We got our power and phones back last night. The neighbors are still dark. I don’t know exactly what the it is the government learned from Katrina, but living through their opinion of a well run after disaster relief effort I am unimpressed.

Ike plowed through here like a farmer with an old mule…Trees, power poles, trampolines…It seems like at some point on last Friday night the whole world was flying through the air. Sheets and sheets of rain falling sideways…Then the steady drip from the living room ceiling. Buckets out and hold your breath waiting for it to end.

During the two hours that Ike was the closest to us here, the pressure dropped to 957…and stayed there. That was between the hours of 3am and 5am. Once the pressure started back up as the eye moved on, I started trying to catch a little rest before the day after fun began…

Believe it or not, this is the view of our house from the road…Last week you could see the house without trying.

There were six adults and two babies riding out the storm in this old farm house. Other than a small limb piercing the roof and letting in a bit of rain (till the ceiling tiles finally gave way from the weight of the water), we didn’t loose a shingle, didn’t break any glass. This old house rode out the storm with grace…

Our inspection on Saturday afternoon led to some amazing discoveries…A tree by the garage apartment was uprooted and pulled the water line free…Water was shooting from the end of the pipe. Be warned, after a hurricane you cannot run to a hardware store for a PVC pipe cap to stop the water. On the next day you cannot run to the hardware store…Even on the third day a hardware store is a bit of a push.

We ended up with one car out of four slightly damaged…

When we finally managed to cut it free on Monday the damage consisted of a broken side mirror and three small dents with a few scratches in the paint…Not too bad for what could have been much worse.

The real cap on all of our fun will be this 60+ year old oak tree that fell on our dog yard…

And what was it that killed the lights? It might have been this…

Driving around town proved we weren’t the only ones with a yard full of downed trees. It seems almost every house was surrounded by a wall of once living greenery. The amazing thing to me was the number of stop lights gone…Some intersections had not one light left. I have no idea how long it will take to get everything back up and running…And just think…We were on the clean side of the storm…

Both Sherry and my work places are still without power so it looks like we will be focusing our efforts on cleaning up around here for a while…

Later folks, it’s bed time.