Hurricane prep is all those things I put off till tomorrow. A little cleaning here, a bit of picking up there. But then there is the 5 or so gallon baggies of ice in the freezer. This list of things keeps getting longer.

I don't really recall doing any prep for Alicia. The forecasters said Freeport, but fogot about the right hand turn that the storms make when they hit the upper Texas coast. Not sure why they do that but they all seem to. Alicia was not that big of deal in my book. Went to sleep about 11 and woke up around 5. Thought about going to sleep then all of a sudden I was awake. Dad was too. We decided to drive just east of downtown and pick up a generator. I-10 was empty and the wind was blowing from the North. The suburban was rocking a bit so we just got up along the inside wall. We grabbed the generator, if you can grab a 15kw track generator onto a dual axle trailer and then stood behind a building and watched the storm. Not too bad, but the rain did hurt. On the way home the wind was from the South so the eye passed over us at some point.

Afterwords I was going around the city checking tower sites. It was very wierd to have only downtown lit up. I think it never lost power. It did lose lots of windows. They had gravel on tar roofs on the buildings. Gravel makes pretty good window breakers at 60mph.

So the prep continues. Sharpen some chainsaw blades. Fueled everything up a couple of days ago. Boarded a couple of bigger windows. Now the storm track keeps pushing to the east. Cut all the branches closer to the roof.

I noticed the shift in what I was planning today. Stopped with the survival planning and with the rescue thinking. Still have everything that needs charging on the charger. I should have internet access throughout the storm as long as the celluar network stays up.

Rita entering the Gulf and starting to form up