When I wake up about 8am, Ike is still pounding the Houston area.
After much deliberation and against the advice of some friends I decide I'll leave about 1pm. There is a curfew announced for home at 6pm. In normal traffic the drive would be 3 hours. Nothing is normal.
I get cash, will be handy in the no-power zone of home. And for the same reason I do two loads of laundry at the hotel. After two weeks out, I'm carrying nothing but dirty clothes and no idea when we'll have power to wash them once I leave. If I had been thinking a bit more clearly there's other stuff I should have gotten.
The drive home is totally normal. Traffic going in to Houston is light. I pass a number of disaster relief convoys. National Guard, HEB grocery store, ServiceMaster cleaning service. Not even a drop of rain until I get within maybe 30 miles of Houston. Ike has moved on.
The inbound I-10 close to Houston is supposed to be under water according to the local newstalk radio. I press on figuring I'll see cars coming the wrong way at some point. But I get all the way to the exit for my daughter's place.
Lots of trees down in various places. Power is spotty. One intersection will be normal, next one the light will be dark and people trying to figure out how to do a 4-way stop.
At my daughter's I find Alice, the cat, and the greyhounds. Also Aryn's mother-in-law stayed with them with her two cats and a dog. So 4 people, 4 cats, 3 dogs.
We convoy home, I drop the mother-in-law and her part of the menagerie. Alice finds about a mile of power lines down in the road between the freeway and our house. Hope those don't bring juice to our house.
We find the neighborhood looks ... just like a hurricane struck it. Lots of fences down. Power out. Some damage to homes here and there but nothing very bad. Our house has a few shingles off and some water blew in around some of the front windows. The house has a lot of MDF trim instead of real wood. Water causes it to swell up so it's clear which window sills got water.
We have water service but it's not declared safe to drink without boiling. Landline non-digital, old no-power-required phones work. Cell service sucks. Closest neighbor has a generator running. His family evacuated to her mother's place in Mississippi. He gives us an extension cord's worth of electricity to run the fridge.
Sleep with windows open in the heat and humidity.
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