On the Bike, Back to B.R.

I went out for a nice 25 mile ride this morning quite early. The weather has been warmer and more humid lately, but the mornings are still quite nice. After a few days off the bike, I felt pretty good, but I have to confess, the motivation is lacking. It almost feels like fall in that regard, and it's hard to push myself, but easy to sit up and look at the scenery, which I have in abundance up here in the woods. The best part was being able to ride on fully inflated tires for the first time in three weeks!

I had called my sister about the Corps of Engineers' Operation Blue Roof, because both of our houses need some sort of temporary roof protection right now. She went down to Mardi Gras World on the Westbank where they are taking applications, but found out that they can't do my house because I have good old fashoned shingles and not the more modern soft sealtab type of roofing. On the more positive side, the hurricane currently in the gulf is on a more westward track than yesterday, which is good news for New Orleans. I'm holding out some hope that if it continues that way, we'll be officially allowed back into the city sooner rather than later.

We are working with the state, FEMA, NSF, NIH, etc. now to secure funding to replace storm-damaged equipment, provide bridge funding for faculty, provide housing for displaced faculty and staff, etc. We are talking in very big numbers. If we assume that most of Tulane's major research equipment will need to be replaced, we're probably looking at something like $800M, for example. Anyway, it's getting pretty interesting now, but I am becoming increasingly frustrated with the communications problems. My cellphone does not like being up here in Jackson at all. This morning as we drove, once again, into B.R. to buy some more supplies and another computer for one of the faculty, my cellphone finally picked up it's voicemail, one of which was about a meeting the prior day that I would have liked to attend. I'm at the hospital right now and my cellphone battery is already dead. We have set up shop in a vacant office down in the basement where we have one telephone line, five people, and four desks. However, we do have good internet access!