Alex's Year in NOLA

Sorry!

2008-10-05T20:36:00.000-07:00

I have not updated this blog since the storm. I am sorry to everyone who had been following my blog. I kept putting off coming back to this because I felt like I needed some huge summary to get back in. Instead, a simple apology and the promise of more to come.

Safe and Sound

2008-09-05T10:54:00.000-07:00

I'm safe and i the city. I have power but internet will probably not come till monday. I'm at a coffee shop downtown and won't get in to the details of Gustav until I can comfortably do so from home.

Gustav Eve

2008-08-31T15:38:00.001-07:00

So I woke up today at 3:45 and helped pack up our shop in New Orleans. We packed 5 trucks with generators, gas, chainsaws, water and other equipment and headed out of the city. It took us six hours to travel 100 miles to the Feliciana Presbyterian Retreat Center near the Mississippi border. Contraflow was crazy and it worked well, but there were times when we were parked on a bridge over a lake set to flood and walked around and mingled amongst the exodus.

Feliciana is not outside of the storm. We set up generators and stockpiled gas, water and food. We will weather out the storm but we will get hit with tropical storm force winds and massive rain. Electricity is expected to go out, as well as water. It has finally sunk in that there is going to be mass destruction, and the city that I barely got to know will not be the same.

In My New City

2008-08-30T12:35:00.000-07:00

I've been in the city for two nights now, one with Reed and Travis in a hotel and another in my new home. I haven't unpacked because Hurricane Gustav is a few days out of town and I will be evacuating tomorrow morning. My house is boarded up in preparation for the storm and I haven't been able to go out much, but I did see Bourbon St. and the Ninth Ward, two places very different from any other part of the country I have been to.

When I got to my new home at Project Homecoming I was invited to a party celebrating three years since Hurricane Katrina. I met some of the people I will be working with and some of the families as well. One of the construction managers, Noelle, is a fellow Gaucho (Ole, Ole, Ole, Ole!). A nice man named George instructed me on the foods and music I would experience, and taught me how to shake a rag during a "second line."

Prologue (Too tired to tell the story of night one)

2008-08-29T20:15:00.000-07:00

Well, I've made it to New Orleans. It took six days to get here, but they were all pretty glorious. The stops were, in order:

Santa Barbara, CA

San Diego, CA

Las Vegas, NV

Williams, AZ (The Grand Canyon)

Dallas, TX