Waiting For the Eye, And Ready To Blink

A news team reports from Cocoa Beach Pier as Hurricane Frances closes in. (Charles W. Luzier -- Reuters)

ON THE ROAD -- The Weather Channel says it's the size of Texas.

Wanting to see for yourself, you hop on an airplane Friday night and fly into Jacksonville, because this is as close as commercial planes will get to Hurricane Frances. All Florida airports south of Jacksonville have been closed. There are three other passengers on the plane. The attendant says flights out of Jacksonville have been filled to capacity.

He also tells you Frances has been downgraded from a Category 3 hurricane to a Category 2. She has slowed down -- to 6 miles an hour -- and decided to spend a few days in the Bahamas.

And who can blame her?

10 p.m.: Nearly all the stores near the airport are closed. Fast-food joints, drugstores, gas stations -- boarded up.

You find one convenience shop, the Island Food Store, that is open. The bottoms of the shop's windows are protected by plywood; the tops are X-ed with duct tape. You buy a big jug of water and two peanut butter granola bars.

On the way out you meet Phillip Ketrom, who says he's 45ish. He's wearing shorts and a T-shirt, but he's not the stereotypical laid-back Floridian. He's moving fast and he's heading north. A NASA contractor, Ketrom lives in Cocoa Beach, but he packed up the Nissan Sentra earlier in the week and made his way to Jacksonville. The evacuation traffic was so heavy, Ketrom says, it took nearly seven hours to drive 160 miles. He says he's scared. "You can call me a [kitty cat]," he says. "Why take a chance?"

You read a lot about the tough old coots who stay in bars drinking rum and smoking unfiltered Camels, but on this trip you run into plenty of cowboys who are getting out of Dodge.

For one thing, Hurricane Charley blew through Florida just three weeks ago.

"We lost two stores down south," says Island Food Store clerk Jennifer Van Nover, 54. "We've got 13 stores left. Lucky 13. Everybody's taking this one real serious." She says she is closing her store early.

11 p.m.: There's no music on the radio, only weather updates. Squalls have begun hitting South Florida, you are told as you cruise south on Interstate 95. Not choosing his words very carefully, the announcer says the local FEMA office has been flooded. With calls, he adds. You are virtually alone on your side of the road. You see a few cars, a few trucks and a dead armadillo.

Midnight: At the sold-out Renaissance Hotel in St. Augustine, next to the World Golf Hall of Fame, Mike Mitchell, 39, and his girlfriend, Erin Myers, 27, come through the back door with their mutt on a leash. The dog's name is Bogart, Mitchell explains, as in "Don't bogart that joint." The couple has evacuated from Vilano Beach, where Mitchell is a seaside artist. "My art supply store is the ocean," says the long-haired, bearded painter who incorporates flotsam and jetsam in his oeuvre. "I've had too many people tell me to get the hell off the water." He adds, "There's one behind it, too," referring to Tropical Storm Ivan.

He and Myers decided life is too precious to be swept away by Frances, so they loaded their Dodge Dakota with the dog, some paintings and Gracie the cat. "And beer!" Mitchell says happily.

1:30 a.m.: At the Comfort Inn in Elkton, there are just a couple of rooms left. The front desk clerk says she has many customers who are fleeing Frances -- some from as far away as West Palm Beach, 250 miles south. A typewritten note on the pillow from the motel staff says: "The electricity may go out, the hot water may not work, the telephone lines might go down, all events that we have no control over. We must weather this storm as a team. . . . " From the balcony, the wind is soft, the moon is shining and stars sparkle overhead.