In a curious case of bad timing, we moved my second born out of Chapel Hill on Saturday morning in the middle of a hurricane.

Our free-to-family moving business has now operated under the harshest weather conditions: Sweltering 100 degrees for a move from Winston-Salem to Raleigh, eight inches of snow in a move in Virginia, tornado season in Oklahoma, and now the outfall of a hurricane. We have maybe a dozen moves to our credit — none when it was 50 degrees and sunny.

The rain was light — a nuisance for movers — when we left Advance as dawn broke, but it grew steadily heavier as we drove east and ever closer to Hurricane Matthew spinning on the North Carolina coast. We vowed to persevere to persevere, the phrase I have employed for decades to spur on my sons when they wanted to stop.

We had no choice. The U-Haul was rented. Robert starts a new job in Asheville this week. The utilities were being cut at his college apartment.

Things didn’t get … too wet.

Elizabeth distributed plastic ponchos to the moving crew, and we tried to shield the furniture as best we could.

The hand-me-down sofa got the worst of the wetness.

The process took twice as long as I had expected, but we were west-bound by noon as the rain became a torrent. Never had I driven on I-40 at 50 mph and had almost no other drivers pass me. As before, the rain lessened the further west we drove.

We stopped at home for lunch and to change out of soaked clothes. The rain tapered off to a sprinkle in Hickory and stopped by the time we left Catawba County. Skies were clear and blue until we reached Asheville when a big black cloud formed over the mountains. More rain? We drove through a few sprinkles, but we moved into the new place in the dry.

• • • • •

Hurricane Matthew didn’t deliver enough rain on Friday night to derail Davie High’s pass-oriented football team in Clemmons.

West Forsyth High coach Adrian Snow, noted for playing in the rain to bog down an opponent, hoped the soggy conditions would work to his advantage. Neither team could move the ball on the ground, but Davie still had its aerial attack despite the rain.

After the game, Coach Snow gave the ultimate compliment to Davie’s senior quarterback Chris Reynolds.

“I’m going to go watch graduation at Davie County and make sure he gets across the stage,” he said.

• • • • •

Some of my smug Hillary friends started calling over the weekend to rub it in.

“What do you think of your boy now?”

I think the GOP nominee is in trouble. The Trump train fell off the rails last week with less than a month to go before the November election — hardly enough time to recover or for memories to forget Trump’s “locker room” comments about his churlish way with women. There may be even more similar tapes waiting to be released.

The funniest comments came from a group of professional athletes who claimed to be offended because they never talk that way in their locker rooms.

The mud keeps getting deeper and deeper. We’ve been treated to a parade of President Clinton’s alleged sexual assault victims, hacked emails, deleted emails, claims of Russian intervention, claims of Chinese intervention, voter fraud, Skittles and red baseball caps.

One commentator ominously noted that by mid-November, the 2020 presidential race will underway. The circus will go on.

– Dwight Sparks