TheBanyanTree: Ike's Moon 2008/09/12

[Dale M. Parish]

20080912T1940

When I got to work Thursday, there was no one there in my group.  By
0730, the two "Storm Riders" came in-- they are the designees from my
group who are supposed to ride out the storm and then make the first
assessments of what has been damaged and what resources will be needed
first to get the network and computer infrastructure back up.  They
are also supposed to be the last out to orderly shut down the computer
systems.

Cindy was on location with The JASON Project/National Geographic in
Johnson Space Center between Houston and Galveston.  She had called
last night to say that because of the safety concern for the student
Argonauts, they were probably going to cut the mission short and fly
out early.  She was scheduled to be returned home Friday afternoon,
but she advised that the National Geographic film crews were taking
their lead from their JSC team leads, who had advised that JSC was
shutting down at noon, so she was expecting them to fly out of Houston
Hobby and needed me to pick her up there.  About 0830, I headed
towards Houston.  Orange and Jefferson counties were by that time
under a manditory evacuation order.  Cindy and I live in Orange County
and work in Jefferson County.  Double whammy.  I had my badge with the
hologram that is supposed to allow us back into the county as soon as
the storm is over with as a "first responder" but didn't know if it
would make any difference prior to the storm.  Probably not-- everyone
was being encouraged to leave the coast.  

I was nearly to Winnie when Cindy called to say that NG hadn't been
able to get flights out of Hobby and that I needed to pick her up at
IAH, about 60 km north of Hobby.  If I continued on IH 10, I'd be
caught up in all that traffic evacuating from Galveston & Harris
counties trying, so I cut up a Farm To Market road at Winnie towards
old highway 90, the primary route to Houston prior to Interstate 10 being
constructed.  This road also was marked as a hurricane evacuation
route for people in Winnie, and there was a good bit of traffic on it.
When we got to 90, most went on north, but I turned west and was
surprised at how light traffice was considering.  It was heavy for 90,
but not near as much as I'd expected from the evacuations going on.
Until I crossed Lake Houston into Harris County on FM 1960-- took me
30 minutes to creep a couple of miles, and I finally figured out that
the problem was all the long lines trying to get into the gas stations
were blocking the right hand lane- only the left lanes were creeping.
When I got to Lake Houston Parkway, I cut south.  I was in "Snowball,"
Cindy's Escape Hybred, and it has one of those GPS navigation thingies
in it-- makes it easier to find back routes at times like this.
Traffic was moving pretty good and I got on down to Beltway 8 and
turned west again.  Traffic was heavy, but moving, and about the time
that I got to Hwy 59 and turned north towards the airport, Cindy
called to tell me that they were just getting off 59- I'd be right
behind them.  They were going to the Thrifty Car rental turn-in, and
when I got there, there were only two cars between me and them.

I met Cindy's student Argonauts as they were unloading the rental van-
they were all going to Chicago to fly back to their respective homes.
Introductions were brief as they had to hurry to make their flight.
There had been enough snack food purchased at JSC's cafeteria to feed
all the JASON Argonauts, the film crew, and all the associated
personnel in the party.  It got dumped on Cindy and I-- they took what
they could carry-on and left us with the rest, which we loaded into
SnowBall with Cindy's luggage, said "Goodbye," and headed out of the
airport.

After a quick refresh stop, Cindy and I headed east on FM1960, and
traffic was moving pretty good until we got to Dayton, where 146, the
main evacuation route from Baytown went under the Southern Pacific
tracks and co-joined Hwy90 for a block.  The Dayton PD had the
southbound lane blocked, and we sat for about 45 minutes before being
allowed to turn north-- the opposite way we needed to go.  The GPS
thingie came in handy-- we took back streets across Dayton, crossed
the tracks at grade and threaded our way across to a north-south
street that intersected 90 at a stop light, but encountered a police
officer in the middle of the intersection directing traffic.  We
waited only a minute until he directed us across to turn back east.
Same thing at Liberty-- on the east side, Hwy90 was barracaded by the
police and we had to turn towards Hull-Disaetta, and the GPS thingie
didn't know any of those backroads, so we just headed due east and
emerged a few miles east onto 90 and had no more problems all the way
home.

I headed down to the shop while Cindy took a nap and loaded a drum of
gas into the pickup and the tractor and generator onto the loboy
trailer and headed back.  The generator was put into the pumphouse and
the fuel on the north side of the pumphouse.  We are still expecting
the storm to landfall west of here, which means that our strongest
winds should be from the south.  

Friday morning, I went back to the shop to get some lumber to board up
the French doors on the south side of the house, and spent the day
moving blowable things to nooks and crannies on the north side of anything
substancial.  The old dead tree just south of the house I cut down and
pushed with the tractor into a pile to burn later.  

I expect that we'll loose power soon tonight.  Here in the woods, with
our power overhead, it doesn't tak much.  What bothers me is that
still, a week after Gustav made landfall, Baton Rouge is still without
power in many places, and all the electric line resources in this part
of the country is distributed into Louisiana.  With widespread outages
expcected in Texas, there will be little extra resources to bring back
in the competition for power restoration.  It's 1900 here now, and our
power's just gone off for the first time-- briefly, then blinked twice
again.  When it goes for good tonight, we'll be in the dark until
tomorrow after the storm has passed.  I won't get the generator out
until then.  Which means that we'll need to keep refrigerators and
freezers closed and depend on bottled water, etc. 

Well, this is being typed in the dark... the alarm clock upstairs and
the UPS are both beeping that they've lost power.  It's still
daylight, but it's going to be a long night.  

Hugs,
Dale
--
Dale M. Parish
628 Parish Rd
Orange TX 77632
(409) 745-3899