carried off by a twooster

In other news, the Macchina di Santa Rosa, the big statue thing that 100 men will carry around the city in two weeks (stay tuned), and the scaffolding surrounding it was blown over today when a freak storm passed through town. I am not sure if there was a tornado or anything like one, but at around 2pm today the wind suddenly picked up to what must have been 60 or 70 miles an hour. We had to shut all of the windows as soon as we could so that they wouldn't get blown off the hinges. It took about 10 minutes to pass, and when it did, we walked down the street to stop by the school. When we got to the end of the street we looked towards the Porta Romana where the Macchina resides until the procession happens on the 3rd of September, and we saw the whole huge thing (about 100 feet high) blown over and leaning against the city wall. It was still raining out, and only a handful of people had seen this. Men were running to and fro, and I can only assume they were assembling the people who could do something about this. It was very exciting, and we felt cool that we could pass on the news to the people at school who knew nothing about it. Since then (now five hours later) they have brought a crane in and are starting to right the giant thing. A massive crowd of people has gathered to watch, and for all we can tell this is the craziest thing to happen since "Wargames" got snubbed at the Academy Awards. Here's a pic: