By traveler 
My 2006 Food 500, which I’ve dubbed the Red Barron (or RB for short) because of the way she handled herself on the road and anywhere I deigned to take her, and I have been through a lot since I bought her in 2009. I’ve noted many of our road adventures on this site and its predecessor at https://singin1.wordpress.com.
I’d hoped we would have many more road trips still to experience, but then it turned that RB was in the wrong place at the wrong time during a drecho that hit Iowa on Monday morning, August 10. This New York Times article described the extensive damage throughout the area.
I was blessed to be at home inside a structure that provided plenty of protection from the storm’s destructive forces. Other than the experience of being without power for four days, I was just fine.
RB was not so fortunate. As the storm finally relented, I looked outside my kitchen window to see how RB had fared. This was stunning view I saw:
I finally gathered myself and went outside to assess the damage. These are a few of the pictures from immediately after the storm and few days later once she had been freed from her tree-festooned situation:
The moment I saw the damage and reminded myself of RB’s age and mileage–she’s approaching 180K, I knew the insurance company would declare her totaled. And so they did.
As I post this, it’s Sunday of Labor Day Weekend, 2020. It’s been a horrible year for this country, indeed, throughout the world. So many have lost so much, the lives they knew and even their very lives, because of COVID-19 and the incompetence of those leading our governments, especially here in the United States. I remind myself that things could have been so much worse.
Still, I’m not looking forward to the final, fond farewell I will have to give my road buddy, RB, later this week.
I’m going to share a story in my next post, so hang in with me.