Ahhh
I've had a hot shower and washed my hair. The power, water and TV are on and life is settling into it's new reality with a few of the basic comforts. Our houseboat got shaken like a vodka martini so there is some chaos to be had, butno major damage. All the termite beads got shaken loose and sprinkled over everything, so it's nice to be able to vacuum again. The termites were evicted with a tenting last year, but they didn't pack their bags when they left.
At one point I saw five little round pearls on my bedroom carpet. "What's this?" I thought, filing through my memory cache for misplaced necklaces. Picking them up, I realized I had four perfect lizard eggs and one hatched shell that must have tumbled from their hiding place. i consider this a sign of good luck.

Wilma, the Stories

Man, what a wallop Wilma delivered us here in the keys. And from what I'm hearing, it's worse on the mainland. The thing about a small place is that it is very manageable. Long lines here are more like chat rooms and wherever you go -- the FEMA center, city hall, churches, unemployment office -- you know somebody or their cousin.
The stories that I'm hearing are incredible: People being chased by the torrent of water; people who went to the official shelter and left terrified not of the storm, but of the other people there; people who saw fist fights over gas on their way back from evacuation; dozens of households trapped at the end of a long lonely road after all their cars were flooded.
I've written parts of my story here. Now it's your turn. This thread is for your story.

New Reality

So now, the day after the storm, our world has changed. No power, ice and water hard to find. Gas scarce. Generators and various saws and sirens alternate with a surreal silence. Nothing is level or clean. Comical storm results: a traffic lights hanging four feet above the pavement; a downspout twisted into antic sculpture and a bright green iguana drinking dull green water from a storm-polluted swimming pool.

Internet is difficult so this will be brief. The server is quirky, perhaps because all the wiring in Florida is wet.

Fortunately Wilma was followed by a norther -- funny in itself since both are a little out of season (opposite seasons). So it's cool and dry. And sunny, so people have their carpets, towels and bedding draped over their cars to dry out. Lots of people pushing cars that were flooded yesterday.

Still Key West is a tiny island and the people are pretty mellow. No looting I've heard of and the atmosphere is casual, chatty in the lines for ice and still good-humored most places. One of the advantages of smallness, I think. Big cities get overwhelmed. Here, it's manageable.

Let's see how I manage tomorrow.

Wallowing in Wilma's Wake

Wicked Wilma whacked us. The Florida keys got a storm surge from the south and one from the north, each washing completely over our 2-mile-by-4-mile island (highest elevation 17 feet). So you can say we're all washed up.

The power went out around midnight as the winds blew and objects thwacked into the outside walls and shutters. The water came up, went out, came up and took it's time going out, but when the tide went out, the island drained. That's one nice thing about an island, the water has a place to go.

Now the soundtrack here is generators and sirens. Tomorrow the chain saws will start.
My own houseboat did well -- no leaks, no damage except a couple of scrapes. It's very well built with 12x4 beams and hurricane strapping. It's been through the edges of Andrew, the eye of Georges and the middle of Wilma, along with all those baby storms in between.

It bounced around a bit and the dock is demolished. My kitchen cabinets spilled out so the floor is now a lovely mix of Cheerios, soy sauce, sesame oil, popcorn kernals, dish shards and glass splinters. But it's just clean up. And, oh yeah, replacing the china and glassware. Anyone who wants can send me pretty dish or glass.

The boat has been for sale for a while. Now I really feel like selling it. I'm what they call a motivated seller. If you're interested, see it at www.nu-flotilla.com and make me an offer.

Gotta go for now -- I'm working on generator power and gas is gonna hard to come by here.

Oh -- the times on my previous posts may be a little off. I keep forgetting to adjust them.

Fantasy Fest parade

As the coordinator of the Fantasy Fest parade it falls to me to organize the about 5000 people who end up on the parade route on the last Saturday in October.

The festival, which began in 1979, is a ten-day costuming event, but in fact, one of my big problems is keeping clothes on the parade entrants. The festival has always been a little raunchy, well, bawdy. I was there for the first one when an exotic exhibitionist named Sister customized the parade as a gold-painted, and otherwise nude,hood ornament on a fancy car.

I knew Sister as part of the windsurfing crowd that I hung with. I remember an Easter bonnet party we had on Smathers Beach. We had a chapeau contest and a balloon chase on windsurfers and a pot luck picnic. Get a bunch of athletes together and soon you have the classic beach antics. My slide show from the era reminds me of the ten-person pyramid and the circle of head stands. I remember the limbo. Sister was behind me, wearing her Easter bonnet and nothing else. Don't look back!

This year, the challenge will be getting out of town entrants and spectators down the road after Hurricane Wilma goes through and getting the town cleaned up. My hope is that we will have power and water and won't be relying on Red cross Brunswick stew.

I know this town, though. There will be no stopping a parade on Saturday night. I was pondering the possibilities, or rather the improbabilities of producing a parade under these conditions, when Liane, in our festival office, told me her mother,Phyllis, a long-time islander here, said there would be a parade of some sort even if it was just us locals.

"Of course," I thought, realizing that I didn't have to push this river. This river would flow right along, no problem. I always say that at a certain point, the parade process changes from me putting it together to the parade dragging me behind it. Here we are. All I have to do is try to keep up now.

See you all Saturday. We'll be having a parade. We may be wearing wetsuits and life vests and be preceded by a front-end loader full of debris, but I just bet there won't be any problem gettting a parade on Duval Street.

Preparing for the Wilma Wash-O-Matic

The lines are tied, three out of four cats are accounted for, shutters are up. All our A-list possessions have been packed and schlepped to our friends house -- Bounce the Clown and Mademoiselle Oo-La-La. The 2pm advisory just came out and Wilma is racing across the Gulf of Mexico straight at us. The satellite photo proves Wilma is bigger than we are. My argument that Key West is a tiny island and therefore easy to miss, doesn't hold up here.

I can hear the first few raindrops from the first serious outer band. Not a bad sound, gentle in fact, rhythmic.

Packing food for today and tomorrow, first aid kit, board games. I'm packing all my favorite clothes since my friend Donna tallied up the value of her possessions and decided clothes were expensive to replace. And my favorite shoes. But not my sweaters. I guess that means I'm not serious when I say I'm moving out of the hurricane zone.

Parade of Pi

I just read Life of Pi, the story of the boy in a lifeboat with a tiger. I'm in a parade with a hurricane.

I begin this blog the morning Hurricane Wilma,the Wonder Whirlwind, has finished with Cozumel and turns it's hungry maw toward Florida, where Ilive in KeyWest on a houseboat, exquisitely vulnerable from the directionwhere Wilma drools.
Wilma is expected to visit my living room this evening,aftersunset, if there is a sunset. Tomorrow this 2500-square-foot, two-story house on a barge may be splinters in dirty water.
This is the fourth serious hurricane threat this year. Each one steals a week from our livesat the best outcome. We secure things, put up shutters, pack up everything and move at least half to a friend's house on higher ground. We gather up the four cats and load their carriers, a litter box and the cockatiel in her cage into the van and drive away.Then we come back, usually after a delay caused by an accident on one of the bridges or a wash-out and move back in, clean up yard debris.
So three weeks of this summer have gone to that and now the unpredictable Wilma. We won't drive away for this one. We will stay at higher-ground's house. We'll know tomorrow morning this time if that was a mistake.

Freaks, Geeks, Goddesses and Wilma

Not only is Wilma breathing down my neck, but Fantasy Fest's fangs are teething on my jugular. I am the parade coordinator for Key West's ten-day costuming festival. The parade is secheduled for the 29th -- next Saturday. wilm comes immediately before and has already cut down the ten days to six, and practically speaking, five.

With the comforting drone of Brian Norcross in the background, I am still preparing for a parade that the city insists must go on. And I believe there will be no stopping some sort of parade next Saturday. We may be wearing personal floation devices (giving new meaning to parade FLOATS) and leading off with a front-end loader to scrape a path through the debris, but there will be a parade. I am thinking of requiring my parade ambassadors, a corps of 100 sober parade route officials to the usually drunken spectacle, to wear life vests just as a symbol of the survival of our sense of humor. i hope we will have our sense of humor. Although I am experiencing lapses in mine just now.