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Hurricane Ike came and went during the early morning of last night.  For me, having passed out from being drunk left me without an eyewitness account of the actual storm passing through. Luckily, I have stories and photos from before and after the storm. I’ll detail them now.

Thursday, September 11th – A Story of Drunken Uncertainty

Thursday, the day before the certain arrival to Ike to the Houston area was as surreal as they came. Paranoia brought on by  listening to the news had most people in our area acting very reactionary. This was evident during my early morning bike ride when I saw a line of patrons at every gas station in sight. Talk of grocery stores running out of food caused even more of a panic.

Amidst all the commotion, my roommates and I didn’t really think much of packing. After all, the past several Hurricane warnings since Katrina had not really effected Houston. Meanwhile, those living in lower lying areas like League City and Galveston Bay had already begun the process of evacuations. For most of the day, traffic on the major roadways was a pain as well.

During the night, most of the city’s young crowd were living it up as usual. It wasn’t so much being unaware that a hurricane was coming. We just didn’t think it was going to be that bad. Most of the city felt this way.

I went out and had a really awesome time with some friends. A group of us had an amazing dinner at FISH and went to Front Porch Pub for some beers afterward. I then headed to Kobain to meet up with Erica, Eric P, Jino, and and a few others for more drinks. Finally, when competitive juices finally called on some flip cup action, we ended off at Pearl Bar, our friend’s awesome bar on Washington and one of my new favorite Houston hangouts.

While others when enthralled in a series of melodramatic moments, Eric and I had a lot of fun warning people of high winds and flooding from atop our picnic table thrones. All in all one of the funnest nights in some time.

Friday – Preparation Time for Hurricane Ike

Waking up on Friday, we knew we had to take Hurricane Ike more seriously. And for the bulk of the morning, that’s exactly what we did. This meant getting groceries, hurricane-proofing the outside of our home, getting gas, and all the other things you do for this type of thing.

Laughably, we did not do a very good job on this stuff. Instead, we went to Elite for a last-minute training session to help Frost Murphy prepare for his fight. Those left at the house ate most of the hurricane groceries by nightfall. The only thing we were left stock-full of was beer. At least we could get drunk right?

You can only watch so much news. We spent most of the afternoon hours watching footage of Galveston Bay getting deeper and deeper under the storm surge of the impending Hurricane. That kind of leaves you feeling anxious. And Cookie made us Hurricane Ike T-Shirts with the caption, “Why would I be scared of Ike?” so that only added to the anticipation.

Our neighborhood is made up of a fairly tight-knit group of long-term residents whom we’ve grown closer to during recent months. In fact Preston from a few houses over gifted us with some expensive speakers for no good reason at all the other week. These guys do that kind of thing for each other all the time.

Hence during pre-hurricane night, we spent the bulk of time sitting on Matt and Julie’s lawn, waiting for the storm to come while drinking many beers and shooting off an occasional firework or two for entertainment. This camaraderie was easily the most fun part of the evening. Sadly, when the rains started coming and the leaves hitting with the breeze started feeling like projectiles, we had to take it indoors.

I’m sure I was not the only one who wanted to stay up for the whole storm but after the power went out around 1am, the combination of fatigue and beer had me sleeping through the whole thing.

Saturday – Recovery Time

I say damn! I didn’t expect Hurricane Ike to cause this much damage. I was under the impression that I’d wake up to having power and walk outside to a normal looking neighborhood with a few patio chairs knocked over. Nothing was further from the truth as our entire street flooded. Rubbish from trees had fallen all over. For the most unlucky, entire trees had been uprooted, knocking holes into the roofs of their homes.

For most of the day, our entire neighborhood came together to help each other out. We did damage assessments and got limbs off homes. Preston and I cleared the entire block of trees so the drains could do their job and un-flood the street. We saw many others doing the same thing all over Walnut Bend. There was even a man with a golf cart and a chain saw running from street to street. It was an awesome sight seeing everyone helping each other out.

We did all we could and stayed without power all day. When nightfall came and we were still without power, we decided to make for the comforts of my parents’ house in Sugar Land. So here I type now, lucky to have running water, electricity, and all the amenities of home.

The story will definitely continue when we go home tomorrow to continue the cleanup and survey the damage further. Hopefully we have power then so we can continue the cleanup process in relative comfort. Nonetheless, I’m thankful that my friends, neighbors, and loved ones made it through. After all, that’s really the only thing that matters.

A few pictures of Hurricane Ike Weekend

This entry was posted on September 14, 2008 at 12:41 am and is filed under Weather. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments.

Tags: Flood, Galveston Bay, Hurricane Cleanup, Hurricane Ike, Hurricane Recovery, Katrina