essentials to areas that are completely cut off. We're fortunate that even though things are a wreck here locally, I'm five minutes off of I-40 and can easily get out and to areas where things are basically normal. I haven't even ventured into Morganton proper. I just hit 40 and go to Hickory. What blows my mind is that Icard at exit 116 is the first place heading east where all the restaurants are open ("all" being both of the two of them) and the gas station up and running and traffic will be lined up on the interstate people trying to get off. Folks, drive 7-8 more miles and then get a mile off of 40 and life is basically normal.

It took a bear breaking into our house for my wife to realize "okay, I need to learn how to actually operate these guns". I'd tried and tried to teach her and she just had no interest and I'd always told her that even though you have no interest you might find that one day you have a need. A bear in the house with her home alone and between her and all exits woke her up on that one pretty quick.

One thing this has shown me is just how crazy things can get so quickly. I'm not talking about the flooding and trees down and that stuff. I'm talking about people. A lot of folks just fall apart pretty damn quickly. People were pulling guns on each other hours into a power outage over access to gas pumps. Stores were getting robbed because everything was cash only so they were cash rich easy targets. If these new tropical storms forming end up tracking through this area poo is going to go from bad to apocalyptic. Speaking of cash, this has also shown me that if you have the ability, you should definitely keep a supply of cash available. I'm not talking "cash" in the bank. I'm talking in your home available to you. We've always kept about $1000 on hand. The folks who didn't have cash couldn't buy anything. Still can't at most stores.

That sucks. Hang in there. Even though Morganton is a wreck I'm fortunate that we're basically at the very beginning of the disaster zone. I can go 20 miles east to Hickory and things are pretty close to normal. We really did just barely take the big punch. I live off of exit 105 on I-40. East of exit 110 there's hardly any trees down along 40. They probably had to cut close to 20 out of the highway between 107 and 106 alone.

The excuses a lot of folks made for them after the first game about how they just struggled because the offense out them in such bad positions constantly... well, what now? They suck. No sugarcoating it.

Josh Allen just got murdered.

Well, damn. That was special.

Yeah, this is just not competitive. Baltimore is owning the LOS on both sides of the ball.

Baltimore is just completely dominating this game. They came in desperate at 1-2 and it shows.

That's where I'm at. You gotta think they'll probably get it rolling sooner or later so it's pretty discouraging they're still winning while pretty much floundering around by their recent standards.

Not sure if the rest of the league should be hopeful that KC isn't playing very well right now or absolutely discouraged because they're probably about to be 4-0 despite not playing well.