Evacuees - Update since Saturday

At 5:30 a.m. Sunday morning I awoke The Wife with the words "We need to go." The Mom got the same call an hour later and by 8:00 our two-car caravan was on the road. My travelling companion was Brutus, my sister's Doberman. The Wife and The Mom followed in another car with Cosmo the dog and Midnight the cat. I had grabbed a few days worth of clothes and little else, but of course the bike was with me. The going on the interstate was at walking speed for the first couple of hours and about 12 hours later we finally arrived in Flower Mound, TX, near Dallas, where The Wife's sister lives. My own sisters had headed East to Ft. Walton to stay with The Dad.

It is Tuesday morning and after returning from a really nice 50 mile ride, I was greeted with "the city is flooding." We had gone to bed the night before with news from the brother-in-law, who had stayed behind in N.O., that the houses were all basically OK. The problem now was that the levee North of the city had been breeched and the lake water was pouring into the city. To make matters worse, the pumping stations were all out of commission. Without the pumps, New Orleans, ringed by levees, fills up like a bowl. They are currently dropping huge sandbags from helicopters in an effort to plug the hole. The lakefront area is probably ten feet deep right now, and we have not had any recent information about the uptown area where our homes are. They are saying it could be a couple of weeks before we are allowed to return to the city. The interstate bridge coming in to the city from the East was knocked out. The causeway bridge over the lake to the north was damaged. Interstate 55 to the West is closed. It is now the "Isle of Orleans" quite literally. Our information here in Dallas is sketchy and everyone is nervous, especially The Mom. Cell phones have not been working, although text messaging seems to get through sometimes. Parts of the city are being evacuated now, 24 hours after the hurricane hit, because of the flooding.

I have not heard from the guys who were in Guyana. They were due to return on Monday, and I expect they made it to Miami. I spoke with Realdo's wife a couple of times Sunday and she evacuated with the kids up into Mississippi.

I had written up a nice little story to upload last night, but it's on my old laptop and wasn't worth transferring to this computer, even if I could lay my hands on an old floppy disk.