This is the point when I usually get out for the first time, and like most of those trips, this, too, was a big bust. The whole trip fell perfectly into my schedule as this was expected to be a Saturday event with chaseable weather into Sunday. I had planned for the entire weekend. I left Denver Friday evening for Hays, KS where I woke up to get the morning data.
When I arrived at the Hays Public Library, I saw that SPC had ridded Kansas of the slight risk. I got in touch with Blake and conversed with him about making a mad dash into Iowa. However, I was battling issues with my throat and elected to hang closer to home just in case. When SPC’s new outlook placed south Kansas and the TX/OK Panhandles in a slight risk, I made the 100 mile trip into Dodge City, then into the OK Panhandle to sit along the dryline in hopes of the cap breaking. Nothing.. I returned to Dodge City where I crashed for the night.
When I awoke Sunday morning, I felt my health deteriorating, so elected to head home. On my way home, I was stranded on I-70 just inside the Colorado border due to a dust storm that closed the interstate. I shot some video and made the local news station with my dust video.
I ended up in the hospital the next day due to a serious abscess in my throat that required a rather painful procedure to alleviate. In the midst of them trying to get to the abscess, the local anesthesia wore off and with them “already close”, they just went at it, no pain meds at all, in easily one of the most painful experiences of my life. When all was said and done, they drained nearly a pop-can’s worth of fluid from it. Any larger and it would’ve totally blocked my airway. Definitely a rather miserable experience.
