September 2008

When I last signed off we werekeeping tabs of the weather patterns in our hurricane season. Tropical Storm Ike was brewing in the Atlantic - likely hurricane potential headed our way. Simon's dad Brian, was keeping a keen eye on Ike's progression and I think would have liked to hang around to see what happened. Unfortunately their five week visit had quickly come to an end.

Sunday 7th Sept: Simon made it home in time to go to a Father's Day and farewell dinner we had planned for his folks but as we loaded into the car it wouldn't start D'oh! #2 we called the Nissan roadside assistance (pronounced Neesahn over here) who replaced a flat battery but when it still wouldnt work said it needed towing. We were spun a story about how this contractor's workshop honours the nissan warranty and was half an hour closer, so the car was towed ($80). Simon got home at about 9.30pm from the mechanics with a rental car and we had leftovers for Maureen and Brian's farewell dinner (sorry guys)




Monday 8th Sept: Sad goodbyes to Nanny and Poppy plus Simon off to Austin overnight.


Wednesday 10th Sept (3 days before Ike): Spent endless amount of phonecalls only to discover our car was not covered under warranty unless it was at a Nissan dealership so get it towed again from original mechanics (who had not touched the car in 3 days anyway!!) D'oh! # 3. By all reports Ike had now progressed to Hurricane status and was looking to hit Galveston. You can click on this link to see a map of Texas and the gulf of Mexico. If you zoom inonce you'll see Galveston is on the coast, Houston up north a bit and Spring (where we live) just above Houston. All up we're about 1.5 hrs from Galveston.




http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&client=firefox-a&channel=s&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&q=map+of+texas&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=X&oi=geocode_result&resnum=1&ct=image




So as the drama/paranoia re Hurricane Ike starts to accelerate we jump on the band wagon to go to the shops and get a few more supplies. When we arrive there's a slight hum of conversation in the air, more than usual. If you tune in you can detect the sense of urgency and underlying anxiety in peoples voices. There was no ice, no water, batteries (all of which we had at home some no big deal), no tape or phones which we wanted to secure our windows and the phone because we only have cordless which does not operate when the power's out. We bought more tinned food etc and called it a night.

Thursday 11th Sept (2 days befor Ike): The day before Ike's projected hit schools and businesses were closing early to allow people the opportunity to evacuate. We knew of a number of people evacuating The Woodlands where we live but most, like oursleves, were staying. Places closer to the coast were under mandatory evacuation and Dallas (3 hrs north of us) was the popular destination.

By now we were anxious about getting our car because should we need to evacuate at some point it was kind of essential to the plan. Also petrol (or should I say 'gas') lines were growing by the minute and we wanted to fill up before they ran out. Nissan worked out that the car itself was fine but the key we had cut at the airport (remember D'oh #1 ?) was not synchronised properly and was essentially causing the car to malfunction. Soooo they just had to re-jig the key which took all of 5 minutes. All in all that one spare key ended up costing us about $600 dollars!! We're considering gold plating it and mounting it on the wall. Anyway, we had to drive 35 mins to pick it up (heading south closer to Galveston and the pending storm front) which was ok but the coming back was in evacuation traffic. Because of stories we'd heard from Hurr. Katrina we were prepared for the trip to take hours but it ended up being quite reasonable, apparently evacuation procedures have been improved as a result of katrina.

The rest of the day we spent preparing the house for Ike. All toys, furniture, debris removed from outside - potential missiles. Bedding moved away from windows, baths filled with water for flushing the toilet, washing up to date for clean clothes, prepared a 'bunker' room if hurricane really bad or tornados develop (we dont have a real bunker so chose my walk in robe which fit 2 3/4 size lilos), torches in every room etc.

Friday 12th Sept (1 day before Ike): Ike due at midnight and headed straight for Galveston. There really was nothing more to do so our friends, Jennifer and Owen, had us around place for a swim along with the Mullins family. No point twiddling our thumbs waiting for the worst.A few houses around us went all out with protecting their house (we later find out that its probably worth the time and money considering the cost of insurance post a hurricane)

There's something to be said for the old saying "the calm before the storm". Whilst we haven't captured it brilliantly the evening sky at sunset was amazing. Beautiful shades of yellow, pink and mauve. What you can't see in the picture is the clouds on the move, its like they were on their own steady evacuation stream. It was lovely and eery in a weird kind of 'we're not sure what's about to happen' way.

The great thing was that Simon was not away travelling. We were doing this together and when you're not alone tackling life's challenges just doesn't seem as bad.

We brought the kids into bed with us so they didn't get frightened when Ike hit. A noble thought, yes, but we didn't get an ounce of sleep!

Saturday 13th Sept: D'oh # 4

HURRICANE IKE HITS THE WOODLANDS IN EARLY HOURS.

Essentially we had howling winds and heavy rains all night. Where we live is littered with millions of tall pine trees that are 95% tree trunk and 5% folliage right at the top. The ones in our back yard were just bending like bananas, amazing really. We changed rooms at some stage in the night to the other side of the house to escape the brunt of the winds - as the eye of the hurricane passes you the direction of the wind changes .

In the morning the winds had died down but the rain was constant.

Hard to tell but the backyard is flooded with water

We had no power, were extremely tired but our initial thoughts were "that wasn't so bad". From what we could see we had no damage just a small tree had done a banana split in the front yard. In the arvo when the rain stopped people started trickling outside to assess the damage and swap stories. The kids went and played in the puddlesThe further we ventured the more the realisation hit regarding the severity of the storm. The winds had been strong enough to knock over huge trees and in a lot of cases snap them in half or twist them around and bend them like pipe-cleaners. This is our neighbour Nancy's house two doors down.One tree has fallen on her roof the other splintered, bent but still intact.
This is the house of an Aussie couple in our street where the tree was fully uprooted fortunately it just clipped the corner of their roof and the damage, although some thousands of dollars, was considered minimal.
This is one of the local parks near our house
This photo is for Simon's parents, Maureen and Brian, who had a run in with this bank. I thought you'd like to see the tree that fell on your nasty ATM. By the way that's a drive through ATM and teller service on the left. I know I was disgusted too but you know what I'm kinda getting used to it

This is our local supermarket, they had a back up generator but little to no lighting so they were allowing 2 customers in at a time (hence the queue). We decided we'd survive with what we had.

And this is my wonderful husband cooking up some mean spag bol - it was like camping ritzy style. What Ike did do for us which was lovely, was take away the humidity for the first time in 6 months and gave us beautiful days of 20-25 degrees. This set a great stage for all the neighbourhood bonding that took place. Every afternoon we would gather in the streets, the kids would have a ball together and everyone would bring food and meat along for a communal bbq. In fact we all ate rather well for the first 3 days as people cleared their fridges and freezers of the perishable goods. By tues everyone was onto canned goods and instant noodles, all fridges were emptied and bins were full of wasted, rotting food.

Having no power was annoying and seeing the masses of fallen, snapped trees in our area was a bit surreal but compared to the devastation seen in Galveston just an hour an a half away from us, we were in heaven. I've snatched a few images from the web to show some of Ike's damage closer to the coast.

Storm surge as seen from NASA space station (cannot verify authenticity)

Galveston coastline before (top left) and after (main pic)

The army of power trucks sent in to restore power to all

JP Morgan Chase tower, Houston City - shattered windows

Yep compared to that no power and lack of food was nothin.



That said however . . .

We had no fridge, no air con, no cooking facilities, no TV!, no drinking water, petrol and no network coverage except for the odd text that got through . Rumour had it that The Woodlands would be without power for 2 weeks. The experience had been a bit novel and a great opportunity to meet neighbours and make friends but we started to worry because the humidity was predicted to return soon and believe me life in Texas with no air con would be disgusting. With the weather in mind and a food supply which would quickly dwindle we decided, for lack of a better word, to evacuate.

Move over Griswalds here come the Webbs

We left on the Wed arvo after Ike. We packed the car with clothes and kids and our all important stash of cadbury freddos and cherry ripes (thanks Maureen and Brian). Simon had to be in Atlanta for work by Monday, we'd been advised it was about a 12 hour drive so decided to do a very lazy, relaxed road trip through Louisianna, Mississipi, Alabama into Atlanta, Georgia (so many songs and quotes we could go into with those states!)

As petrol was almost non-existant we decided to drive north towards Dallas to see if we could fill up. We had planned to only drive 2-3 hrs the first day and crash somewhere but alas there were no rooms at the inn! D'Oh # 5 Forgot the small detail that most of the evacuees drove north and of course had filled up every hotel room for miles. We drove from town to town and ended up driving another 2 hours into Louisianna and staying at the only place with a room. It was dodgy at best but hey, beggars can't be choosers.

In the morning we stopped at this diner for breakfast and felt like we were in a sitcom, even had a waitress called Flo (kidding).

Getting Liam to have his midday sleep in the hotel and trying to keep Ashley quiet at the same time was somewhat interesting if not challenging but all in all, the time together as a family was great.

Stayed in Jackson Mississipi for 2 nights despite worrying for our safety and holding onto our wallets. Life had been so busy up to this point that we just needed to stop and 'be'.

And the D'ohs keep rollin . . . . . D'Oh #6 Simon goes out to get Mexican take away for us to eat in the hotel. He was out in the carpark waiting when he noticed a tack in one of the tyres. Now dont ask me why, actually don't ask Simon either cos he still cant figure out why he did it but Simon felt compelled to pull the tack out. The tack which was not a tack but an inch long nail was now standing with Simon listening to the air hiss out of the tyre. Thank god Simon knows how to change a tyre because I sure dont. As seems to be the case with us it wasnt that straight forward, the spare was smaller than the rest and would not survive the rest of the trip.

So we squeezed in a quick visit to tyre shop before venturing off to cross the mighty Mississipi.


We made it to Atlanta, Georgia on Sunday only to find out (again) that there were no rooms in the inn. This time Ike was not to blame but a football game between two rival teams Alabama and Georgia. D'Oh #7 We eventually found a place 15 mins out of the city but it did not all together give us a safe sense of security but by this stage that was nothing new.


We had a day together before Simon's work started and went to America's not quite so pretty equivalent to Uluru, Stone Mountain. It is the largest exposed granite dome in Nth America standing 825 feet tall and covering 583 acres.

A carved memorial covering an area of 3 acres shows 3 confederate heroes of the civil war: President Jefferson Davis, General Robert E Lee and Lt General Thomas 'Stonewall' Jackson.

views of atlanta

Trees growing from rock crevices

The rest of the week was spent at parks, the hotel pool and the Botanical Gardens (you have to pay to enter) where they have a Children's garden with splash pads and activities.

So September 2008 was a month we won't forget full of natural disasters and D'Ohs which reminds me, our final D'Oh #8 occured in Atlanta where there was a fuel shortage due to Ike interrupting supply lines from the Gulf. I decided to fill up on a whim when I spotted a petrol station open - we needed petrol to do our 14 hour straight drive back to texas. Almost 2 hours later with 2 very bored children i was able to drive away with a quarter of a tank of petrol - woohoo!

Love to y'all. October coming soon . . .

PS ashleys arm healed well (don't ask us how we know this without a follow up xray!) but thank you for well wishes