5/19/12 - Saturday IS Better. Life is Good!

 We awoke late on Saturday, around 9 AM at the Hays Fairfield Inn by Marriott.  Aside from the air conditioning that had a bad attitude, wrinkly sheets, a tiny bathroom vanity, no juice at the breaky bar, a crappy morning run, No Starbucks within 80 miles and me losing my sunglasses on the first day, things were going along quite swimmingly.   It could only get better.  At least John had gone the first 24 hours without getting a speeding ticket.

We wolfed down the complimentary breakfast which included a quite intriguing "Jimmy Dean Sausage-Egg and Biscuit patty.  A cholesterol hockey puck.   After two bowls of roughage-plus cereal, the hockey puck tasted pretty nice.  We live on.

After reading oodles of conflicting pages of weather data from the internet, we based our navigational tendencies on more pragmatic instant-gratification reasoning - the closest high-quality coffee shop.  That location being Great Bend.   We soon found ourselves at GB's best coffee shop - Perks.  Free Wi-Fi, nice muffins, passable coffee, and free Wi-Fi .  We hammered away at our laps tops while nursing the small coffees and berry muffins.  It was 3 PM by then and the barista was giving us the evil eye.  Closing time.  We retired to our vehicle to finish our blogs.  Who closes at 3 PM?

Our laserlike focus on documenting our adventures in finding the perfect tornado was interrupted about 20 minutes later - by a clap of thunder.  Huh?  What was that?  Weather? A thunderstorm had found us.  How embarrassing.   We looked around to make sure no other chasers were watching then sped off like we planned it that way.   Room service severe weather.  Yeah.  That's the ticket.

The rest of the day was history.  Nine tornadoes in less than 3 hours.  Read John's blog for the boring stuff, but we made it "home" in time for dinner.  Such a nice day.