Back to Jekyll

Jekyll Bike Path

We're back on Jekyll Island for a week. Since the entire island is a state park, the local beauty is promoted and maintained. The residual beauty of the shores and the historic district are wonderful. We like those things.

Private homes, hotels, a water park, a little shopping center, golf courses, and of course a campground take up some space, but by law 65% of the land must remain undeveloped. A couple of the hotels are old and ready for replacement, and such decision are always controversial, and the controlling board decided one recently.

The campground offers monthly rates which we find favorable. Some campers thing the campground should be improved. The roads are dirt, and dusty when there's been no rain. There's no community room, so gatherings are difficult. The campground installed a large tent to serve this purpose, and it seems to work OK for potlucks and dinners, but other typical campground activities are thwarted. The Christmas dinner was held in a room at the golf course restaurant. The restrooms and showers are aging and impossible to look pristine, but we don't use them so it's no big deal for us.

What we do like is camping among the live oaks and yellow pines, with all the squirrels and birds flitting about. November is acorn season, and every now and then we hear a CLUNK-ponk-rattl-rattle as one bounces off our roof.

Entrance road

December is the season when Jekyll lights itself up for Christmas. This is the 3rd time we've been here in December, and in general, the lights seem more subdues this year. I like them better, especially in the historic district.

Last night, I spent a couple hours with my camera trying to capture the Christmas lights. I had intended to experiment with High Dynamic Range (HDR) photography, so I took my tripod anc captured several shots of each scene, each one with a different shutter speed. When I got home, I assembled each set of images in HDR software, but the results were less than pleasing. What you see here are just selected exposures from each set. Pretty nice, but neither spectacular nor unusual. But I like them.


Du Bignon Cottage

This cottage was one of the prettier ones, I though. Simply yet clearly lit, festooned with evergreens, it remined me of my New England Christmas roots. The building is one of the museum pieces that the Historic District has restored with period pieces and is open for tours.


The tree on the green and Goodyear Cottage

The green area was on that was much less flashy that I remeber from our visit in 2004. The live oaks had their arches all lit up along the main road, but there were no flashing wire sculpture lights to take away from the simple beauty of the cottages and their lights.


Jekyll Island Club Hotel

The hotel was once the clubhouse for the richa nad famous folks who had their winter homes here in the late 19th century. The Christmas lights offered a cheeriness which brightened the classic victorian style if the buildings.


Our pre-Christmas visit will end here tomorrow, when we leave for Naples and 10 days with Consuelo's family. Just before New Year's, we'll return here for 3 months. I'll have more pictures of the rest of the island then.

700 miles, 8 states, SN*W!

We're out of Maine, on our way south, and we're at the second night on the road. We got underway at 9:40 on Friday morning, December 5th, only 10 minutes behind our plan. We made a quick stop in Peabody, MA, so Consuelo could check the fit of a garment she's making for our daughter-in-law, Maria. While they did that, I took Thumper for a walk. After that, had soup and a sandwich and headed on down the road, landing in Southington, CT. We thought we could stay at the Wal-Mart there, but the signs said "NO RV OVERNIGHT PARKING", so we found another big empty parking lot at Bob's Furniture. Bob's people said "We don't own the lot, but it should be OK, as long as the cops don't kick you out." They didn't, in fact they parked in the lot with us for some of the night.

On the first day, we traversed Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, into Connecticut. Diesel is a bit more in New England, so we bought $75 in Massachusetts. That lasted into New York, where it was no cheaper, so we bought $100 worth there at around $3/gal.

We've spent over 4 years doing this RV thing, but we're discovering things that we've forgotten, or perhaps mis-remembered, about what we're supposed to do. For example, I found some bake-em-up crescent rolls and wanted to bake-em for breakfast on Saturday. I searched all over for a lighter or matches to light the pilot on the over, not finding any. Then I remembered that we have a convection-microwave oven, and we had the generator running to charge the batteries. 12 minutes later, we had nice warm crescent rolls.

We got onto the road about 8:30 this morning. It was about 18 degrees F when we left, and warmed a bit as we travelled. We crossed into New York, bought fuel, then went through Pennsylvania, a few miles of Maryland, a few more miles of West Virginia, and landed at a Flying J truck stop at the first exit in Virginia. We filled our LP tank so we could stay warm, and parked for the night at around 5:00 PM.

We have a history of Pennsylvania and treacherous weather. We had a couple trips from Rochester, MN, where we lived, to Western Massachusetts, where my family lived, travelling through PA on I81 and I80, facing snow and ice along the way. Today, we encountered snow flurries as we arrived in the Harrisburg area. Not enough to slow us down too much, We almost stopped in Harrisburg, but pressed on. At 6:00, the cashier at the Flying J reported that traffic was moving at 20 mph in the areas we had just come through, so we got by it just in time. More snow is in the forecast. We'll take it a day at a time, but we'd prefer to miss all of it.

Thumper finally seemed to realize at around 2:00 PM today that we weren't just out for an overnight trip, and that she had to resign herself that there would be no free runs anytime soon. My signal for this was when she gave up hoping that we'd park back at the Maine house, watching for the door to the motorhome to open onto the back lawn, and she climbed up on the sofa and went to sleep for the first time since we left.

It's 33 degrees here in northernmost Virginia. We are looking forward to cavorting on the beach in our shorts in Georgia in another week. OK, we'll settle for in a sweater. But MUCH, MUCH WARMER than 33 degrees!

Thanks... last one out, turn off the lights.

Thanksgiving Day

The final event for the Maine house was to host the kids and grand kids for Thanksgiving. The weather was OK, not perfect, and everybody reported having a good time. We cooked fairly traditionally, turkey on the grill, mashed potatoes, butternut squash. The kids had their own idea of food, and we had the alternates for them, like macaroni and fruit juice. They'll have whole new set of traditions when they grow up.

Amelia & Luna with the Clauses
On Friday, all the moms tripped to the stores to shop Black Friday. The results were mixed to disappointing, specific deals were sold out when they got there. While the moms were shopping, the dads took the kids to see Santa in Rockland, in the rain. Everyvbody except Amelia got on Sants's knee and tried hard to remeber everything they had thought about asking Santa for earlier in the day, but the excitement forced temporary amnesia.

We then travelled but a few miles out to the Transportation Museum in Owl's head, and the kids had a blast building styrofoam airplanes and flying them in a huge empty display hall. The Dad's had fun making airplanes, too, and Grandpa had fun looking around the museum.

On Saturday, we drove down to Pemaquid Point to see the lighthouse, frolic on the rocks, and look for shells. The ocean was a bit angry after the storms that passed through earlier in the week. After dinner on Saturday night everybody (except us) packed up and left for home.

Pemaquid Point Light

We're now left with collecting everything we'll need to take with us for the next 18 months as we cpend the winter in Georgia, travel to Alaska, then winter again in the Southwest US. Plus, we're leaving the house in a condition to be able to rent it next summer, which means packing all our personal stuff away in one bedroom. And finally, setting the house on low to survive the winter.

Consuelo and I have really enjoyed spending time in Maine. We're developing compassion for the local folks who scrape out a living up here, and suffering some of the same injustices that they do, like high fuel oil prices. And the locals are welcoming us to the community, like asking to use one of my photos on their community calendar.

We're almost ready to hit the road again. On to the next leg of travel around the US. We're excited about it.

Turning the Temperature Corner

The last leaf

It's getting colder in Maine. It does this every year, I'm told. This is the latest that we've stayed in the north since we started our motorhome adventure 4 years ago. It's good to know that we can do it, but it does have a few complications.

We had the motorhome out in August, going up to Acadia for a long weekend. Most everything in it is ready to go. We didn't drain the water, in fact, I believe we have a full tank. Since the temperatures are now routinely below freezing at night, we're keeping the heat on to keep the pipes from freezing. That's burning LP, and since we haven't found anybody to deliver LP at our house, we'll have to take the motorhome up to Waldoboro to get the LP tank filled.


Maine fuel

We've been doing a lot more work on our house over the last few weeks. We stripped the remaining wallpaper in our bedroom, patched and painted the walls and the ceiling. We got the interior knotty pine put up on the new porch, and trimmed out the windows. We bought some bookcases in Massachusetts, and used one as a TV cabinet, one on the porch, and one in the hallway. The hallway downstairs has been scraped, patched, and painted. The stairwell and upstairs hall has been patched and painted.

We tried to do the ceiling over th stairs, but that was a disaster, the new paint peeled off all the remaining paint after it was scraped, patched and painted. We are having the sheet rock folks in to quote doing that job before we leave.

A fallen leaf

We've been pleased with the warmth that stays in the porch when the sun shines. We expected it to be a sunroom, and it is insulated throughout. But we've used it for several days without heat in November, which is better than I expected. The again, I understand we've been having some unseasonably warm temps over the past few weeks.

But today when we woke up, the chill of winter was around, with the overnight low around freezing. Today will be sunny, but not above 45 we're promised. We're slipping down that slippery slope of winter... you know, the one that some people ski on!

Declining Main Street

I stopped in to the Friendship Hardware Store on Main Street today. Suzie Simmons, who owns the store, tells me that she'll be closing the store in a couple months. It's a timely reminder of how bad things are on Main streets around the country. Things are bad.

The hardware store kept running, perhaps long after its time, by supplying some of the special needs of the lobstermen in Friendship. Reels of rope, all weather rubber jackets and pants, rollers, and a great supply of stainless steel hardware, hard to find even in the big box stores. Fall is usually the high demand season for the hardware store, because it's the big season for the fishermen. But not this year.

Friendship's last B&B

This year, the lobster buyers, mostly from Canada, have met all the demand and have stopped buying. The fishermen have stopped fishing. The price for lobster is incredibly low, $2 to $3 a pound wholesale, or less. At that price, you can't afford to fill the boat with fuel, or buy bait to bait the traps. So the fishermen are staying home, living on their savings, if they have any. And if the boats aren't running, they don't need any hardware.

There are other problems visible on Main Street in Friendship. One house is being gutted, a result of tear gas damage that occurred when the resident had some nasty hallucinations and stood off the police for several hours. Another house is being boarded up, after being destroyed by fire last weekend. There aren't that many houses on Maine Street to begin with. Losing two is a significant percentage.

Wallace's Store

At Wallace's store, gas is only $2.99 per gallon, far less than it was earlier this summer when the pump price had to be doubled because the pumps couldn't be set for over $4.00 per gallon. And the owner was found working both ends of the store, making sandwiches in the back then running to the front to ring them up on the cash register. His customers are patient, but he won't last long at this rate.

This is the latest in the year that we've stayed in town. The other summer folks are all gone, they left by Columbus Day. I expected that Friendship would be somewhat bleak during the off season. But this year, it seems downright depressing. Makes me wonder what will be left to come back to when we finally come back.

Reflecting on fall

Maple reflections

I am often amazed and amused by reactions of people, or the lack of them, in response to major events. There are some seriously historic events affecting us right now: Major financial upheaval, a presidential election with a black candidate, two major hurricanes battering the gulf coast, the Red Sox losing game 2 of the ALCS, trees in Maine changing color. OK, the last two are only historic for the moment, if there can be such a thing. But the rest are really, really important, yet we live on without much change or effort.

We were surprised that after hurricane Gustav passed through Louisiana, the major media dropped the story immediately. Electricity was out through major portions of the state for weeks, yet we had volunteers arriving during weeks 3 and 4 wondering what they were coming down there for.

The financial crisis that faces us certainly affects nearly everyone. But there are few actions that we can take locally to alter the situation. Even if we should go out and buy a new car right now to support the ailing auto industry, it's likely that the banks wouldn't give us a car loan. Plus, buying a new car would be 'more of the same' action that got us into this problem, overspending into debt.

Filling the hive

The diligent residents of New England are doing what they have always done, despite the news. Like the bee at the left, they are loading up the wood bin, sealing up the windows, canning the produce, and generally preparing for 6 months of cold, snowy weather. They talk, complain, and fret about the news, and some of it affects them directly, like the lobster men having to shut down for a few days because their major customer in Canada cannot buy any more lobster right now.

Hatchet Cove in October

But time marches on, and fall colors are a signal that it's time to put away the boat and fly rods. Fall is a beautiful time in New England. Our stop at LL Bean last week informed us that Columbus Day is the busiest day of the year in Freeport, a tribute to both the colorful countryside and the need for sturdy winter clothes.

So here's historic news for the weekend. The woods here are alive with color. I'm going to take my camera and capture some of it in a bottle to share with my friends during the long, leafless winter months down south. Call CNN. Let 'em know.

Flying Home

ERVs ready to go home

By the end of September, things are winding down on DR159 in Baton Rouge. Only a handful of ERVs are still binging food to the damaged neighborhoods, so the rest are gathered at headquarters in Baton Rouge and washed, repaired, checked, and replenished with supplies. Many of the original crew members have already returned home, so new drivers are found, and in some cases flown in to return them to their custodial chapters throughout the USA.

I took an opportunity to speak with the Public Affairs group, to see if my skills and intuition were suitable to work as a volunteer taking photographs and writing stories on an operation such as this. Sharing the work we are doing is important to reveal our contributions to the general public, and to our donors as well. I gave them a link to this blog as a reference, and they said I would be welcome to come work for them, after I had taken the appropriate training. So I may do that in the future.

The triplets

Working at headquarters is not without a little fun and an occasional hi-jinx to lighten the mood. Early in the operation, the job director brought in a Bayou Bengal, a stuffed tiger named after the LSU mascot. The tiger would be handed off every day as an acknowledgement of a job well done by a group or department. At first, it was simply handed off, but when it was my turn to give it away, I made up a story about how the tiger was actually a Red Cross volunteer, that it was assigned to do mental health, and I had filled out an official transfer form to give it away to the next department. Over the next few days, the tiger story grew and grew, one day having had triplets who were abandoned in a staff shelter and fleeing to Texas under the "safe haven law". The triplets got name tags, Faye, Gustav and Ike, after the 3 hurricanes that had ravaged Louisiana this year. The mother returned, blamed Tony the Tiger as the father, and was put up in a hotel. And on, and on.and on.

On September 29th, Consuelo departed Baton Rouge and flew back to Maine. She had spent 4 weeks on the job with Red Cross, working 3 weeks in staffing and the last week in In-Kind donations. In-Kind is part of the Material Supply System that organized donations made to the Red Cross. These could be corporate donations such as pallets of canned water from Anheuser-Busch to a 10 minute a capella concert by the Phi Mu Alpha Symphtones, which we had in headquarters one day. Working in In-Kind gave her a different view of the operation, but I think she still likes working with people more than stuff.

On Tuesday, October 7th, I flew home from Baton Rouge, having spent 5 weeks on the job, with 2 days off. I felt a sens of accomplishment for the job I did, and my performance evaluation reflected that.

By noon on Monday, I began finishing up the tasks I had left on my desk, made a few final changes to the personnel database, and turned in my cell phone. I checked out my rental car, which would be returned to the airport on the next day. I showed Martha Fortenberry how to generate the data for the daily report using a spreadsheet I designed, that reduced a 2 hour job to about 10 minutes. It was faster and easier, but a little tricky, and non-programmers might easily make stumbles along the way.

Decorations at Boutin's

On Monday night, 8 of the remaining staff got together at Boutin's, an authentic bayou restaurant that served alligator and frogs legs, mudbugs, and catfish. It was a goodbye dinner for all, since the numbers in headquarters had dwindled significantly, with under 200 visiting volunteers like us on the job in Louisiana.

After dinner, I went to the hotel, packed my bag, and requested a 5:00 AM wake up call. I got to the airport OK, but initially parked my Hertz rental car in the Avis return spot. This because when we arrived, we got a car from Avis. But I quickly realized my mistake, and move on to the Hertz spots.

Air travel into Atlanta was predictably delayed, and I was about 10 minutes late making my connection for a flight at 10:50 to Boston. Fortunately there was another 12:05 flight to Boston, and it had room for me. And as I write this, I gliding over Long Island Sound as the plane begins its descent.

I'm tired. It has been a long 5 weeks, coming out of retirement to work 10-11 hour days, witnessing 2 hurricanes, and out of touch with my normal routines of life. The food has been OK, but difficult to manage in a healthy way, and I expect I have gained another 6-7 pounds, as I did in Indiana and had not worked off. I miss cooking, I miss my puppy, and for the last week, I ,missed Consuelo.

But the work is rewarding. I was literally moved to tears several times by the commitment of all the volunteers that showed up, taking chunks of time out of their lives, many far more precious than mine, to help other out in times of disaster. It is heartwarming to be part of a group whose principles include minimizing human suffering, and whose mission is to bridge the gap between the initial response and the long term recovery. As my health and finances permit, I will continue to offer my services in this cause.

What we're doing here

While Consuelo and I are working in headquarters, hundreds of Red Cross volunteers are spread throughout Louisiana providing assistance to folks affected by the hurricanes. I thought it was time to share some of the Red Cross official images with y'all out there, so you could see what we'all are up to down here.

The shelter in the picture is empty, but that's just because we don't publicize pictures of shelters with residents in them. But you get the idea of how much room each person gets to sleep, store their belongings, and relax to wait until their homes are OK to go back to, or they find another place to stay. You might think that the space is too small. But keep in mind that the Red Cross mission is to provide basic needs, and a safe place to sleep doesn't need to be large.

We have about 112 of these food delivery trucks delivering food throughout the affected areas. Some of them park in fixed locations, and our clients come to the truck. Others circulate through less densely populated neighborhoods and deliver directly to the residents who may still be in their homes but without facilities to cook.

Driving these ERV trucks is rewarding for the volunteers, as they come into contact with grateful clients. But they work a long, hard day. They start early each morning, driving from the staff shelter to the kitchen, loading supplies, water, and food. The hot food goes into 'Cambro' containers, which keep food hot for hours. Even so, ERV drivers check the temperature of the food often, and if it drops below a safe temperature, it is discarded.

After they have delivered their load, they return to the kitchen, sanitize their truck and everything in it, and return to their shelter for the night. Many ERV drivers work 14 hour days. An a Cambro full of food weighs around 50 lbs, so they do some heavy lifting. They are some of my heroes.
Other Red Cross workers go into the damaged neighborhoods to perform damage assessment. The Red Cross has several categories for describing damage. The first two are "completely destroyed" and "severe damage". The mobile home in this picture is "completely destroyed." The damage assessment teams cover every street in every neighborhood affected by a hurricane, and collect reports on specific addresses. Our operation for Gustav is one of the first to use handheld electronic devices (like Palm Pilots) to collect this information, speeding the download into out computer systems. Unfortunately, we did not have enough devices for all the workers needed here, so some areas were still covered by paper reports.

Still other Red Cross workers offer small financial support to families whose homes have been seriously damaged. These client assistance workers meet with the families where they can find them, often in shelters, and connect the families with the damage reports.

(All photos by Gene Daley, American Red Cross)

The Rollover

We're just about done with our third week with the Red Cross in Baton Rouge. The shelter population is dwindling. Feeding is slowing in Louisiana, though Texas is still going strong. We still have almost 1300 visiting volunteers on the ground here, and several hundred local volunteers who go home every night.

The rollover is my term for the time when most of the volunteers come to the end of their typical 3 week deployment and go home. Even though our needs for staff are falling, we still need to keep certain parts of the operation running at full speed, like our staffing department. So new volunteers are deployed to fill in where others have left. Thus the staff rolls over to some degree.

Part of the function of the group that is working for me is to greet and register arriving staff. The same folks complete the paperwork when staff finishes the job and sends them off to home. These days we have an active mix of both types coming and going throughout the day. A crew of 7 people is working these tasks for me, and since they are people, we have to accommodate days off (about 1 every 8-9 days) and illness, which is probably a little higher than normal life because most of the staff is sleeping in staff shelters and colds can spread more easily.

Since I've been on the job, nearly my entire team has rolled over. I have an excellent supervisor who keeps thing running smoothly, leaving me time to interact with all of the other groups in the operation to chase down corrections in their rosters, and to find answers to the exceptional questions that keep life interesting in headquarters.

Since the Red Cross has been up and running for over 100 years, you might think that we have found the best way to do just about everything that we do. But every disaster operation brings new wrinkles, and this one is no exception. For example, because volunteers that flew into Louisiana arrived and deployed throughout the state before Gustav arrived, we have airline tickets in place in New Orleans, Baton Rouge, Shreveport, Alexandria, and Monroe. We also have a significant number that transferred her from along the Gulf Coast. As the operation progressed, the need for staff shifted from eastern part of LA, up to Shreveport in the NW, to the southwestern parts of LA affected by Ike. So we have a lot of folks in the south with tickets to fly home from Shreveport.

To handle this as smoothly as possible, we have a guideline which is based on the cost of changing a ticket with the airline. If the cost exceeds a set amount, then the volunteer will have to return to the ticketed city to depart. Otherwise they can change their ticket and fly home from the nearest airport. It's a blend of using the dollar wisely and using the volunteer wisely.

Rental cars fit into this guideline as well. I've been told that Avis, our primary partner for rental cars, has agreed to waive the drop off fee if we need to leave a car at a different location than it was picked up from. Before they agreed to do that, I know of at least one volunteer that needed to drive from Baton Rouge back to Dallas to drop his car and catch his flight.

Other exceptions don't fit the guideline so easily. Today, we handled a worker who ended up in Lafayette without a rental car, and had to fly out from Baton Rouge. Since part of our job in staffing is to take care of the volunteer, we get involved in such problems. The solution here was easy, since we have couriers moving documents and small amounts of urgently needed supplies within the operation. The volunteer in Lafayette will simple catch a ride with the courier on the day he needs to be here.

The more difficult problems usually include money, things like reimbursing a volunteer for ordinary expenses when the power was out and credit cards don't work and receipts don't get printed. Or a volunteer gets well intended but incorrect advice from a supervisor or their chapter on what expenses are allowed. In such cases, staffing talks with Red Cross headquarters to permit the exception.

The largest on I heard of on this job is that of an ERV driver. ERVs are those red and white trucks that often serve as billboards for the Red Cross in photos of us in the field. They pick up food in Cambro containers at a kitchen and deliver it to people where they live.

This particular driver was deployed from California to be prepared for Gustav in Texas. Since Gustav didn't trouble Texas too much, he was sent to Florida in preparation for Ike. That didn't happen there, either. So they turned him around, back to Texas for Ike. Along the way, the ERV broke down, and the driver got it fixed, which took a few days.

Meanwhile, the ERV driver did not have a PHH gas card which most ERVs carry to pay for fuel. And he had to stay in motel rooms and pay for meals and incidentals along the way. To cover these costs, he needed to use his own credit card with his personal money.

As he finished his 3 week tour, he was about $2000 into his own money. This far exceeds any guidelines we have, and is so unusual, it took a while for us to convince National staff that he was telling the truth. All perfectly reasonable, but highly exceptional.

Perhaps the larger issue for the volunteer was that he took 3 weeks out of his life and never got to do what he came here for, to feed hungry people from his ERV.

We have decided to extend our deployment with the Red Cross. Consuelo will stay one more week in a new job, working with the In Kind Department, which arranges for donations of goods and services to the Operation. I will stay longer, until my department is ready to close, maybe for another 2 weeks. We will get another day off on Sunday.

The Second 10 Days

The winds of Ike are blowing hard southwest of us, but just a strong breeze (read: small craft warnings) here in Baton Rouge. The Red Cross is strong on preparedness, so my trip to New Orleans got cancelled today, and headquarters shut down at 2:00 so we could stay out if the worst of the traffic. Then, when we got to the hotel where we're staying, the power was out for 3 hours, then on and off three or four times before it stayed on around 7:30.

The TV is now displaying all the tornado watches and warnings near here, all in the LA parishes SW of here, towards Texas. By and large, the Cajuns have been pretty laid back in the face of all that's going on here, but I think we're all getting a bit weather weary.

Not sure what will happen next, but I'm thinking we'll got back to Maine when our term is up on September 22nd. Consuelo has a cold, along with lots of other people at HQ. Most of them are sleeping in shelters, where colds spread like wildfire. So far, I've stayed immune, but I'm sure that won't last.

My work has been handicapped by no power, no network, no server, slooooow communications. It makes me wonder whether all this technology that the Red Cross depends on is really the right lone solution. But we keep pushing on, and when we're not, we're sitting on our hands.

For the geeks that might read this, a major Red Cross Disaster Response (DR) runs on lots of laptops, backed up by a major server with full backup. The function is to procure, track and manage resources needed to support the operation, such as finances, supplies (food, toilet paper), and our staff. Reports are produced daily, indicating measures of activity, like how many shelters are open, how many staff are on the ground, and how many rental cars we have. The disaster itself is measured by our disaster assessment team, who travel through the affected area to inspect the actual damage. After that is done, client caseworkers provide dollars for victims with immediate needs.

The laptops tie into an ethernet network, which connects with our national sites by T1 if available, or via a high speed satellite link. For our personnel database, we run an application that talks to a remote database across the network. If the network is down, we wait. If the application hiccups, we wait. Over the last 3 days, we have had less than one full day of useful work time. I got more work done in 2 hours in my staff lodging than I did in two days at HQ, because of program/network problems.

And of course, we have the GIGO function. I estimate that there are about 40 people feeding data into the database for this operation alone. My job is to make the data as accurate as possible. I am quickly reminded of the EDS commercial showing the cowboy herding cats. In my opinion the job is not to provide 100% accuracy, but rather to allow management to quickly spot trends and maneuver resources to be most effective. The response to Gustav has tested this need exhaustively, as we've arrived, prepared mega-shelters, pulled them down, then put them back in place for Ike. Some of the staff feels like they're on a merry-go-round, and others have been twiddling their thumbs in both directions, but the news about Gustav died down rapidly after the storm, and to me that's a good sign that we got our job done.

Our the mission is a valuable one, we address a need that is not met in quite the same way as any other organization. Some folks think that we compete with the Salvation Army, but I don't think so. Our focus is on providing immediate need after a disaster, and I think the Salvation Army is around all the time. SA doesn't do disaster assessment, and to the degree possible, we're trying to cooperate with FEMA on this. But our standards are different than FEMA, we have more granularity. And we intend to disappear, or at least dissolve back into the local chapters, that are always responding to local disasters like apartment fires.

Tomorrow, if time permits, I'll take more classes to further acquaint myself with other portions of a disaster operation. Then I can be more of a know-it-all.

Back to the Disaster

We got called back to work for the Red Cross in response to hurricane Gustav. We arrived late Sunday night, August 31, and the hurricane arrived about 8:00 the next morning.

All of the response organizations were on the ground here before the hurricane. We had Red Cross, FEMA, USArmy, as well as press members traveling on our final leg of the flight to Baton Rouge.

Inside the staff shelter

From the airport, we rented a van for the 5 Red Cross staff and drove to Woodlawn church, which had been set up as a staff shelter. In the gym, 100 cots were set up, and the dining area had tables and chairs, and a TV that people crowded around to get the latest weather news. This was our first time to stay in a staff shelter, and we included sheets, pillows, towels, and extra medical supplies as if we were going to backpack in the hills. Cots were provided, and about 95 folks slept in the gym.

On Monday, all staff stayed in place during the hurricane. Based on the wind maps we now have available, Gustav came ashore as a cat 2 hurricane, and bashed through Baton Rouge as a cat 1 hurricane, with sustained winds of 80 to 100 mph. We looked out windows, stood on the lee side of the building and watched the tree tops violently whipping back and forth. At around 8:30 AM, the power went out. Throughout the day, we watched and waited, got to know other staffers.

Our food that day was 'heater meals' and standard Red Cross snacks, cookies, chips and the like. Bottled water was the vintage drink. Heater meals are a pouch of food with a piece of specially treated cardboard. You stuff it all in a plastic bag and pour in some water, and in 10 minutes it's hot. Some of it was pretty good, and it was very high in calories, since people eating these meals may not eat regularly. I tell people that I don't come to the disaster for the food or the fancy hotel rooms.

Toppled steeple

About 10:00 the steeple blew off on the church we were in. Throughout the morning, the wind blew hard against the back of the building, rattling the walls and forcing some rain under the wall at the edge of the gym, which just happened to be where our cots were placed. We rearranged the room to leave a space along the wall to clean up the water as it came in.

In case you're wondering how people are arranged in a shelter, we had women to the left and men to the right. In our second shelter, they had a section for married couples. The church had 2 sets of bathrooms, and a grand total of one shower per sex. After we lost power, we lost hot water, too.

AC ducts blown off

Later in the morning, we heard metal banging against the windward walls of the church outside the gym. We thought perhaps the wall was coming apart, but it was only the air conditioning ducts being blown off the building.

By Monday afternoon, the winds had slowed a little, and our shelter staff manage to set up 2 small generators outside and to run extension cords into the dining and sleeping areas so that we had about 4 light bulbs. And we had the TV, of course. The local stations stayed on the air and kept us up to date on the status of damage and other important information. But we still had to use our flashlights in the bathrooms. If you can, imagine standing with a flashlight cord between your teeth while you pee, hoping you don't drop it into the urinal.

Sleeping on Monday night was more difficult. We had no AC, no power, and left the doors of the shelter open to capture whatever breeze we could, but the overnight temps were in the 70s and the humidity condensed on the tile floors, making them slippery and dangerous. Snoring was prevalent, all the CPAP users were without power. But we got through the night.

Tuesday we drove to Red Cross headquarters. We saw power poles toppled, billboards crashed to the ground, street signs blown every which way. A few of those long, long stop light arms over 4 lane boulevards had been blown around to new positions. There was no power anywhere that we could see. Every business was closed. When we got to HQ, they, too, had no power, so they sent us back to our shelter to wait until we could get our generator up at HQ. We drove back to the church and began cleaning up the tree debris in the parking lot there.

Since stop lights were out throughout the city, all signals were declared to be 4 way stops. During the day, this worked pretty well. But after dark, it was very difficult to see intersections and lights in the dark. I ran a few intersections which had little or no cross traffic because I couldn't see them.

Tuesday morning, there was some confusion as to where we were supposed to go, but we found our former manager from Indiana and she made sure that we stayed in her department, taking care of the HR function. We got to work.

Now, it's a week later. We've been working 12-14 hour days since last Tuesday, and we have our first day off. We need to do laundy, and all the laundromats have been closed, due to no power. We were among the very fortunate few to get hotel rooms, so we've been able to get showers. But 2100 other Red Cross staff are mostly still staying in staff shelters.

The primary care needs are beginning to wind down. Only 2000 people slept in shelters last night, down from about 45,000 one week ago. We're still feeding over 100,000 meals a day from 13 mobile kitchens. Our disaster assessment teams are getting done. The client assistance portion of the job is just ramping up, and our staff will be out in the damaged neighborhoods going door to door to see that people are OK and offer assistance where necessary and appropriate.

Red Cross has been doing planning and stockpiling resources in preparation for Ike. Right now, that looks to be less of a problem than we expected. That's OK. I've had enough hurricane immersion for now.

I'll report more later, if and when we get another day off.

Little Things with Big Wings

Yellow moth on clover
A week without guests means several things. One is that I have time to take my camera out in the fields and forest and see what's new there. This week, the moths and butterflies are harvesting the bounty of nectar from the pasture behind our house.

Hundreds of these small, yellow ones were flitting about, playing tag and falling and rising from the grass and clover. If they had been in my garden, eating my tomatoes, I probably would have been upset. Instead, they made wonderful, if difficult, subjects for my camera.

Brown moth in ferns

Deeper in the woods, this brown moth was trying to hide in the ferns. Somebody should tell him that he would blend in better in a pile of dead twigs and branches. Instead, he was the perfect contrast for my lens.



Monarch in the sun
I nearly missed seeing this monarch butterfly munching clover blossoms, as he was hardy moving as her explored every flowerlet. The sun was shining through his wings, and he virtually lit up as I walked by. And he was in no hurry, nor bothered by my presence. I will probably have to send him a payment for modelling, as he didn't sign a release.

Dragonflies in temporary pond

All of the rain we've had here left the trails full of puddles, and a nascent pond blocked my way farther into the woods. The dragonflies had found the spot, though, and it appeared that a female thought this to be a good place to lay eggs for the next generation. I'm hoping she's wrong, and dryer weather will evaporate the pools and let me pass beyond here next time.

Maine visitors

Lobsters on the porch

The folks who spend summers in Maine tell us that now that we have a place here, we'll get visitors all summer long. We wanted folks to come share our new home, and they obliged.

John & Deb Wilkinson came from Rochester, Minnesota, to visit us for a few days. We had the porch finished enough to have a tray of hot, steaming lobsters out there. We also took in the Farnsworth Art Museum in Rockland, and toured the Boat Show. John likes to do projects, is a great electrician, and he helped me finish the wiring on the porch.

TJ, Jacqui and Luna

TJ and his family made their way up here from Brooklyn. We took advantage of a rare sunny day to walk to the waterfront. Luna picked wildflowers. We also went to Rockland, and tyhe kids took in the Lobster Fest while we grocery shopped.


Luna and Porter

They brought along a Slip&Slide, which was a lot of fun for a while. On Tuesday, we took a boat trip to Round Pond, about 8 miles down the bay.

These are just the latest visitors. We've had others, starting around July 11th. And more to come.

Porchbuilding, Maine style

7/23 Laying the floor

Around 1999 we decided to build a screen porch on our cabin in Northern Minnesota. Many hands helped over 2 summers to clear, excavate, deck, and build a roof on a 10x24 deck. Lack of experience, inadequate bracing, and strong Minnesota winter winds brought the roof to the ground. Wiser then, we had a professional rebuild it, and it has since withstood the weather. We enjoyed it greatly.

7/24 Walls going up

When we contemplated adding a porch to our Maine house, we never hesitated to find a good builder to do the job. Recommendations were received, calls were made, and by February, we had a working plan and a verbal agreement. By early June, a building permit was in hand. Work would begin in July.

Begin it did. Progress has been good, only a few glitches have diverted the track, and we expect to be more or less finished by the end of next week. We are leaving some finishing touches for our own hands, like adding indoor/outdoor carpet and putting the interior trim and walls up.

7/28 Adding Rafters

Our contractor/carpenter is Ian Young, of Warren, ME. He has hired his brother on, and they work together remarkably well. And they do great work. If anything, I would say the porch is overbuilt... but then, my last attempt fell down, didn't it.

After experiencing the heat of the summer sun under the unadorned roof in Minnesota, we've spent the money to insulate the roof and the floor, which should make the space comfortable in three seasons. The windows and doors are first quality, though not flashy. The exterior siding will be vinyl, closely matching the rest of the house. Azec trim boards will never need paint. Perhaps the only drawback is that the rest of the house looks a bit shabby next to the new construction.

7/30 Shingles on the roof

While it won't be finished for a week, we ate our second meal out there tonight. It's a wonderful, light space. We think we'll really enjoy it.

I'll report on it again when it's done.

Friendship Day

The Petting Zoo

Every year, our little town of Friendship hosts a summer celebration called, appropriately enough, Friendship Day. It's a day filled with events and fun for people of all ages. This year, after nearly a week of rain most every day, the morning fog burned off to reveal a beautiful sunny day in the mid 70's.

The events planned are similar to other town's ideas of celebration. For example, there is a softball game for all comers, regardless of age or sex. There's plenty of food for all. There's a parade.

We started off our Friendship Day with a blueberry pancake breakfast at one of the (two) churches in town. Yummy! We got to meet other "summer residents" who came in from Northern Vermont and Eastern Massachusetts.

The difference between our festival and other towns are, in some cases, quite dramatic. For example, we were used to petting zoos filled with sheep and baby pigs in the midwest when we lived in Minnesota. In Friendship, the petting zoo includes lobsters, crabs, and fish. And just like the kids in Minnesota pet a sheep, the kids here had fun petting a flounder. Really!

Making lobster rolls at the fire department

And while some of the food is the same, the fire department gets lobsters donated, and they make the most yummy lobster rolls.

The parade is miniscule, compared to most that I've been to. But this year the theme of the parade was the Fire Department (all volunteer, of course). So the neighboring towns from all around us sent over their fire engines to join in our parade. I hope there were no fires in Cushing or Warren! We also had lots of antique cars show up.

The artists and artisans bring their wares, and sell them in booths in downtown. Wool is just as valuable here as in Minnesota, and wool crafted items are on sale. Other big sellers are Adirondack chairs, photos of blueberries, and fudge.

The softball game

The softball game is held near the grounds of the schoolhouse. Because of all the rain, the field was pretty muddy, and grounders which should have been short hops turned into short plops. But everybody was having fun, and I heard the familiar "Oh, I'm gonna feel this tomorrow" from the lobster fishermen who generally use their muscles to lift traps, not run bases. I left early in the game, I could tell it was going to get ugly.... muddy, dirty, and ugly.

Out on the water, races are held for both sailboats (The Chowder Cup) and lobster boats. It used to be that the biggest, baddest, fastest lobster boat would make the most money. They could set more traps, get around to them quicker, and place them farther from land. But the economics of lobstering have shifted dramatically in the past couple of years. Economy offers the premium these days. Cruising to your traps at 18 knots is far more fuel efficient than cruising to them at 30 knots. And some fishermen are staying out overnight to save fuel, and reach those far away places. So the fast boat is falling out of favor, and the races are becoming a reminiscense of the good old days, not a measure of the best. Fastest, maybe, but not the best.

Bill Michaud trying to auction off a sex book

Finally, our day uptown ends with the ersatz auction, moderated by our wonderful ersatz auctioneer, Bill Michaud. Like most ambitious people in Friendship, Bill wears numerous professional hats. He and his wife run "The Outsider's Inn", one of the (only) two B&Bs in Friendship. He also rents and guides kayak trips in the harbor and bays. And he also sells real estate.

But he seems to have the most fun being an auctioneer for a day, making jokes and enticing bidders to raise their bids by a dollar or two. All for a good cause, as the proceeds from the auction pay the annual fees for our ambulance service, and have for many years.

There's other things to do, like visiting the Friendship Museum, looking at the items to be included in the bicentennial time capsule at the town hall, and several attractions for the little kiddies. And after it gets dark, they promise to set off fireworks. What a fun day!

Doing the Maine Thing

The first midsummer visitors

The first wave of midsummer visitors arrived here last week, so the work we were doing on the house got wrapped up and we stowed our tools for a while.

The first hearty souls were Consuelo's old friends from Up With People, Cheri Cross and Deb Bruce who live in Northampton, Mass. They stayed two nights with us, we had cooperative weather, so we took our pontoon for its maiden voyage to Rockland Harbor to watch the Friendship Sloop races. It was a beautiful day and we had lots of fun out on the water. I took scores of pictures of the sailboats challenging each other in light breezes. After that, we found a wonderful seaside lobster joint in Owl's Head and they treated us to lobster. And after that, we went to the movies to see Mamma Mia, a bunch of fun movie.

Friedship sloop racing

As they left on Saturday, my son Paul and his family, with one cousin from NC in tow, arrived for an overnight. We took the pontoon out in Friendship and cruised over to Cow Island to see if we could find seals, and we did. They took us out to lunch at Moody's, and while we were there, my brother and his wife arrived from Brookfield, Mass. They fed us well on Sunday night, the most delicious steaks. We took the boat back to Rockland for another harbor cruise, and on Tuesday, we bought a bunch of lobsters here in Friendship and had a feast with all the fixins.

Wild blueberries

When they left on Wednesday, I took a walk with my camera back into the Maine woods, and found a place where I could pick blueberries. We had those this morning on cereal. Another treat!

And we're doin' the Maine thing, ayuh!

Bad, bad Garmin!

I generally try to give a company the benefit of the doubt when there's a problem. However, my patience has been overstretched with Garmin in the past 60 days, and I feel it necessary to make a public statement of my disapproval.

Last summer, I bought a Garmin 420S combo GPS/depthfinder. We boat in the waters off Friendship, which is littered with islands and several rivers feed Muscongus Bay, making visual navigation tricky. For safety reasons, the having the GPS and a depthfinder made good sense. I used it on my Bass Tracker several times and am satisfied with the device.

This spring, I needed to move the device from the Bass Tracker to our 20' Pontoon. I got the transducer moved, set up the wiring, and went to mount the GPS when I found that the mounting bracket had corroded to the point of unusability. The long, thin screw was frozen to the nut inserted on the plastic bracket. WD40 did not help, and eventually the plastic gave out so the nut spun freely. This should not happen to a marine part.

So I set out to get a new bracket. I found Garmin's online web site, placed an order (I thought) for th part, and waited two weeks. No part. Then we went off to Indiana to help with the floods. while there, I sent an email to Garmin support, and they indicated that they had no record of my order. Hmmmm.

The email also said to call the phone order line. I tried that from Indiana, but we were working 12 hour days, and they were closed at anytime I could call.

I tried to place the order again. No luck. Both of our credit cards were rejected without explanation.

When we stopped in Ipswich for a couple days, I checked into a marine store, which had a healthy stock of Garmin stuff, but no parts. The dealer implied that Garmin parts are only available from Garmin.

When we got home, I tried the phone again. I encountered a 35 minute wait time, and while waiting, I thought about the online order problem. I realized that when Garmin was aking for my shipping and billing addresses online, they really wanted the zip code for my credit card. Though they never said than, nor did the indicate what the problem was with the card. I re-entered the order online using our Texas address for billing address, and the order went through.

The online system said the part would ship in 4-7 days, and that they would send me an email when it shipped. 10 days later, I sent another email, asking about my order, with the number. 2 days later, I got a reply indicating that my part was on backorder, with no prognosis as to when it would ship.

Needless to say, I'm upset. We're now nearly 60 days from when this started, with no end in sight. If you have to ask me, don't buy Garmin. Their quality is doubtful, and their support is near zero.

Back to Maine

Fly in the Ferns

We got back home from Indianapolis on Saturday, July 5th. We stopped in Ipswich for a couple nights to celebrate Liam's and the nation's birthdays (though not in that order). Paul and I got out to fish a couple times. You can measure our results by noting all the pictures of fish on this page.

The Red Cross was pretty well transitioned by the time we left. We had shrunk to about 90 volunteers from a high of about 500, and a total of over 1000. We stayed a few extra days to finish up operations in staffing, leaving just 2 people to move everything back to the Indy chapter.

We both now find traveling by air to be an effort. Perhaps we're spoiled by having everything with us when we travel in our motorhome. Our air travel was not unusual, though were on standby on an overbooked flight from Philly to Portland until the no-shows were counted.

Flashy mushroom

I was glad to get my good camera back into my hands upon returning home. I took a long walk in the woods behind our house and snapped the photos here. It's a challenge to find interesting subjects in the Maine woods at this time of year. The ones here were trying very hard to be subtle and not be noticed, except for the yellow mushroom that was standing tall and bold in the middle of the trail in the woods.

We took a day of recovery on Sunday, and will get back to work scraping wallpaper and otherwise getting the house together for company coming on July 16th. We will have to make up for the time we spent in Indianapolis, but it is a labor of love.

Four corner Flower

Thumper stayed in a kennel for a week at the beginning of our trip, after which Paul rescued her and brought her home. She was very glad to see us, and even more glad to get back to the house in Maine, where she can wander through the fields.