As windsurfers living in Atlanta, we have an odd relationship with nature. Atlanta ( cue drumroll Where Wind Goes to Die™) is not an inherently windy place. Aruba is windy. Hawaii is windy. Dahab and Pozo are windy. If you stuck a wind turbine on top of your house, the only thing it would do is mess with your neighbor's satellite dish.

On occasion we'll have a decent breeze. But for real wind, we need Mother Nature to do something quite different. And, when Mother Nature does something different, that is very often a bad thing for someone else. A cold front brings misery to the homeless and poor who can ill afford a high heating bill. A blustery day means a tree is wiping out someone's house or leaving a neighborhood in the dark.

A really windy can mean anything from wide-spread inconvenience - unless you are selling plywood or bottled water - to catastrophic and tragic destruction. This week was uncommonly windy here. This made us happy. This week was uncommonly floody in New York and New Jersey among other places. This made us very, very sad.

We try to take a light-hearted approach to windsurfing around here but it was hard amongst the images of devastation from elsewhere. Yeaaa... we have wind! Oh, crap, that entire neighborhood burned down.

We've struggled with this paradox: Some wind makes us happy. Lots of wind makes us sad (at least the empathetic among us) and ridden with guilt.

We all deal with these feelings in various ways.

Denial: Some of us ignore CNN, the news, the Weather Channel, and our other sources of information. Our world extends from our driveway to our local lake - no further. This may sound harsh but we all must admit that we do this in some degree or another. A flood down the street which sweeps away someone's cat is tragic. A tidal surge in New Jersey is newsworthy. A typhoon in Bangladesh which drowns thousands hardly merits our attention. Not that we value one life differently than another but the further the tragedy from us, the more it's removed from our mind. And once it's removed from our mind, we hitch the trailer and head towards Van Pugh, Galts or wherever.

Guilt: Some of us feel bad that the same weather that brings us joy is causing someone else such heartache. Guilt, sadness and mourning. However, being windsurfers, this feeling is fleeting and then we likely revert to denial, pack the car and set off for the lake.

Shame: This doesn't happen often but is important, nonetheless. Typically, it's when we are driving down the street on the way to the lake. We see our neighbor who's trying to clear the limbs from the tree that just bisected his house. He sees us. We look away and slump down in our seat. We gave a dollar to the homeless guy at the interstate exit the other day - our karma tank is still half full. But, in our heart, we know that we've done something pretty awful - we left our harness at home and have to drive past that poor bastard again.

Blame: When you build a home on a sandbar, don't blame us when Mother Nature decides to rearrange the furniture of the seashore. You want a pretty view plus our tax money so FEMA can bail you keister out when the inevitable happens. (We'll ignore the irony of the well off using federally subsidized flood insurance for their pricey seaside homes while decrying government spending.) Worse, you just ignored the governor to tell you to get the hell out of Dodge and, now, we have to send a 10 man rescue team to ferry your butt off your roof to safety. That's exactly what's going through our mind while we sit in the emergency lane and wait for the HERO truck to bring us some spare gas. We remembered our harness this time but forgot to fill up before heading up the highway.

Does the image below make you:
a) Laugh
b) Digusted
c) Appalled
d) Confused because you aren't familiar with New York's famous logo

Too soon?
Source

All the joking aside, we do recognize the magnitude of the devastation, from the wealthy beaches of New Jersey to the shanty towns in the Caribbean. Maybe, our windsurfing on the edges of these storms is our way of making the best of a bad situation. Our way of saying, "either we windsurf or the terrorists storm wins. Or, maybe we are just insensitive jerks trying to justify an otherwise meaningless activity in a cruel and capricious world.

Well, it makes us feel better to put this link here: Donate to the American Red Cross