The evening started out with Black Belt Test #1. I was a bit nervous going in about the physical fitness portion...I needed to do a mile in 15 minutes. While I was able to fast walk a mile in 12:55 yesterday around the lake, I expected that trying to do it after the bulk of the test was going to be hard.
For me, the test went well. However, we wasted a lot of time as some of the students were not doing things correctly and we spent extra time doing some things over. (And for some of the forms, over and over and over.) I was trying to leave to still get to Fort Wayne tonight, so they let me submit my time from yesterday, do the physical fitness portion on my own, and call it a night. I still got out a good 30 minutes late, but I wouldn't be surprised if the others were there for at least another 30 minutes since it takes a while to wrangle everything. I also wouldn't be surprised if not everyone is invited back for the next round, since this was the easy round.
Anyway, I took a quick shower and ate quickly and left. There was more lightning than I think I've ever driven through before. There were a few stretches of heavy rain, but I stuck with some cars that were going a bit slower and it wasn't a problem. I did have to take a quick stop to go to the bathroom thanks to all the water I had drank (drunk?) earlier. Even with all those issues I only pulled in about 15 minutes after my original ETA. Also, as expected, my check tire light went on around Allegan. It always has for the last many years, and so I was happy to see that it knew exactly where to turn on.
The kids went right to sleep and Nathan and I were talking only to have his phone alert go off. Hmm...a tornado warning. Then my phone went off. We debated if we needed to move to the basement for few seconds, then went to ask Liz. After another minute or so we decided we probably should. I tried waking up Isaac with no luck. I tried waking up Joshua with no luck. I was trying not to alarm them, but that might have worked better. I finally got Joshua to respond, but he immediately fell back asleep. Then I told him to wake up again, only to have him fall asleep again. He finally got up on the third try and I got him moved to the basement. Then I went to get Isaac and had to yell at him to get him to up and at this point things were getting a little scary outside. But Isaac was slowly taking one step at a time and was not waking up enough to go any faster, even as I was loudly and strongly encouraging him to do so.
The adults hung out in the basement for about 10 more minutes, but all the kids were back asleep as soon as their heads hit the pillows. We then realized that the tornado alarm had been going off but we couldn't hear it. I'm not sure if there was actually any tornados, but there was some very strong winds that knocked over a lot of things (more on that tomorrow).
Lesson that I've learned: if the phone warns you of weather, moving to shelter should not be up for debate.
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