Lotsa wind on Sunday, as you might have heard. Kelly and I had a day planned that got slightly crazy and ended with us snapping photos and biking around our tree-lined and tree-felled neighborhood, returning home to a darkened abode.  More after the jump.

Kelly and I were hosting a Open House for our currently on-the-market home, and so early in the AM we got out and did some yardwork.  Mowing the lawn, I heard a crack and saw an 8-inch thick branch at the church across the street fall into their parking lot.  Winds were blowing pretty much straight-line up Hikes Lane at that point, and Kelly and I decided it might be best if we scurry inside and not get bonked on the noggin by limbs from one of our three 60′ tall silver maples.

Sensing the opportunity for some really epic slope soaring (and needing to get out of the house for the Open House), I packed up the car with some of my favorite slope planes (my Combat Wings XR and my Polecat Hammerhead) and we headed out to the Frankfort Slope!

Driving along I-64 to Frankfort was an adventure enough – trying to squeeze around semis and trailers all being buffetted by winds and even dodging a tree that fell in the highway as we passed by. Crazy!  We drove right up to the lip of the 300′ slope and WOW was it cooking.  Huge, huge winds in this natural bowl-shaped hill.  I didn’t have the stones to throw my oh-so-pretty Hammerhead off the hill, so I went with my tried-and-true CombatWing, which barely had the weight to “punch through” the 50 MPH+ winds.  I only got about 1/2 an hour of flying in, wrestling the plane in the turbulent winds the whole time.  The dynamic soaring on the backside was epic, though – I’ve never fluttered this wing before, but boy howdy did it flutter this time!  Whew.  Nature was on full display.

Sadly, no pictures of me flying as Kelly was “safe from nature” in the car for the most part.  Quite beautiful up on that hill, though.  Dust from the concrete plant and smoke from a fire a couple miles away down in the valley of the Kentucky River made it feel like summer and fall were fighting amongst themselves and whipping the Earth while doing it.

We drove back to Louisville along I-64 around 4PM with the windstorm letting up slightly. We took a ride around the neighborhood to assess damage – not like we had much to do at home.

Up by the Meredith Dunn school there was some pretty awesome damage – like this cypress tree that was torqued into a big flailing mess – but managed to spare the fence underneath.  Just across the street from the Dunn school there was a tangle of wood and wires:

Kelly was riding her new Peugeot fixed-gear conversion she has named “Spanky”. Check out the kick-butt “Ruffy Tuffy Speedblend” tires from Rivendell Bike Works (which appears to no longer have them in stock!)

Over near the Bon Air Library I saw a wicked balancing act with a half-ton tree branch suspended from a street sign. One bolt was holding the entire thing up:

Other scenes of destruction/beauty followed:

All in all a pretty wild day, and as I write this 3 days on, we still have no power in Hikes Point.