We are fine after Hurricane Ike came through. Thank you for checking on us.

We evacuated to Karen and Billy's today because we have no electricity yet at our home. Their light's flickered a little and went out for a few minutes but didn't stay off.

Please note: Nothing blows down in this video, the strong wind is just steadily blowing from the west. You can see it blowing across the golf course. My feelings won't be hurt if you just watch a little of it because it is basically the same for the whole time.
.

[Jim1Jim1 YouTube]

.
We had no damage to our home, not even a shingle was lost. The winds reached about 80 MPH for a couple of hours.

So many have lost so much more than just electricity and their food.


We did have a was wax myrtle bush to blow over. I cut part of it out and will try to straighten the rest up better when the flower bed dries up some.

Those garbage pails are full of the stuff mostly from our refrigerator and freezer that we had to out.

[large picture] [super sized] ........
.

This pretty horse apple tree out back in the golf course lost one of its two trunks. And the wind blew most of the apples off onto the ground.

.

.

.

.
[large picture] [super sized].....

.

[large picture] [super sized]

.
Trees in the road were quite common. A few, like this one, were on our subdivision roads. The ones falling on the power lines cause the outages.

About one of ten gas stations are open, they run out of fuel quite often. Some limit to ten gallons, others to $20 or $50 to stretch it out further. Lines are fairly common, a half mile is common as well. Coming in to Houston from our end a lot of the evacuees from Dallas are running on empty. Some run out of gas waiting in line.

Yesterday we went to Willis and picked up four bags of ice that FEMA was giving out. For people who have transportation, this works pretty good. Buses are non-existent up where we live, taxis are few, so most of the ice went to people whose could drive. They were out of rations and we didn't need water.

FEMA was at three other locations in our county, and sixteen in Harris (for Houston) County. So far that is nineteen distribution places for four million people, lined up in single lane car lines. And they operate from 10 AM to 6 PM, not real good for working people. [Before posting this I saw on the news that the volunteers who are handing out the stuff for FEMA at one place figured out that two lines of cars could go through twice as fast as one. Of course they ran out of ice, water, and rations earlier.]

Just not good. I am sure we will hear all the good and bad about FEMA, but for sure they don't want the bad rap they got for Katrina and Rita.
.

[large picture][super sized] [large picture][super sized]

.
Mrs. Jim has a tee time for Friday, we will come back if these guys have all the course ready. Fallen trees are left and right at this time. In the meantime we will play golf over here with Billy and Karen.

We probably will go to the grocery store just for the fun of it because they are open over here. Gas lines are shorter too.