Tomorrow, June 1 marks the official start of Hurricane Season. Yippee.

After donating last year’s canned goods in a recent food drive, I stocked back up for this season. Still need to get water… turns out there was a gallon from 2 years ago in the back of the pantry. It sprung a leak. That’s why the “use by date” is 2 years from when it’s bottled: isn’t not that the water goes “bad” but the plastic just can’t hang anymore.

Today’s paper had a special hurricane preparedness section with checklists, contraflow maps, lists of this year’s storm names, etc. I think even more helpful was Saturday’s column where readers sent in their thoughts. Another article that really interested me was “Airport a vital escape route from storms.” What fascinated me was this:

During Hurricane Gustav, federal officials originally wanted to stop flights about 10 a.m. on the day before the storm made landfall, but airport officials were able to get a few more hours of flying time, Wilcut said. "That allowed us to get a lot more people out of the city," she said.

The last flight out was Aug. 31 at 6 p.m., according to news reports. The storm made landfall the next morning about 10:30 at Cocodrie.

For Gustav, the airport opened again to commercial flights on the afternoon of Sept. 3. It took about two weeks to reopen to commercial flights after Katrina, Wilcut said.

As Gustav made its way towards Louisiana, I was road tripping from Georgia to New Mexico. Aug 30 Aug 31

I’m glad the airport didn’t close at 10 am August 31, because I would have been stuck in Dallas. I was in a serious race against time to make it back to New Orleans to help Greg evacuate. My friend in Albuquerque said I was welcome to stay as long as I needed to, but I would have lost my mind. I couldn’t even sleep the night of the 30th, I was so amped up with a singular thought “I must get home.” Not only would there have been a period of time during the height of the storm when I would have no idea if Greg was OK, but who knew how many days it would have been before the airports reopened. As you can see, after Gustav it was a few days. After Katrina, two weeks. One of the most important lessons I've learned about hurricanes and storms is no two or exactly alike.

G and went to our office since the power is back on. We needed to lug our computers and files back and set up to get back to work Monday. It’s very quite over here, strangely quiet. I don’t know what to do with myself this weekend since nothing is going on and I’ve had the last few days to unpack, clean the house, etc. I never did go on the bike ride yesterday. I may ride with a friend tomorrow. Thankfully there's football to watch as a distraction.

G called his folks and they said they were told they should have power by 6pm tonight. That’s impressive. G’s brother who lives in Baton Rouge still does not have power. I need to refill my prescription, which means a trek to the Target on the Westbank. Hopefully I’ll find an open gas station. One good thing about only going to the in-laws to evacuate is I still have half a tank of gas.

I’m trying not to get excited about Ike yet. It is too far away to call accurately. I’m not paying any attention to what comes out of C. Ray’s mouth ever again. I’m only listening to Bob Breck and watching Weather Underground. I really don’t look forward to evacuating again or trying to get Hana into her cat carrier. She drew blood from both me and G when we were putting her in to bring her home. I wonder if there’s a small dart gun we could pop a tranquilizer into her, like they do on the wild life shows. I tried luring her in with shrimp but she’s too smart. The shrimp did get her out of her hiding spot. Speaking of shrimp, Kyoto, our favorite sushi restaurant reopened last night and it was packed. No Who Dat ?! rolls though – no oysters. Oh the indignity!

Slowly the city gets repopulated. When we drove in Wednesday evening, it was quiet, hardly any traffic. Yesterday, we had breakfast at Slim Goodies (reduced menu and cash only). We walked over to the just opened Breaux Mart to pick up a few things. A woman told us the butchers were in their way in and they would have meat in a few hours. The only other thing they didn’t have was bread, but she said she was working on that as well. The rest of the day was spent unpacking, cleaning up, upboarding etc. Later that day, we drove by Martins Wine Cellar on Magazine (closed) and Rouses. There was a line to get into Rouses and they had little produce and no meat, but everything else. We took Magazine from Napoleon down to Washington. Almost every restaurant was open! Walgreens was open as was the Bulldog, Balcony Bar and Rendezvous. After unloading our groceries, G texted the Mad Irish Man “Rendezvous is open.” He replied “I’m on my way.” We decided to be social and headed over. It was good to see familiar faces, sit in the AC and drink a cold pint. We walked over to Reginelli’s for dinner. It felt like Mardi Gras! The street was clogged with traffic and people were walking all over the place. The restaurants were packed. This just 24 hours after we got back into a silent city. I think I’m going to hop on my bike and explore and see if the power is back on at my office.

Plug: my friend's bar in Mid-City is open with cold beer, food, AC and TV: Mid-City Yacht Club, 440 South St. Patrick Street.

Saw this bumper sticker on a car in the Rouse's parking lot: "If you have been reading this for the past 14 hours, you must be evacuating."

It was so good to sleep in my own bed again. I’ve been on the move for the last 12 days having one adventure after another. Where to begin? I guess I will work my way backwards.

We arrived home yesterday around 5:00pm. We drove back home the way we came, on Hwy 61/Airline Hwy. It was smooth sailing except for traffic lights that were out; they became 4-way stops, which slowed things down. When we arrived home about 3 hours later (usually a 1.5 hr drive) G talked to one neighbor who was working in his yard and I talked to another over his fence. We unloaded the car and then looked around. A few sheets of corrugated metal got pulled off the shed roof but thankfully they didn’t go flying. A tree next to our house is now leaning towards the house. It didn’t fall on it and thankfully it didn’t take out the phone line. Fence neighbor said he didn’t notice any missing roof shingles on our house. I replied “there better not be, that’s a brand new roof.” The cats are elated to be back home. We have full power, water, phone and Internet. Today I will check out the grocery stores. We cleaned out the fridge before leaving so we need some perishables. It is very quiet. No traffic on the streets, no noise from the port. Just the occasional helicopter fly-over and a NOPD or a National Guard patrol drive-by.

It was miserable at Linwood. No power, no phone. The temperature was rising and the humidity was suffocating. The love bugs were swarming. Before we left, G helped his father put the window unit in so they could have AC. The cell signal was weak and many times in the middle of sending a text message I would lose the signal and have to try again later. It was a throw back to years past. My mother-in-law and I would sit on the back gallery fanning ourselves, trying to move as little as possible. Extension cords ran all over the place, plugging the TV and other things into the generator. You had to be careful not to trip over them.


Tuesday, the day after, would normally be clean up day but it was raining. Also, the debris was pretty big – whole trees were down, 7 total! It’s a miracle that none fell on the house. We did all go out to clear the mile-long gravel lane that leads to the street. No major trees fell, just large limbs, something we could handle.

Two large oaks that went over

G next to roots for scale

So sad.

We watched the local news and they did a good job covering the whole state, not just the Baton Rouge area. The press conferences by Gov. Bobby Jindal were a test of patience. He said so much and talked so fast you would zone out only to snap to when you heard something that was important to you. WWL 870 am was also a good source of information. Reading some of my fellow bloggers, there were many complaints about CNN.

Quick post - we are home and have power, phone and water. Not sure about internet. We are glad to be back! More details to come.