Weekend in the City - Long

I returned to my foster home here in Jackson, LA an hour or so ago after spending a 3-day weekend back in New Orleans.

Saturday was a busy day! Unlike Friday, there were lots of people in the neighborhood on Saturday and I got to share stories with a number of my neighbors who I hadn't seen in a month. Since The Wife wasn't due to arrive until around 10:00, I decided to tackle the roofing job first. I needed to patch a fairly small area on the edge of the roof that I could easily get to by standing on the nearly flat shed roof at the back of the house. It was incredibly convenient. I did a pretty nice job of it, working in the asphalt shingles amongst the older asbestos ones, and I'm quite confortable that it will hold up for a long time without leakage as long as we don't get another hurricane. I then replaced a fairly large area of the shed roof from which the old covering had been neatly removed by Katrina. This wasn't quite so easy, as I had to wrestle with a big roll of roll roofing, but I got it patched up and after a liberal application of roofing cement I think it will keep the rain out for a while. It felt good to get the roof job finished. No, I STILL haven't heard a peep from an insurance adjuster.

Just as I was finishing the roof, The Wife called to say that they were going straight over to Dan's house in Lakewood South, which is a "restricted" zone. Residents aren't supposed to be allowed in, so they had with them a sheriff's office deputy, who is also a psychiatrist, to ensure that they could get past the soldiers or policemen guarding the exits into that area. They said that they didn't think they could have gotten in without him. Well, I headed out to meet them there (without any deputy sheriffs) and slipped past one of the checkpoints thanks to my knowledge of the local streets, meeting them at the house shortly after they had arrived. This house had gotten about five feet of water, so the furniture had floated around and everything was covered with mud and there was mold growing on almost everything on the ground floor. We removed a lot of what used to be valuable antique furniture, leaving it on the covered rear patio to dry out gradually in hopes that it might be salvagable. It was smelly, slimy work, but I think the house can be fixed. It will involve completely gutting and rebuilding the ground floor, of course. The swimming pool in the back yard looked like a big science experiment. I plopped in about ten big chlorine tablets to try and slow down the growth rate.

Although we were in a supposedly restricted area, there were lots of people working on their houses in this upscale neighborhood. I guess half the homeowners in this development are doctors, so they all had managed to get past the border guards somehow. It made the problems with my own house seem pretty trivial.

After that, The Wife and I headed back to our place and proceeded to throw out the rest of the damaged stuff from the basement, creating in the process a little wall of black garbage bags along the street and a moderately sized junk pile across the street on the neutral ground. By the time we were done, the basement was looking and smelling a whole lot better. Just as we were leaving, three college students with a hand truck and roll of duct tape walked by and asked if we needed a refrigerator moved. Whooo Hoooo! For $30 these guys taped the beast shut and wrestled it through the house (without getting much of the horrible contents on the floor) and down the steps. It was perhaps the best $30 I've spend all year. We got word that The Mom's condo had power (and air-conditioning), so we locked up and headed over there for a while, but eventually went over to The Dad's place in River Ridge where there were steaks on the barbeque. It was a good day's work, but yet another day off the bike.

Sunday: This morning we grabbed our old mountain bikes that had been hanging from the ceiling of the basement and took off for a little ride around 8:00. As we got to the levee bike path at Audubon Park, I was happy to see the remnants of the morning's Levee Ride heading back. We turned around and chatted for a while with Tim, Charlie, Realdo and everyone, and later saw Todd on St. Charles. Realdo and his family have moved back into their apartment on St. Charles Avenue. Todd said that his shop in Metairie was fine and he had been open for a couple of weeks already. He's probably the only open bike shop in the city right now. GNO Cyclery and Adam's were not so lucky, and GNO had been looted. I'm sure these two will eventually reopen, although Todd said that some of the other shops probably won't. I don't know if Bayou Bicycles intends to reopen. Mark and Alfred are currently working at Richardson Bike Mart in Dallas.

We rode around the area hoping to find an open coffee shop (CC's on Magazine had been open the day before), but no luck, so we headed back home and resumed the cleanup. I threw out another pile of junk from the dirt floor side of the basement while The Wife cleaned up the sidewalk and street. We had to wait quite a while to start because all morning there was a huge dumpster parked alongside the house that they were filling up with some of the tree branches that the power company and its cleanup krewe had left behind the day before. The Wife wanted to go to church and since the church on Carrollton near Oak St. had a sign out on the neutral ground saying they would be having mass at noon, we went over there. There were no lights or a/c, but with the large doors open the church, lit only by the sun shining through the stained glass, was pretty cool. Around the time we were finishing up, a Salvation Army truck came by and offered us some cold gatorade and snacks. When there's no refrigeration for miles around, a cold gatorade really tastes good!

Kenny B. sent a link to a bunch of great photos taken while he was working with the California National Guard. Here are a couple of them.

Anyway, by the time we left we had gotten a lot accomplished. Now we just need electricity, a new refrigerator, a new dryer, and a new blower motor for the heating unit and we're good to go! The more permanent repairs to the roof and ceiling can wait until we hear from the insurance company, and since there are people with much bigger problems than we, I'm not going to get pushy.