Tornado

I remember having a great fear of tornadoes throughout my youth. Iowa isn't the most common place for a tornado to strike, but we are in tornado alley and get our fair share. There is one experience that still resonates with me. I was about 9 years old, staying at a family friends house during the days over the summer, much like a babysitter. The tornado warnings started showing up on the news about the same time the sky turned purple. I tried to show strength, but I was probably one of the most frightened ones. I remember sitting in a small room in the basement and hearing the wind and the rain howling outside. After it calmed, my friend and I, being two of the oldest, went outside to assess the damage as if we had any idea what we were doing. It wasn't hard to notice the very large oak tree that had been uprooted in the back yard. Timing is everything. Immediately after the fear of how strong the storm must have been consumed my very being, the sirens sounded. We ran inside, took shelter, and waited out round two of the storm. Looking back, it's as if I went out in the eye of a hurricane. The damage was not quite to the same extent, but my young ears would have believed anyone that said it was.

"Place"

My experience of "place" is most shaped by the traveling I do, more specifically the driving to get from place to place. I love traveling and I have put well over 30,000 miles on my car since I got it in the Spring of 2008. This is significantly more ridiculous if you account for the fact that I didn't put a single mile on it in the summer months of the past two summers and rarely drive during weekdays. I participate in drumline activities that have made me drive long trips beginning when I was barely old enough at the age of sixteen. I have become so familiar with driving out on the open road and similarly grown to love experiencing places while driving through or to them. Through this, I have grown to severly dislike the winter driving season in the North that makes up a large portion of my reasons for wanting to move south after graduation. Much of my opinion toward places is associated with my experiences driving to them, through them, or even from them in the case of my hometown, Des Moines. Don't get me wrong, I'm a full supporter of Des Moines, and would love nothing more than to see it continue to grow and maintain it's status as the "Hippest city in America" according to fastcompany.com (http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/75/desmoines.html) However, during the season of snowy, icy, slippery, and often extremely dangerous roads I would much rather be in my family's favorite vacation location, Saratota, Florida. My experience with Sarasota includes a few times that we have deceded to make the trip by car rather than air. The most recent driving trip was my Dad and I road-tripping it down there after Christmas 2008. Along with being my first experience with 5 Hour Energy, this was a great defining moment in my driving history. I took the graveyard shift while my dad slept. Around our 15th hour of driving, I re-took the wheel. It was around 1am and I had just taken the aformentioned 5 Hour Energy, which surprisingly really kept me awake, focused, and not jittery. I was listening to a CD by Cartel which was on my iPod but I hadn't really dug into it yet. This experience still comes up in my mind when I listen to that CD, and it has become one of my favorite CDs that I own. This experience exemplifies the significance of music and travel in my life as passions.

Hometown Image: Downtown Des Moines

I took this picture while driving in downtown Des Moines on the way to meet my sister for lunch. It was taken in the Spring of 2008. I actually grew up about ten miles north of where I took this picture, in a suburb of Des Moines. I have always loved the downtown area. I love the similarity it has to well known cities such as New York or Chicago, but at the same time maintains its own style. Also, it doesn't cover the same extent of area those other cities do, which is great in the fact that it is easily accessible. Also, it is very safe, having one of the lowest crime rates of any urban area in the country. Des Moines provides the best of large and small cities in one place that is easy to visit.