I've never been a believer in making a "bucket list" of things I'd like to do before I die. I live in steadfast denial of the aging process, and any admission of life having an expiration date would be a clear concession to the grim reaper that I refuse to make.
That said, there's two things I've always yearned to see while I'm around. This weekend, I almost checked both off my list.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again because I'm quite possibly very stupid: I want to see a tornado with my own eyes.
They're deadly, yes. But tornados are also spell-binding. They seem to defy all laws of reason and physics. When we go about our day, we're used to the world behaving in a certain way. For instance, we can generally rely on the ground staying on the ground and the sky staying in the sky. But sometimes, the sky gets super angry that it has to stay in the sky and instead points a swirling finger of destruction at the ground to up-end our lives.
I've always been one of those idiots who wants to run TOWARDS a tornado, not away from them (DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME, unless you want your home to be Oz.) I grew up in a house that was virtually tornado-proof, so maybe that's why I've always found them more fascinating than terrifying. My current house would probably come down with little more than a huff and a puff, but it hasn't stopped me watching every idiot storm chaser on Youtube with envy.
As much as I yearn to witness one, the reality of tornados is sobering and horrifying. A few years ago, I saw the damage firsthand to homes in Fruitland, IA and Washington, IL, and there are no words. My thoughts and sympathies go out to everyone in Kansas, Ohio, and obviously right here who've been affected by storms, floods, and this spring's historic outbreak of twisters. As I type this Thursday night, tornado warnings are popping off in Iowa for yet another round of damage and terror. If this is the new normal, it's a scary normal.
I almost had a front row seat. Occasionally in this column, I've poked fun at a certain regional meterologist who likes to call snow "white gold" and cheers on blizzards with enthusiasm. As it turns out, he's a great guy who's just an unapologetic weather geek. Every spring, he takes a pimped-out van on a week-long chase across Tornado Alley. This year, he invited me along for the ride. I desperately wanted to go, but schedules were tight and my only option would have been driving out and meeting up somewhere mid-chase that hopefully wasn't in the path of funnel.
It wasn't to be. When you're storm chasing, the storms call the shots. This season, the storms called him to eastern Colorado, a bit far me to play catch-up. No storm chasing for me this year. Instead, I sought solace with friends at my favorite place in the world: Codfish Hollow. If you haven't been to the farm-turned-concert-venue in rural Muscatine, you're missing one of the greatest treasures we have.
There we were, standing in a field next to a rustic barn blaring decidedly NON-rustic rhythms, when my friend pointed and went, "What's THAT?"
"That" turned out to be the second thing I've always wanted to see. In the northern sky, three equidistant lights were evenly gliding from west to east, and three things became instantly clear: it was unidentified, it was flying, and it was an object. Missing my chance to see a tornado sucked, but a witnessing a UFO was the best consolation prize I could ask for.
It wasn't even a clear night. Only a few stars were visible, but these lights were almost as bright as the Big Dipper itself. Was it three objects or one BIG object (aka the mothership where they take the abducted for routine probing purposes)? I stood transfixed as they disappeared into the horizon before springing into professional journalist mode. Thankfully, my years at the newspaper taught me proper interviewing technique in times of crisis.
I approached a couple of potential witnesses and calmly asked, "OMIGOD DID YOU JUST SEE THE [EXPLETIVE] UFO IN THE [EXPLETIVE] SKY JUST NOW?!?!?!?!"
So, fellow Codfishians, if a chubby insane person accosted you this weekend with tales of aliens in the night sky, he did NOT, for the record, take too much brown acid. He really DID see a [EXPLETIVE] UFO in the [EXPLETIVE] sky.
And I did, for approximately 16 hours. Some of you spent last Monday with family and friends on a day of rememberance and togetherness. Others may have spent the day submitting field reports to MUFON, the Mutual UFO Network. That's where I discovered five other identical reports that night, from Iowa to Michigan, reporting the exact same sighting. Whatever I saw was big.
And it was. While we were dodging storms and firing up barbecues, Elon Musk and his SpaceX team were releasing sixty new broadband satellites to orbit Earth. Before the satellites were properly positioned, they were released low enough to be seen by the naked eye. The mass of lights nearly sent the Netherlands into a panic. By the time they orbited back over North America, you could only see three of them. I found video of the flyover from a SpaceX fan in Chicago, and it was exactly what we'd witnessed.
So our UFO wasn't actually a UFO, but it was a FO regardless, and a day with a FO is better than no FO, I always say. Maybe one day I'll see something truly unidentified in the night sky. Maybe one day I'll be able to go on a real storm chase. Until then, tornados and UFOs remain on the bucket list I'll never admit to making because I plan to live forever unless an alien or a twister gets me.
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