Shopping, splashing, and sad news in Houston

Thursday was eye appointment day. Chloe and I both got our eyes checked and did the one-hour-glasses thing at Lenscrafters. I’ll post a picture of Chloe’s new look soon, but I’m too tired today (see below). She looks great, and her resemblance to her Aunt Lynn is more noticeably revealed.

On Friday, Frank and I resumed our cruising preparations. We shopped, shopped, and shopped some more: Target, REI, West Marine, Joann Fabric, and Home Depot. It was great, felt really good to be *able* to make cruising preparations.

REI was the most fun. It felt like being home, of course ;-), especially when the cashier turned out to be from Olympia! He was very interested to hear about our Katrina misadventures and then picked our brains for cruising tips. REI ought to feature the adventurous nature of their employees in their advertising.

Saturday, the four of us returned to Splashtown. The weather was iffy – overcast with occasional sprinkles – so the crowd was light to begin with. (Southern mothers worry about their kids getting cold if the temperature goes below 90. I believe it hovered at about 89 all day.) When the afternoon thundershower hit and they closed all the rides, the crowd went down to probably less than 100 people in the whole park. We waited 30 minutes or so for the storm to pass and then wore ourselves out climbing stairs and sliding slides as fast as our legs could carry us. It was pretty much an ideal watersliding experience.

I think, all in all, our favorite ride is a relatively mild one called Thunder Run. You go down in 2- or 3-person toboggan-style tubes, so there’s the fun of shared experience, and it has thrills without leaving you adrenaline-shaky afterward like the Tornado does (for me, anyway).

Saturday night, we took the gang out for Tex-Mex food, in an attempt to thank Chuck and Karen for hosting us all through all this time. As we begin our third week in their house, one meal out doesn’t seem like much! Needless to say, they will be welcome to crash with us any time they like, for years and years to come!

Today was boating day. Chuck, Frank, the girls, and I left Karen, Chris, and Marty to quieter pursuits and headed up to Lake Conroe with Chuck’s powerboat. We spent the day being towed on inner tubes, dodging lovebugs, and swimming in the ~90-degree lake water. The lake was a bit more crowded than we like it, so we also had the opportunity to watch the usual assortment of dingbats and daredevils do their thing. One guy was towing a tube behind his jet boat, with the tube rider constantly subjected to the 70-foot arc of spray. It looked like tubing in a waterfall.

Unlike the double tube that we’re accustomed to, Chuck and family like to use single-rider tubes. We trailed three of them today, and it is fun to bounce off of each other and try to move from tube to tube. Marjie was a natural at all the tube acrobatics, and the faster the better. Chloe was happiest sitting steady on the center tube, although she got pretty cocky about riding with no hands as the day wore on.

Battered, bruised, and exhausted, we returned to Chuck and Karen’s to some bad news. One of Chrissy’s friends who also evacuated to Houston had called to say that her heart-patient mother hasn’t recovered from the stress of evacuating. They aren’t expecting her to make it. Chris headed up to the hospital to deliver some fruit and other supplies for the vigil. I don’t imagine situations like this are turning up in the Katrina death toll, but they ought to be. This is a woman who might have lived years longer without the storm upheaval. Very sad.

The news today from Slidell, on the other hand, is pretty good. Power, water, and some phone service have been restored, and no official deaths have been recorded. The communities where flooding is a periodic fact of life are coming back much more quickly than New Orleans and St. Bernard parish, with many of them even expecting to open their schools within a week or two.

Power restored to the boatyard doesn’t necessarily mean power restored to the boat slips, but we’re probably going to head back soon, even if it means some time without air conditioning. We want to get everything ready to go so that once the waterways clear and the bridges become operational again, we can head out. Or we’ll at least be there in the thick of things to find out if that isn’t going to happen soon enough to do us any good.

If anybody knows of a cheap way to move a sailboat over land to a functional port, let us know. ;-)

KQR