Training the Best

Another picture from the AP wire of the Pensacola Bay Bridge. This appears to have been taken from Landry's, a bar and seafood restaraunt I ate at on Wednesday. It is a unique feeling to see disaster pictures from familiar places on the AP wire. 

A picture from the AP wire of the Pensacola Restaraunt Supply warehouse on Main street. I drive by this building every day on my way to NAS Pensacola. I can't say that I am shocked that Main street flooded, it is only about 100 meters from Pensacola Bay in places. 

Like I had expected, Katrina was no big deal here. I have not yet been down to the coast yet, so I don't know how downtown Pensacola and the beach made out, but up here, north of I-10, all we got was a lot of wind and a lot of rain. The Pathfinder made it out without a scratch, it just got a good bath. This hurricane reminded me a lot of my trip to the coast to cover hurricane Isabel. A lot of build up and a lot of TV induced anxiety and in the end it was not a big deal.

Of course the residents of the 40,000+ destroyed homes in Mobile and the refugees who saw part of the Superdome's roof ripped off in New Orleans aren't going to be singing the same tune. We were fortunate that it tracked so far to the west before turning north. They were fortunate in the fact that New Orleans did not suffer a direct hit or a hit to the west which would have put the worst part of the storm on their heads. I think that the gulf coast made out as well as it could have.

So here is the story of hurricane Katrina as experienced here in northeastern Pensacola.

The Marine Corps issued an evacuation order late on Sunday morning, anyone who lives at 30’ elevation and below was ordered to leave and anyone else assigned to the base who wanted to leave could and didn’t have to be back until Wednesday morning. My friends and I chose not to because the highways were already jammed with people evacuating from Mississippi and Louisiana. At ten o’clock on Sunday morning I-10, which is the major east-west highway along the coast, was stop and roll.

The rain started at about 9pm and the wind followed shortly thereafter. Our power flickered a couple times then but was on without interruption for the rest of the night. It finally died at 3:45 in the morning, I know this because my cell phone was chirping as it went from battery power to charging as the power went off and came back on. I woke up a few times during the night as my roommate’s dog whimpered and stirred and a few more times as the wind and rain beat against the door to the patio from my room.

I woke up this morning at 7:15 to call my squad leader to let him know I had survived the night and went back to bed. I woke up again at 8:50 to the platoon commander calling me because the squad leader had not called him. Apparently my whole squad had left voice mail messages on his phone and he had not gotten any of them. Geez, what a pain in the ass. I have to wonder, what would they have done if the cell phone service had died? Very few of us have land lines and those that do likely have cordless phones which require power to operate. I’m not going to bring it up though, they might make us bring a sleeping bag and rack out in one of the hangars for the next hurricane.

Katrina made landfall today at 0600 as a category 4 storm near the Louisiana/Mississippi border. The weather here got progressively worse as the day went on, but in spurts as bands of rain and wind came through. The worst weather here came between 1030 and 1530. I was going to go out and shoot some video of the trees whipping around in the wind and rain but I kept wanting to wait until it got bad. Well it never really got bad so I never got any video or pics. I spent the majority of the day reading a Robert Ludlum novel and napping.

The great thing about living in an apartment complex though is that we are on city water and we had hot water the whole time. I took a hot shower this morning; I definitely was not expecting that to happen.

So now I’m just hanging out on the couch watching images of the devastation taking place in Mobile and New Orleans. I’ll just hang out and watch some TV, resume my normal daily activity of doing nothing.

Ok, so I lied. Katrina took a turn to the west and we're here waiting out the storm. We're pretty far inland though and the wind just started picking up this minute. The power is already flickering so I'm going to fire off this update before we lose power for the long term.

To mom, Aunt Edee, and everybody else who is going to worry, don't sweat it. I am out of range of any of the flooding and shielded from the wind so I'll be safe. Just a bit of a headache for me.

I will not likely have cell phone service for a while so don't sweat that either. I'll get back in touch when I can. In the meantime, enjoy the a/c and cable TV for me, I won't be for a while!

Well if you've been watching the news you have heard about Katrina. A couple of days ago she was just a tropical storm and we weren't really paying attention to it. This morning all that changed. She shifted course, picked up some speed and here we are.

The current predictions have given us a 17% chance of being hit, but all of that will change with time. Hurricanes have never followed predictions anyway. I'll know by tomorrow if there is an evacuation order and I'll head north east. No sweat though, I don't have that many valuables here and I'm not planning on waiting it out here.

I don't want to make a big deal about this, it really isn't. I just wanted to give an update to let anyone who wanted to know what was going to happen. Someone out there probably thinks we're going to batten down the hatches and man guard post on base. Don't lie, I know you thought that. We're on a Navy base, they run when hurricanes threaten!

So I finally have a bit of normalcy in my life here. I have a place to live until November, I'm staying with two friends from TBS. They are going to Primary in Corpus Christi, so I'll stay with them until they leave and in the meantime I hope to find someone here who will want to share a two bedroom apartment. I think I'm going to start buying furniture and dishes and all of the necessities to living on my own. I'll have to get them eventually, no time like the present.

I actually found a mountain bike trail here which is halfway decent considering the flat terrain here. It is funny to read the description of the trail and see it in person. A "massive" hill here wouldn't even be worth mention in North Carolina. And the "downhill" section? Yeah, not really. I'm going to check out a few more in due time, but I'm going to buy some disc brakes first, my old rim brakes are sqealing like mad and I've had it.

Those of you who are easily upset about how your tax dollars are being spent might want to stop reading right here. I am not doing a damn thing right now and I won't be doing a damn thing for another two months at least. There is a long waiting list and we just have to sit around and wait. We check in every morning at 0800 and then the day is ours to waste. I am on the funeral detail team and we all have some kind of collateral duty, but that only takes up a couple of hours each week. I am sure that I'm going to be bored of this crap soon. I wanted to work on my green belt and even go to an instructor's course for our martial arts program, but the command is worried that we might break an arm or leg or something so they don't allow us to do martial arts at all. Great, all this time to get something done and they take it away from me.

Well it is and it isn't. The barrier islands of Naverre beach and Gulf Breeze are pretty amazing. Hurricanes have done their damage and it shows all over. Signs are ripped apart, the ones that are still standing, roofs are ripped off on the buildings that aren't condemned or leveled.

The strange thing about all of it is the randomness. There is the obvious damage right along the shoreline, but then there are sections inland a couple of miles which have spotty destruction. Davis boulevard is really torn up near the place where I am staying right now, but University which parallels it is mostly untouched. All of this makes me wonder if this place is in a constant cycle of destruction and rebuilding. I know that recent hurricane seasons have been more active than others, but it seems that this place is a magnet for hurricanes, that at least one a year hits here.

So I was going to stay with this lady in a nice apartment complex located pretty conveniently for me, but as I was driving to Pensacola on Monday her boyfriend apparently decide that he wanted to move in with her. Long story there, but they have been an on and off couple who have lived together in the past. Grr. It's not all bad though, I was going to pay a lot to stay here and the places I am looking at are much less expensive. The trick is going to be finding a place I won't be ashamed to have company over to. I have to admit that I like to have a nice place to live and asthetics matter to me.

Other than the living quarters situation, things are good. I have checked in for the most part and I passed my flight physical today. Once I get my last two wisdom teeth pulled out in a week or two I'll have a full up chit and be cleared to start training. That won't likely happen until mid to late October, possibly later depending on the weather and other unforseen delays in the program. There is a backlog of students waiting to train and everybody is experiencing a two to three month wait.

I made this entry brief because I have to hit the rack, I have a funeral detail tomorrow morning and I have to be at the office at 5:30 tomorrow morning. Goodnight!