Hurricanes, schmurricanes ...

OK people. I'm sorry if you or your loved ones have been hit by recent or not so recent hurricanes in the continental United States.

But you know what? You're giant pussies. You have no idea what it truly feels like to get slammed into by the full force of hurricane.

Where I live, hurricanes are typhoons. Category 5 hurricane = supertyphoon. I've been through a lot of them. The whole community of Guam has. One year, we had like 8 typhoons and supertyphoons either hit us directly or come close enough that we felt the power and destruction of its winds.

See, when America gets hit by a hurricane, it doesn't feel the full brunt for too long. For a brief period, there might be full sustained power. But when a hurricane or typhoon hits a large land mass, it weakens, and quickly. Yes, there is still some strong wind and storm surge.

But how's this: Guam once got hit by a typhoon with sustained winds of 150 mphs (gusts to 175 and up) for 12 hours straight. Then the eye passed over the island. Then we got the backside of the storm, winds going in the opposite direction, for another 12 hours.

See? The U.S. mainland never gets the backside of storms; just the front. And anyone who has been through both can tell you the backside is the more deadly/dangerous/damaging. Why? Because everything is bent in one direction from the front side, weakened and initially damaged. The back side, with opposite winds, snaps everything back, often breaking it and completing destruction.

Ever seen a steel-reinforced, concrete power pole snapped in half? That's happened here multiple times. I've seen the solid steel skeletons of warehouses warped like a funny-house mirror distorts images. I've seen cars flipped over, moved blocks, torn apart by storm surge.

We have this one beach where the parking lot is located about 150 yards from the water, and is about 30 feet higher than sea level. It had three small concrete (steel-reinforced) picnic pavilions with one concrete picnic table in the middle of each, plus a bigger paviliion that could fit a lot more people, with a ceiling of about 20 feet. After one storm, the surge of the ocean pushed sand and rocks from the beach to about 5 feet below the parking lot level. Two of the three small pavilions were just gone. One bent and broken. The main pavilion was FILLED with rocks and sand. There was about a foot or two of space between all of that and the ceiling.

We're typhoon survival experts here. We've gone months without running water and/or power at different times in our lives. We've been through the absolute worst that Mother Nature can dish out.

So excuse me, and us in general, if we don't feel sorry for any of you mainlanders who have dealt with the "fury of nature." In fact, cry me, and us, a river.