Irene Provided A

Windwhipped Wedding Trip

By Nancy K. Crevier

When Amanda Lindblom married Christopher Richards at St Clement’s Castle in Portland, Conn., on August 14, she did not expect her honeymoon and first weeks of marriage to be a true “whirlwind,” but thanks to Tropical Storm Irene, that is exactly what the Newtown couple experienced.

“We left for our honeymoon to St John in the US Virgin Islands on August 15 and were there for ten days,” said Mrs Richards. The first week was the kind of beautiful weather always pictured for a romantic getaway. Then, on August 21, the couple encountered Irene, butting into their vacation paradise like an unwelcome third guest.

“We got hit on St John by the hurricane, which was a tropical storm at that point, and it lingered for three days,” she said. In the villa on a hillside overlooking the beach, the couple felt safe as they watched the winds whip the trees and torrential rain drive sideways past their windows. But in short order, the island ordered all ports closed, and no one was going on or off the island, a bit of a worry to the newlyweds, who wondered if their August 25 flight back to the States would be possible.

“We weren’t worried about our stuff getting washed away,” said Mrs Richards, but for those three days, all of the restaurants were closed. “Most of them are open air restaurants, with no real walls, so they closed up,” she said. Romantic dinners for two were over; the villa served all of the remaining meals in a little conference room.

On August 25, the Richards’ departure date, only two flights to Miami were going out, and then the first flight, the one they were scheduled to leave on, was canceled.

“Luckily, we got on the second flight, but we missed our connecting flight in Miami,” she said.

Meanwhile, Hurricane Irene was sticking to them like gum on a shoe. Flying up to Hartford from Miami — their original destination of JFK International Airport no longer an option — Irene shadowed them the whole way, said Mrs Richards.

“We could see the hurricane clouds right off our plane wings, and the lightning. Our flight was actually diverted away from the Outer Banks, so it took a little longer to get to Hartford. It was really unnerving, and I don’t like turbulence,” said Mrs Richards.

The somewhat rattled and exhausted newlyweds arrived at their Botsford Hill home around 1 am on Friday, August 26, and immediately began to prepare to encounter their “frenemy” Irene, once more.

“We had two days to prepare, and we did not even bother to unpack. Our house is not the sturdiest, and it already leaks a little, so we grabbed my wedding dress, our computers, and a couple of other essentials and went over to Chris’s parents’ house,” she said, where they remained for four days, waiting for power to return to their own home.

They had cleared out the refrigerator before the wedding, knowing they would be away, so not much was lost. But in the freezer, the wedding cake top was beginning to thaw, “So we took it with us when we went to my in-laws’, and ate it there. I guess you are supposed to eat it on your first anniversary, but we just pushed that up to an almost two-week anniversary,” she laughed.

All in all, encountering Irene once was enough, and twice was too many times, said Mrs Richards. For now, though, it looks like for Amanda and Chris Richards, it is finally, “Goodnight, Irene.”