Today, I had the sort of idiotic or at least short-sighted thought to drive out to the Sanibel Outlets which are only maybe half a mile or so before you get to the bridge that passes from the mainland to Sanibel Island.

I just wanted to go for a drive and I thought that I would take a few pairs of shoes that I had that are beyond redemption and are of no use to me whatsoever anymore (unwearable, even) down that way because there is a Nike Factory Outlet store there that has a bin for recycling shoes. I thought I would walk around and see how things were there at that outlet mall post-Hurricane because I haven't been more than about 20% of the way, from where I live, to the beach since the Hurricane.

Well, it was really a case of how things WEREN'T there at that outlet mall.

Oh wow.

Well, at the McGregor entrance, which was TOTALLY closed off, there was a huge pile of tree limbs and other similar debris piled down at that entrance. So I went a little further down McGregor and took a left to come back up on Summerlin so I could take a left into the entrance. Well, that entrance was open, but one half of the parking lot was totally closed off. The other half was open, but I hardly saw the point. There were only 2 cars in the half of the parking lot that was closed off (kinda wonder what they were doing there), and in the open half, well, I don't remember, but probably about a similar number. One guy was biking around.

A few of the windows here and there looked to be blown out, and quite a number were boarded up.

But the whole outlet mall was totally closed down. For a number of years, it was the largest outlet mall in the Southwest Florida area, and was, by revenue, probably among the 3 highest earning malls in all of Lee County, which by now is home to over 750k residents (may be a lot more In Season - dunno). It's on the same general side of my city and I've been there a number of times...not too infrequently.

Yesterday was the first day I've been downtown since the Hurricane. I went to a semi-regular haunt of mine that sells pizza by the slice. I thought that their location would have been destroyed, but they said they only got like maybe an inch of water because the land slopes down a good bit the next block over next to the Caloosahatchee River, which I had never really realized before. If you didn't notice before Ian, you will know now. But some of the establishments the next block over...well, I didn't walk over to see, but I'm sure they've got headaches out their ears. I didn't look around or ask many questions. I was in and out of there pretty quickly.

But this evening was the first day that I really drove down hardly at all towards the areas that were hit the hardest. On the way down McGregor (the Westernmost major N-S street in Fort Myers, although sometimes it's more E-W because it runs parallel to the river/harbor in spots), the closer I got down that way, the greater in size and more numerous in number the piles of debris were. But I just didn't even think about the Sanibel Outlets being closed. Even when I saw the McGregor entrance closed, I didn't really think they were totally closed because the structure looked intact - I just thought that was a security and control issue as they were in a transitional phase. I thought surely they would do everything they could to continue to make money. But oh no. Completely closed. And the trees and other landscaping...well...they didn't exactly look the same.

As I've told a few people, I don't even think of it as a natural disaster or a weather "event". I've told them that it feels more like a "Weather Bomb".

And the more and more it is registering at a gut level, it just literally makes me sick. I don't know how much of this is survivor's guilt. I think that's part of it, but there are other feelings in there, too. Maybe if I lost everything or nearly everything like thousands did, I would feel something...different. Not good, but not quite "guilt".

And what happened there is NOTHING compared to what actually happened on the islands.

But my God, it made me and is making me feel sick.

Sorry. Just wanted to vent.