Hurricane Ike

As I recall, in 2005 I posted during Hurricane Rita. We were at the lake house. This time Lynna and Rusty and a few other folks opted for the lake house again, Missy, Steven and the boys went to the house of some friends in Kingwood, Lillian and Corky were already on a trip to Nashville and then on to Virginia, but Mike and I wanted to get the airplane out of harm's way in case Hobby Airport took a hit. While taking it out, someone asked if we'd take another one as well, so we flew two airplanes, our Cheetah and a Tiger, westward. We stopped in Sonora, TX for the night only because another weather cell wouldn't let us get as far as Fort Stockton. A couple from Baytown and a couple from Houston landed immediately before and after us, so there were four airplanes landing at this small town within about four minutes.

The Baytown couple had a ranch in Sonora so they went there. The other Houston couple joined us over to the Comfort Inn and we each got a room there. There's not much to do in Sonora so the next day we all left for Las Cruces, NM, a much larger town with plenty to do. We had a great time with Sharen and Rainer. They are both engineers, he's from Austria. Sharen is retired from Exxon and she worked 18 months in Alaska back in 1989-90 on the Valdez spill. She said don't believe anything you read or heard from the media - she thinks they must have been on a different spill because whenever she read anything it was certainly not a report coming from where she was.

Anyway, I digress... we are in Las Cruces - it's Sunday a.m. - and we're planning to visit a church here and then decide where to go next. According to reports we are not supposed to return to Liberty just yet. You can see photos at www.i-dineout.com. Click on two different stories there for two sets of pix. One is titled, "Photos of Liberty and Dayton Saturday Afternoon" and the other is "Do NOT Return to Liberty at this Time".

A couple different people who stayed in town went by our house and said that as far as they could tell only the garage collapsed, but the house looked okay from the street.

Lynna said the lake house didn't fare as well though. More than half the roof was torn off, as well as damage to the ceiling fans on the deck, the boathouse, and water leaking in through the roof, through the walls, and lots of places. I guess even downstairs carpet is wet.

My car is at the Liberty Airport and I hear from a couple folks there that airport didn't hold up too well (no surprise). Apparently hangars and airplanes are in pieces strewn about the airport, as well as other debris. Not sure about my car. Mike's car is at Hobby. No word yet from anyone there, but it appears flight ops are back up and going there. However, last we checked, there is a TFR over the Gulf Coast until further notice. That means "no fly" for us (Temporary Flight Restriction).

I know power is out in Liberty as well as at the lake house. They're saying to expect the power to take weeks to restore in Liberty.

Don't know yet about my office. Its in a 14-story building so I'm wondering about the glass. Of course if we can't fly back into Houston yet... doesn't matter much.

We did leave the Cheetah in Sonora and only flew the Tiger out here to Las Cruces. A really nice guy who has a hangar there let us tuck the Cheetah in his hangar.

The weather's been great here and we hardly slept a wink Friday night because we were watching the Weather Channel all night.

Well, check out the photos on i-dineout.com. I figured I'd better get something posted for friends and family afar who might be wondering. We're all fine, just lotsa clean up awaits.