This is actually an old picture from a different trip to the beach, but it will have to do since I didn’t take any pictures this time. 3 days, over 1500 miles and 3 states. The CREATE South conference went very well and then my 14 year old son Flip and I went to Wilmington to celebrate his birthday. It was a blast. We pigged out on seafood and spent way too much time on the beach.

Finally, we left for home and just outside of Raleigh, the cloudy sky turned pitch black suddenly. Then the temperature dropped and I was seeing thunder and lightning everywhere. I searched through the radio stations for a weather report, but found none. About half the cars on the road were pulling over and about half were driving on. I wasn’t sure what to do- we had left about 3 and a half hours later than I had planned and pulling over would really throw our time off. But if it was tornadic, I had no choice but to stop and take cover.

What to do? I asked Twitter. I had Flip post a message from my phone asking any of my Twitter friends to call me and left my phone number. I was apprehensive to do this because my Twitter updates are not protected and any fool could have called me.

Fortunately, my Twitter pal John Carney was my knight in shining armor. He helped me figure out where I was and he got the weather report for me and found that there was no tornadic activity in the area. I continued on down the road and made it safely home. Heather and CarolinaDreamz also gave me a call and I had nice conversations with them as well!

Twitter’s not just a fun toy, I’ve found. It’s helpful in many different ways. Are you Twittering? Follow me right here. And I’ve deleted that tweet with my phone number, so no, you won’t be able to stalk me. I follow just about everyone that follows me other than obvious spammers. I’ve had to block a couple of people who were made of crazy and lose (the exact opposite of awesome and win), but altogether I find Twitter users to be fabulous people!