Hurricane Ike

Well Houston is still in the recovery process from the disaster that hit our shores this past weekend but all told, we made it through with very little inconvenience. Others were not so lucky. I know a guy from work who had chest deep water in his house; another, my boss in fact, who lost his house in Kemah and everything in it. We drove down Nasa Rd 1 and saw several boats crashed on streets. We saw businesses along the marina floating under water. Debris is everywhere and there is no gas to be found. I have really spotty phone service and have been most successful with text messages to and from people. But several people have no power still and they're saying it could be weeks. As you know I work on Galveston Island and cannot return to work for an indefinite period of time. I am hoping that that really means not till Monday but we'll see. The kids are out of school for the remainder of this week also. But that's good because we'll need their help in cleaning up the yards of both the rent house and Chris's house. Both houses survived the storm with no damage. Chris lost several large branches on his big oaks in the front of the house and we have a lot of limb debris to clean up. However, on the bright side we won't need to buy firewood for a couple of years. We don't do a lot of fires... Neither of the houses took on water so there is no flood damage. The rent house lost two sections of fence, the top of one of the palm trees in the back and a rather large branch from one of the trees out back. Our neighbor lent us a limb trimmer that helped us to strip it down to a trunk but the trunk will need to be hacked into pieces with a chain saw and we don't know anyone with a chain saw yet. We're gonna share the cost of a new fence with the other neighbor but for now cannot let the dogs outside into the back yard without supervision. Also, we've added a third dog to our number, Remi, Chris's old dog.

Chris, Chelsea, and I evacuated to Chris's parents' house in Spring, far north of Houston. The trip there was a breeze! I couldn't believe it because I sat in Rita-Evacuation traffic for about 8 hours and expected this trip to be just as bad. In fact, on Thursday morning, first thing I did was get my gas tank filled and have an oil change, which was due anyway, but I assumed I would be sitting in traffic all the way north. Not so. We got there in about 45 minutes. No traffic on the roads. The news was super-sensationalizing the traffic situation. Peter & Frances have 3 extra bedrooms - one for Chelsea, one for Colin, and one for Chris and I with a bathroom attached - all upstairs. We were actually quite comfortable. We brought all our food and had also gone grocery shopping before going there so we ate well the whole time. Thursday night Chris grilled turkey burgers on the Foreman Grill because we still had power. Delicious! Friday we got dunkin donuts for breakfast and Frances and I made 3 quiches - ham & cheese, bacon and spinach -for breakfasts. We never ran out of quiche. That day I made a shrimp risotto and then the storm blew in. We were watching it on the news more than anything else.

Here's me in front of a downed tree on Peter & Frances' street.

It was raining and windy when I went to bed and still raining and still windy when I woke up on Saturday morning but for the most part, I slept right through it. I feel like I missed something. Chris and I took a walk Saturday morning in the rain and took pictures of the destruction. I've never seen so many downed trees. Huge trees just fallen over. We didn't have power, of course.



Here's a picture of Chris on Ronny's old street standing in front of another downed tree.


Saturday was really surreal and I've lost most of the day but we mostly just sat there in shock from so much destruction and loss of the ability to plug in. It's the little things you don't think of when you lose power - like you can still grill things outdoors but if you trim veggies into the sink the disposal won't work. We had a candle light dinner that night of grilled chicken, roasted corn on the cob and roasted new potatoes. Delicious! Oh and we invented the "barbeque" directions for the package of pilsbury iced cinnamon rolls. Dessert turned out nicely too. We played cards by candle light. Chris and I took a walk through his neighborhood in the eerie darkness of no power for miles. It was actually a perfect view of the full moon and quite lovely.

Sunday Chris and I attempted to venture out into the world to see our house and obtain ice and Peter and Frances went to church. The more successful trip was Peter's & Frances'. Chris and I found police blockades on the freeway and floods in the road where we could have taken another way. So rather than using up our precious gasoline reserve we decided to focus on getting ice but quickly learned that everyone else in the city was also on that mission and there was none to be had. The only businesses we saw open were a McDonalds with a line of cars wrapped around the block; a Home Depot; and a gas station with another huge line. However, Peter & Frances found their church to have power so they charged up their cell phones, and found a friend who had power and lent them their generator as well as 20 gallons of gas to run the generator! So we really only went about 30 hours or so without power. That day we ran the refridgerator, fans, lights and appliances as needed. It was also so beautiful and cool as the front had come in. Chris and I finished a jigsaw puzzle that Chelsea and Frances had started. We had a great day and ate grilled turkey burgers that night. Monday Chris and I again drove out south and that time made it all the way home. We had power at the rent house! Yay!!! In fact, our little subdivision is the only section of this area that happens to have power and in fact, never lost power. Some of our neighbors stayed here to ride out the storm and let us know that the worst thing was tree damage. We were very lucky!

We drove back to Peter & Frances's place and prepared one last meal - turkey chili made on a camp stove on the front porch. Then we packed up our stuff and left. They are doing fine with the generator but still have no power. We slept in our own beds last night and tonight it's so cool out that we haven't been running the AC anyway. Today we took a trip to the grocery store to replenish our supplies and it was weird. There was nothing refridgerated at all. The shelves were bare - no milk, cheese, eggs, butter, meat, salads, frozen foods, etc. They had certain isles blocked off. It will be another 48 hours before they will be able to sell perishables. Thus, we bought a basket-full of things we could use for the next few days for 4 people in the hopes that we'll be able to buy milk and meat, etc. in a few days. We're doing fine though. We can cook vegetarian meals no problem! Also, Peter & Frances bought us a gallon of milk on the north side before we left so we have most of that and we had 2 tubes of turkey meat left over, one of which we ate tonight. We also have plenty of beer and there's no working so we've been partaking.

Not all the damage was caused by Hurricane Ike, as you can see from this picture The Kool-Aid Man visited the apartment complex next to the one I used to live in.

Oh Yeah!

In other circumstances it would be so awesome to have this much time off of work. But I like to plan these things. We can't really go anywhere because there's not much gas and we need to reserve what we have for making it to grocery stores or what-have-you. We can't go play disc golf or anything like that. We can't go out at night because we're on curfew from 9PM - 6AM.

Here's a picture of a boat crashed up on Nasa Rd 1. We wanted to get pictures of Kemah but the roads are still blocked and those on the east side of Hwy 146 are not allowed to return to their homes yet.

We do have two yards to clear of brush and we got one mostly done today. Tomorrow we'll go to Chris's house and clear that away. That one will be a lot more work. I already have a blister on my left thumb from raking brush. We also have a huge pile of limbs in front of the house. Tomorrow they're meant to resume trash pick up but they won't take the hurricane debris. I have to say again how lucky we are to be here with power, running water, food supplies, a working fridge, plenty of ice, the internet etc. We've been looking at pictures of the damage especially on Crystal Beach and are shocked and awed at how awful it is. Kahlich did some research and found out that every beach house we've ever stayed in as a group (the April Beach house group) is GONE. We may not even do a beach house next year because there will hardly be any beach houses to be had on Bolivar any more.

So that's it for my update, how the hurricane affected me, the evacuation, the aftermath. Let's hope for a speedy recovery for the rest of the affected.
LOVE