Ike

I ride a bike everywhere for both exercise and transportation. I like it, now that the temps are cooling down. I hop on my bike and out the drive I ride. Two doors down, Rebecca's house not only has the blue tarp stretched tightly across her roof still, but now what appears to be a work order written large on it. Hers will be a big job, I hope they're able to have it done soon.

Less that a block away the smell assails me. Mold. Decay. And I thought all that stuff was gone, but wait, no, there's another pile of wallboard and carpet ripped out. Hmm, now I really need to get that done, too--even though by comparison mine is only a small amount. Still, it needs doing.

Oh, a new pile of tree branches. It wasn't there yesterday--it must have come out of their back yard. I sneak a quick peek up into the trees and see that they, like us, still have plenty of dead branches broken and caught up there. When it was really windy the other day, I, like most of my neighbors, had a new batch of branches to haul out to the curb.

I stop and snap pictures. It is now two months since Ike came through, and the clean up goes on, and on, and on. . .

Comcast trucks are much in evidence [finally]. I hear they've lost about half their customer base in our community [including us] due to their incredibly slow responsse. In our case, once the line that was down in our back yard went up, service was restored. Too bad for them that they waited so long that we looked into, called, made an appointment, had the guy come out one eve, but since it was already getting dark at that point, he came back the next morning first thing--and we now have satellite [and he even pulled a heavy branch off the roof for me!] The next day Comcast finally came. . . they still had to take care of the downed wire. It was only reported a week and a half earlier!

The daily runs of the huge trucks picking up the big loads of branches and downed tree limbs are over. The guys who did our street were down from upper Wisconsin, and the heat here was terrible to them--and we thought was nice after Ike came through. Dry and unseasonably cool. What a blessing with the power out for most of us for at least a week or more! Still it was awfully hot for these men to whom I was able to give cold water [ten days after Ike and our power was restored.]

The sound of Ike in my mind is not the wind of the storm, but the buzz of the saws beginning the next morning and continuing still. In the first week when so many places of work were closed, men were everywhere: cutting, sawing, and getting rid of the carnage. Now its usually only in the evenings and weekends, and it's here a buzz, there a buzz, [everywhere a buzz, buzz--eventually!] Most of the major work has been done.

Some blocks do not smell of mold any longer, but of new wood as the old blown down fences are hauled away, and the new fences go up. I've a friend from church who lives on a farm and they lost all their fencing, and at last report, still have "miles of new fence to put in."

I feel for the early primary grades in Santa Fe [the next town over]. They lost the roof of their first & second grade building. As a result, the first grade classes are in the Jr. High for the rest of the year [and we'd only been in school a couple of weeks before Ike!] They've settled in nicely, I hear, but they are truely short on library books etc. The community has really pulled together to help them out.

As I write, we have another load of Contracters bags filled to the brim with branches and leaves. I still have to cut down the tropical plants in the backyard which were bent beyond their capacity to recover. As I ride around town, I see that most people have put that off as well--only a few have started work on this type of plant. I guess I'm not the only one who was hoping that they would recover eventually on their own--but it just does not seem to be.

I'll post pictures next week. This has been an interesting experience, and as my rides get braver and longer and reach new territory I see fresh evidences of the churned up landscape.