Gustav is Gone

Just a quick note of thanks to those who expressed their concern and best wishes as Hurricane Gustav was bearing down on us. I spent last Sunday boarding up and hunkering down in preparation for what we thought was going to be a worse blow than Katrina. Fortunately, this once formidable storm lost a lot of punch before gracing us with some pretty good wind and a fair amount of rain. We sat in the northeast quadrant of this puppy but I would estimate our strongest winds at 60-65 max with some higher gusting. I was never really concerned about the predicted 14’ storm surge as we live roughly 6 miles from the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain and sit some 22’ above sea level. (that’s referred to as high ground around here) Our power went about 11:00 AM Monday and along with it went cable TV, phones, DSL and water. I thought I had the system beat with my Verizon WAN card and had spent a good deal of time Saturday night fine tuning my laptop and cleaning everything up in preparation for Gustav. Well "“ it worked like a couple of tin cans with a piece of string stretched in between. I was able to get to the BBS a couple of times and tried to post to no avail.

In any event, my wife, Patricia and I made out just fine. I’ve got two generators and we were well prepared in terms of provisions and a few amenities "“ rigged up a window AC unit. Phones came back this morning followed by power within the last hour and I’ve already got all the boards off the windows and am making some good progress on picking up branches. Our home suffered no damage, we didn’t lose any trees and all is well. Most importantly, we are still here to talk about it.

As a point of comparison, Katrina left us without phones, power, water, DSL, cable and cell service for the better part of three weeks. We took one gust clocked at 155mph by the US Coast Guard and my yard debris which took 10 solid days with a chain saw for me to cut and pile, wound up filling three 18 wheel dump trucks. Yes, we dodged a bullet with Gustav.

Thanks again to those who were thinking about us. I guess you’re just going to have to put up with the Rockster for a while longer. We’d like to extend our best regards to all.

 

Glad to hear all is well. I spent the day watching is on Fox News and TWC.

 

We're all happy you're safe and back here with us, ToTo still in tow.

 

I guess when Gustav saw Rockster out there with a Hammer
he pulled his tail between his legs and changed his thoughts.
Glad your back and well.
hawk22

 

I know you were prepared for the worst!

That's all you can do in any anticipated situation.

Glad you and yours are safe. Hope all is back to normal!

Mike