Old Guys Endure Gustav

Having grown up in Iowa, I was unaccustomed to hurricanes when we moved to Central Louisiana. Since our arrival five years ago, we've experienced Ivan, Katrina, Rita, Humberto and now Gustav. There's a wide range of affects from these storms, from mere wind, to wind and rain, to wind, rain and flooding, to losing power and/or water, and merely hosting evacuees - in the case of Ivan.

Here's my mini-diary of our visit from Gustav.

Wednesday, 8/27 or Thursday, 8/29, our principal reminded us to take our emergency contact lists with us over the Labor Day holiday. We all knew that Gustav was coming but we did not know where.

Thursday, 8/29: People started stockpiling water and supplies. I filled one vehicle with gas and had to wait for 15 minutes to get to the pumps. The scene was nearing panic buying.

Friday, 8/30: we drove to Dallas to spend a long-planned weekend with a family member who had flown from North Carolina. We had a good time but we also kept an eye on the weather reports and friends at home warned us of Gustav's forecast arrival. Gustav was supposed to make landfall in Louisiana on Monday morning and arrive with strong winds in Central Louisiana Monday evening.

Saturday, 8/31: I met a guy from Lake Charles, LA. He had already evacuated and warned me to stay put in Dallas. My sister in Iowa also suggested that we stay in Dallas. We really wanted to be in our home if something bad was going to happen. And we knew there would be no storm surge in Central Louisiana. It's more than 150 miles from the coast.

Sunday, 9/1: In order to be better prepared for Gustav, I went to Wal-Mart and did my own panic buying: shelf-stable milk, Pop-Tarts, cans of beans, tomatoes and fruit, a can of Span, more batteries and two cases of water.

Monday, 9/2, 8:30 a.m.: We left Dallas. From Dallas to Longview, TX the traffic was light. Starting in Longview we noticed that all the hotel parking lots were absolutely full. There was less and less traffic going east. We came across a convoy of vehicles headed toward Louisiana - mainly utility trucks and vehicles towing big generators.

Monday, 9/2, 10:30 a.m.: The wind picked up considerably after we crossed into Louisiana. When we got to Shreveport, LA, 100 miles NW of Alexandria, we saw very few vehicles going SE.

Monday, 9/2, 12:30 p.m.: The rain started falling by the time we were 10 miles NW of Alexandria.

On the way home we stopped several times to fill the gas tank. Our goal was to have 3/4 tank when we arrived home just in case gas became scarce (like after Katrina and Rita).

We had made our plan of attack for our arrival. I dropped my wife and the kids at home where they would take into the house or move to the carport anything that might be moved by the wind, e.g., patio furniture, bikes, garbage cans. They also filled the bathtub with water in case we lost water (this happened after Rita!). My wife washed all of our dirty clothes just in case we lost electricity. She also made a pot of chili. The kids collected our flashlights and put them in a central location.

With the vehicle I drove to the bank to withdraw some cash (no line at the ATM), filed the gas tank (short line), and bought a few more foodstuffs (short lines).

When all our preparations were done, we waited. It rained all afternoon.

Monday, 9/1, 4:47 p.m.: we lost electricity. That evening we ate with some friends down the street. She had cooked a big meal in case the power went out. It was raining harder all evening long.

With no television for information, we relied on the radio. Thanks to Red River Radio, our NPR affiliate, we have two eton crank radios that we can use even if the batteries die. During these storms, the local tv station, KALB, broadcasts on the radio. We were able to hear of the storm's progress.

Monday, 9/1, 7:08 p.m.: KALB is reporting wind gusts in town of 4-60 mph.

Monday, 9/1, 7:11 p.m.: KALB is reporting that Gustav is now a category 1 hurricane and the eye is 44 miles south of Alexandria.

Monday, 9/1, 8:31 p.m.: KALB is reporting the water pumps for the city of Alexandria have lost power and there is a conserve water alert for all residents. We have already filled a bath tub with water for showering and flushing. And I filtered several gallons of water for drinking beofre the storm. That's in addition to the bottled water we bought. Gusts are now up to 70 mph. Thank God for the radio!

Monday, 9/1, 9:30 p.m.: It rained quite hard all night long. Our youngest heard a "thunk" at one point so our 16-year-old and I went out for a look. We found a 4-inch diameter branch on the trellis that is over part of our patio. It had struck the corner of the house and blown to the trellis. We also stood in the street to feel the hard rain on our backs.

Tuesday, 9/2, 6:30 a.m.: When we woke, the rain had just stopped. We walked in the street and draining rain water nearly covered the width of the street. We started picking up the fallen branches from the yard. We could hard the loud whine of generators all over the neighborhood. When we took a walk to survey the situation, it appeared that in our neighborhood, 1 in 20 houses had generators. We saw several trees blown over and branches all over every yard. Red River Radio's relay station must be down because I can't get NPR on the radio. KALB reports that the fire department had to respond to a call of a fire during the middle of the storm last night. They found a fire that was started by a candle on a bed.

Tuesday, 9/2, 8:00 a.m.: Our house has a gas stove top so I was able to prepare coffee (as I did after Rita). A neighbor and his boys came over. He enjoyed the coffee and the boys enjoyed being out of their house.

Tuesday, 9/2, 10:00 a.m.: We start listening to the radio after we clean up the yard. Callers to the radio station are asking about where to find ice. People appear to sell generators. Warnings go out that some of these generators don't work. Our land line telephone stops working. It appears that our mobile phones are working. Our 16-year-old is frantically sending and receiving text messages to friends in South Louisiana. We hear that Baton Rouge does not have power and trees are down everywhere.

Tuesday, 9/2, 10:50 a.m.: The radio or KALB reports that the eye of the storm did not turn west as predicted. Instead it passed only 10 miles south of Alexandria. 85% of the homes in Alexandria have no power. Light rain begins and we have moderate wind. Still no landline phone service.

Tuesday, 9/2, 2:00 p.m.: Landline phone service is restored. My wife tries to get some work done using her laptop. Now the tv station is off the air. The radio station stopped broadcasting as well. It is rainign on and off. The wind intensity has decreased.

Tuesday, 9/2, 6:05 p.m.: It's raining again. Still no power. Warmed up chili for supper. Thank God for natural gas and underground pipelines! When it started raining again, we put on our bathing suits and took showers in the rain. Cold, yes. Refreshing, oh yeah!

This evening we play cards and another table game. It's warm, humid and we're getting grumpy.

Tuesday, 9/2, 9:30 p.m.: Our neighbor brought us a bag of ice. We rush to take our still cool milk from our refrigerator and get it into the cooler with ice. We've avoided opening the refrigerator since loosing power.

Wednesday, 9/3, 6:30 a.m.: The rain just stopped. It rained very hard all night long. The cat went crazy wanting to go out then insisting on coming back i the house. I heard something moving around in the carport but could not find it in the rain. I met a neighbor in the middle of the street. Water was running over the tops of our feet. It filled the street completely. Still no power. Time to make coffee.

Wednesday, 9/3, 7:30 a.m.: KALB is back to broadcasting via the radio. It is reporting that 5 inches of rain fell in the last 2 1/2 hours bringing our total to 15 inches. Now we have tornado warnings all over Central Louisiana. Schools will be closed until Monday.

Wednesday, 9/3, 9:03 a.m.: There is flooding all over. One end of our street is still covered with about 4 inches of water. Callers to the local radio station are begging people to stop driving so fast in streets filled with water. It is causing waves of water into homes. KALB is reporting water in their studios. Roads and streets are closed.

Wednesday, 9/3,11:30 a.m.: The mayor of Alexandria has just ordered all non-essential businesses to close no later than noon. Flooding is bad. Authorities are using boats to evacuate people.

Wednesday, 9/3, 11:45 a.m.: The school still does not have power. The deputy parked their is tired. He has worked 5 consecutive night shifts. His wife and daughters are 60 miles NW of Alexandria in Natchitoches where they have had power and water the entire week.

Wednesday, 9/3, 12:30 p.m.: Our friends with a generator (air conditioning!!!) invited us to their home. We're outta' here. Their generator is run off of natural gas. Our neighbor told us it takes approximately $60 of gasoline to run a gasoline-powered generator all day.

Wednesday, 9/3, 4:30 p.m.: The Weather Channel is reporting that Alexandria got 19 inches of rain. Wow! Still no power or Internet or cable. The radio station just reported ice for sale in Pineville. I dropped off my wife and our daughter. Our 16-year-old and I rush the 8 miles to buy two big bags of ice, one for us and one for the neighbor who generously brought one for us on Tuesday.

Wednesday, 9/3, 5:20 p.m.: After 49 hours, power is restored to our house. The cable is still not working but we can watch KALB using a wire antenna. The milk from the cooler is still cold. The beer from the refrigerator is not cool enough to drink.

Wednesday, 9/3, 8:30 p.m.: The cable is back on! We have Internet. Now we can get connected to the outside world, friends and family!

Thursday, 9/4,: It's weird. Thousands of people are still without power, many traffic signals are not working, but our lives are getting back to normal. My wife can work. Our 16-year-old is doing homework. We're riding bikes and cooking and opening the refrigerator. We slept in air conditioned comfort. We felt guilty. Other people are suffering while we do not.

The school's power came on at 4:15. I just happened to drive by and see firetrucks in front. When the power came back on the alarm system went off too. We had to unlock the place to reset all of the alarms. Several of us surveyed the school and found water problems in several ceilings. Another PE teacher found water on the synthetic gym flood and pulled up some of the pieces to dry out the place. The principal was a bit worried about sewer back ups.

People are driving a bit crazy or distracted. More traffic signals are working.

Friday, 9/5,: Thousands outside the city are still without power and many communities want citizens to boil water. Most school will open on Monday. The national Guard and other are distributing military-style MRE's (meals ready to eat) in Pineville. The governor is not happy that it is taking so long to restore power.

And now we are worrying about Hurricane Ike. On the National Weather Service site, it shows Ike headed our way.

Old Guys See Green and Gray

For the past 35 years a bunch of nutty people ride bikes more than 450 miles across the state of Iowa. It probably started out as a testosterone-laden challenge from one reporter to another. Years later there are 10,000 nutty riders.

My wife, high-school-aged son and I are some of those nutty riders.

We have to drive about 800 miles from the Deep South to the Heartland. We see a lot of road and landscape between there and here. But there's something striking about Iowa landscape.

Iowa is NOT flat. It's not mountainous like eastern Tennessee or Western Colorado, but it is not flat. Ride in the Loess Hills in Western Iowa and you'll change your mind. And there are plenty of steep hills in Northeastern Iowa. We rode 50 miles/hour down a hill near Guttenberg a few years ago.

The other striking aspect about Iowa's physical beauty is the green. How many shades of green did God create and how many have humans help create. Just think: how many varieties of corn and soy beans grow each with its own color, then add shades from leaves growing at different levels, add the wind that blows the plants to provide more shades of green. It's absolutely amazing.

Then Old Guys see gray as well. Eastern Iowa suffered, and suffers with the aftermath of flooding. Towns like Cedar Rapids were in the news for loosing hundreds of homes. I saw some areas of Waterloo, Iowa today. These homes have watermarks to show how high the waters swallowed them and pages of paper on the front door to tell the owner/occupants that they are no longer welcome to live there. One sees gray "yards" that show where water and crap left their marks.

My sister and her family filled sandbags. A family friend of hers is going to volunteer in Waverly, Iowa, tomorrow to help with destroyed homes. We ate at a Mexican food place and read about the services available in Bremer County, Iowa. As we drove by a grain elevator (storage structure) that had been flooded. My sister explained that the grain rotted and stunk terribly. My brother says the damage will be more than a trillion dollars. I bought sweet corn from a farmer today and he said he'll have corn until late August because the corn is so late this year. Too much rain means late crops - if any. Another guy told me that 4000 homes will be condemned. On the radio this morning I heard that people who have lost their homes in that community can move into FEMA trailers.

One has to wonder if Iowa Governor Chet Culver will survive this crisis. Remember one southern governor fared well after Hurricane Katrina and one did not.



It's sad to see such beauty alongside such destruction.

Old Guys See Green and Gray.

Old Guys Wonder

This Old Guy and his wife and son drive vehicles. We buy auto insurance hoping that we never have an accident. Other drivers will have accidents and our premiums will help pay for their expenses.

This Old Guy and his wife pay for health insurance. We hope we never get sick. Other people will get sick - sicker than we get and our premiums will help pay for their expenses.

That's how insurance works, right? It's a social contract. Risk is distributed so that no single person or family is crippled by some catastrophic event.

Even Social Security works this way. Present workers pay into the system and present-day retirees get payments. It has worked this way since the 1930's.

Now Senator John McCain says:

Americans have got to understand that we are paying present-day retirees with the taxes paid by young workers in America today. And that's a disgrace. It's an absolute disgrace, and it's got to be fixed.

Disgrace? This Old Guy doesn't understand. Where's the disgrace? Everybody pays in to the system and everybody who survives until retirement age collects. Maybe future workers will have to pay more to maintain the present level of benefits for future retirees, or future retirees will have to accept a lower level of benefit.

In fact, the head of the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office explained

The long-term fiscal condition of the United States has been largely misdiagnosed. Despite all the attention paid to demographic challenges, such as the coming retirement of the baby-boom generation, our country’s financial health will in fact be determined primarily by the growth rate of per capita health care costs.

Health care costs. That's the true problem. Social Security, a disgrace. Nah...

This Old Guy wonders whether McCain understands how Social Security works. And if he doesn't understand how Social Security works, does he understand how insurance works? Does he understand other basic economic ideas? He has stated more than once that economics is not his strong suit.

Old Guys Wonder

Old Guys Thank Friends

Looking under our bed for a waterproof wallet to use during our seven day, 470-something mile bike ride across Iowa, I found a business magazine extolling the virtues of teamwork. I've long considered myself to be a team player. Ask the people I work with and most will tell you that I would come to their aid.

But outside of work, who's on the team? Let me tell you.

There's the girl we call Rent-A-Sister who babysits our daughter when we have a long run (18+ miles) or bicycle ride (30+ miles). Without her help we could not have adequately prepared for the Boston Marathon or for Ragbrai.

There's our friend John who beats me in triathlons and gives me a goal: beat John.

There's our friend Jeff who trained with us for the Boston Marathon. With him waiting for us, it was impossible to take a morning off. And our friend David and his wife Nina who trained with me for the Inaugural Mississippi Blues Marathon in Jackson, MS.

Finally, I want to tell you about my lunch. I'll call it the Elliott Smith Salad. They have a huge and productive garden. And they're generous people. Michael has what he calls the food giveaway program. Today I prepared a salad of cucumbers, tomatoes and green peppers - all from the Elliott Smith garden. I sauteed some leftover steak (not Elliott Smith) and Elliott Smith onions. After placing the salad on my plate, I sprinkled the steak and onions on top. Then I drizzled it with Ranch dressing. Finally I sprinkled finely chopped Elliott Smith hot peppers on top. It was fantastic.

Thanks for lunch.

Old Guys Thank Friends

Old Guys Organize

Back from the beach, now the Old Guy has to prepare for another trip. We will drive to Iowa from Central Louisiana to participate in our fourth Ragbrai. Ragbrai is like Mardi Gras on two weeks.

10,000+ bicycle riders pedal between 60 and 100 miles per day for seven days crossing the state from west to east. The route changes every year. Riders camp every night in designated overnight towns. Some town are "large", e.g., Ames with more than 45,000 residents. Others are quite small, e.g., Northwood, population 2,000. Churches and other entrepreneurs organize and prepare meals to sell each evening. Other entrepreneurs sell cold drinks along the way, or water slides or mud wrestling.

Vehicles carry riders' stuff from overnight town to overnight town so riders are free to speed along, ride leisurely, and/or stop as frequently or seldom as energy, heat, or hills require.

We usually get up at 5 a.m., head for the porta-potties, pack up and leave the campsite by 6 a.m. We ride and have breakfast in a town 15 to 20 miles away. There are folks who get up and leave later than we do. Some of them are hungover.

So to get ready for this week of calorie-burning and seeing the sights of rural Iowa, it takes some time. Not just training - I've ridden my bike more than 1000 miles in 2008. It takes time to assemble all the gear and pack in a sensible manner.

So I make a list and start checking things off.

Tent and tent seams. Check.

Inflatable mattress and pump. Check.

Large zip lock bags. Check.

Ibuprofen and butt butter. Check.

You get the picture.

Old Guys Organize

Old Guys Enjoy

This week we are at the beach. Navarre Beach, FL. The sand is white and the water is bluish green.

Sandra and I have ridden our bikes every morning. We've been in the surf.

There's never a bad day at the beach!

Old Guys Enjoy.

Old Guys Love Cycling

At the grocery store yesterday a fellow educator, we'll call her Maggie Manners, greeted me and asked if I was having a good summer. I replied that I have ridden my bicycle more than 300 miles in the last three weeks - in preparation for our annual bike ride across Iowa. To my shock and horror, she replied, "I hate bikers".

Maggie explained that a good friend of hers had been killed while riding a bike. When he died, she had to go and tell the guy's children that he had died. Those children attended the school where we presently teach. This happened more than ten years ago.

She complained that people are always riding bikes on the rural road where she lives. There is no shoulder on the road so she fears that she'll have to turn sharply to avoid hitting them.

Grief is something I know about. Our second son died at age two. It took two years before I could drive by the hospital where we took his body. But ten years . . . And she's blaming all bicycle riders for the pain of having to talk to children about their father's death.

I ride for fun, to spend time with family and friends, to save money, to stay healthy, to really see what is going on in Central Louisiana (as opposed to trying to catch glimpses while driving a vehicle) and to set a good example for my students. I am NOT using gasoline, NOT clogging up busy roads, and NOT using more healthy care services because I work to stay fit.

Little things like riding bikes for economy and fitness add up to a healthier family and community.

Old Guys Love Cycling