As Houston slowly tries to pick its way out of the mess that Hurricane Ike created on Saturday, here’s my own side of the story:

Luckily my mother was able to evacuate and spend a few days with family in the north of Houston. This kept her away from the storm surge but the eye still passed very close to them in Conroe, so they got to sit and listen to the howling winds through the night and then lost their power with the rest of Houston. Fortunately, she returned home Sunday to a house that was in one piece, although she described the ride home as one of the most harrowing of her life, since most lanes of the freeway were still flooded and debris was everywhere.

House-wise, we were particularly worried about windows being blown out, since we have a lot of big ones, but all of them were intact. Part of a tree fell over, but it fell away from the house, and the back yard fence is leaning but not fully knocked over. My car, which had a back window that needed to be taped up as it had fallen off the runners and into the door, managed to weather the storm fine, which was a great surprise. My aunt’s house was fine as well, although my cousin’s gym wasn’t so lucky. The metal roof got ripped off and rain poured in over all of the gymnastics equipment. Luckily she has insurance but it’s going to take quite a bit of work to get it back to normal, plus all the time it takes for everything to dry out and for a roofing contractor to become available.

The majority of Houston is without power at the moment; they’re gradually restoring power but they think about 3 million people are still without it and that it might take a month to get everyone back on the grid. Once my dad gets back from a business trip to Tokyo (he was supposed to fly in on Saturday, which clearly didn’t happen, and now he’s due to fly in today), my parents are thinking about going to San Antonio until power gets restored, since my mom’s college has canceled classes for a while. It depends whether my dad’s office in west Houston has had power restored, since they were the least affected by the storm. I think my mother is hoping that there is no power there because at least in San Antonio they would be able to buy food that needs to be refrigerated and take hot showers!

A few nights ago my mom joined up with the neighbors and had a big BBQ with all the food that was about to spoil and my mom is still having to go down the street to take showers at a neighbor’s house that has a gas water heater. She has all of the windows open in the heat and can hear all of the neighbor’s power generators going…but unfortunately we don’t have one and they are pretty much sold out across the entire state of Texas now. I wish I was there to help clean up but I’m kind of glad I’m not because at least here in Oz I have power…and I don’t have to eat meals of canned vienna sausages and crackers like my mom did last night. She’s absolutely bored out of her mind because there’s not a lot to do except clean up, especially once it gets dark, when she can pretty much only read by flashlight. She’s also going to have a lot of fun trying to buy more food, since some supermarkets are finally open but there are mile-long queues just to get in. The gas situation is worse, with gas supplies expected to be low until at least the end of the month and massive queues at the few open stations.

There are some photo galleries on The Houston Chronicle that show the full extent of the damage. We got very lucky that the storm surge wasn’t as high as predicted because our house was spared, but Galveston Island was pretty much destroyed as were a lot of other coastal communities (Kemah, for instance, where there is a nice boardwalk with loads of seafood restaurants, games, and even a wooden roller coaster…all of which was under about 10 feet of water after the storm). I’m hoping that nearby League City fared alright since I haven’t heard from my tennis coach about whether his Fitness Centre or his house are okay. The pictures coming out of the disaster areas are just unbelievable, from boats and houses sitting in the middle of the freeway to shocked fish stuck in chain-link fences. The authorities say it’s going to take more than $10B to clean up because structures all the way across Houston were mangled, and lots of school districts have cancelled school “until further notice.” Overall, it’s just a mess and it’s going to take a long time for the city to get back to normal.

By the way, things are going really well here in sunny Brisbane. It’s much warmer than it was in Perth and I feel like I need an entire wardrobe change…but I like it! Much better than battling down the Terrace as the chilly wind howls past. I’ve got a great physio here that’s put me on a fixed gym routine to help strengthen my back muscles as well as improve my posture, which has always been terrible, so I’ve invested in some dumbbells, a medicine ball, and a fitness ball so I can work on my fitness from home and be pain free as soon as possible. Also, it’s great to be around James for more than just a weekend, even if I do feel like the housewife because I’m staying at home all day cleaning the house and doing laundry!

All photos in this post have been obtained from the Houston Chronicle. Mouseover the image to see the credits.

This satellite image is just scary, especially when you notice that the hurricane is actually the size of Texas itself. Even worse is the fact that I watch the news here and see waves splashing over the familiar seawall in Galveston like it wasn’t a 17-foot barrier to the sea. My family is safe and sound in San Antonio/north Houston/Tokyo, but I’m still thinking of everyone at home and hoping you all have homes and businesses to go back to after the 25-foot storm surge has its way…

I’m happy to say that my back has steadily improved since my last post, and I am now at the point where I don’t constantly feel it, although if I do much of anything it still steadily starts tightening up. Still, I’ll take what I can get and be happy that I can function in a nearly normal capacity now (if you count being a professional bum as being normal). It came at a great time too, since the Olympics are over so I have no excuse to sit and watch random sports all day every day (and a belated congrats to Michael Phelps, who I really enjoyed watching win those 8 gold medals, especially the 100m butterfly, and Rafa, who cruised to his gold medal)…although I’ve still found excuses to get up at 4am to watch tennis (Rafa vs. Andy Murray was a good match and well worth the early wake up call, even if the guy I wanted to win didn’t…but as Poppa said, I have to be true to my “British nationality” and cheer for Andy, which I will be doing when I get up at 5am tomorrow to watch the final against Fed).

Anyway, back to my point…my physio has always been a strong advocate of keeping my back moving rather than sitting as an amoebic lump on the couch. This started with a strict list of stretches that I had to do every hour to get my full range of movement back as well as to stretch out the muscles that were so tight in my back. A few weeks ago, he decided that I was ready to push even further than this and actually begin really exercising. Part of his goal was to try to push me as hard as possible to see if I broke before I went to Brisbane, since it’d be better to happen now than to think I’m better and then possibly get a job and fall apart once I got there. The good news is that he didn’t manage to break me, and the even better news for my own sanity is that I was able to get out of the house in a different manner than just walking the same streets up and down, day after day.

There’s three significant things I’ve managed to do in the last few weeks that I consider to be real landmarks. The first is that I ran 2kms twice in the span of three days and didn’t collapse afterwards on either occasion. The physio said the real challenge with running would be getting out of bed the next morning, but I managed that, albeit with a significant amount of stiffness in my neck, traps, and in the middle of my back, but no severe pain. It was really exhilarating as well, which was understandable since my physio said that I would probably feel high after the first few times exercising since I hadn’t done it in so long.

The second significant event was competing in the 4km City-to-Surf a couple weeks ago. Normally, I probably would have entered the 12km race, which actually goes from the city (St. Georges Terrace) to the surf, just because I am competitive and would like to see how far I could push myself, but I knew that would be a very dumb idea in my current state. I was iffy on whether I should even enter until the Wednesday before the race (which happened on Sunday, August 31), when my physio told me it would be a great idea, provided I came in the next day for treatment so he could make sure I was okay.

The race itself was absolutely insane, with 36,825 entrants throughout the half-marathon, 12km walk/run, 4km walk/run, and 11km wheelchair divisions. One of those entrants was Cathy Freeman, the Olympic golden girl of 2000, who said at the end of the race that it was the longest she’d ever run and she had to really push herself to finish under 68 minutes (her division). She said she felt she couldn’t stop running because of what people would think! Anyway, it seemed like about half of the entrants were in the 4km division, which started in Perry Lakes. A few friends from work and I got there about 15 minutes before the race and were joined by our Scottish friend just as the runners were taking off. She was planning on running while the rest were going to walk, so I said I would join her for as far as I could, since as I’ve said before, I really wanted to push myself.

Running was really quite difficult, since by the time we passed the starting mats that triggered the timers on our shoes, a lot of the walkers had started as well and were pretty much blocking the entire path with their strollers, linked arms, etc. We ended up running on the grass half the time to get around them. By the time we reached the 1km mark, Ibby had run quite far ahead, which was okay with me because I didn’t want to end up in one of the first aid tents along the way! I managed to run probably about 3 of the 4kms, with many short walking breaks while I avoided various obstacles. It really would have been nice to have a runners’ lane and a walkers’ lane, but it’s probably best that I had to slow down a little, since I was definitely feeling my back by the end of it (but thankfully not enough to make use of those first aid tents!). I still managed to come in roughly 2,400th place out of 9,297 people, according to the <a href=”http://citytosurf.activ.asn.au/2/3226/3179/2008_results.pm”>official results website</a>, which wasn’t too bad at all! Plus, after the race we all got free leg massages and sausages courtesy of Prime Health Care, who my team was associated with.

The third big accomplishment was going to Rottnest Island last week. Rotto is a jewel of an island about a 30 minute ferry ride from Fremantle that Perth denizens love to head over to during the summer. I hadn’t been there yet because I was told it was best during the summer, when the water’s just warm enough to go snorkeling in (there’s tons of reefs lying just off the coast). Unfortunately, I never made it to summer in Perth, so I decided that I might as well go in the beginning of spring instead just so I could see the place.

I nearly didn’t make it over there, since I made it to the ferry terminal well past the 9.30am departure date, but fortunately the ferry was running a bit late. We got over there at about 11, so I had 5 hours to traverse the island and do as I pleased before the last ferry left at 4pm. My first stop was picking up some sunscreen and food in the shops at Thomson Bay. I was surprised to see that they weren’t as excessively overpriced as I thought they might be; Subway was only about $1 more expensive per sandwich than on the mainland. Unfortunately, Subway had an insane line, so I went to the Rottnest Bakery instead, which proved to be even more costly time-wise. They promised me that my squid and chips would be done in 8 minutes, and then 20 minutes later brought me my money back and said they were sorry, they’d burned my chips, so they were going to give me the food for free for waiting so long. I was extremely frustrated at the time, since I felt like valuable minutes were ticking away, but it ended up working out for the best, since I got a free (and very good, but very greasy) meal as well as getting to see some of the local wildlife while I waited. Two peacocks were facing off over a peahen, so there were lots of flared feathers for me and my fellow tourists to get excited about, and even more exciting, a quokka appeared on the deck of the bakery to investigate the smell of food. Quokkas are tiny marsupials that only live on Rotto; they look kind of like a cross between a skinny wombat and a kangaroo (since they both walk slowly until spooked and then hop away). This quokka, like pretty much all of the animals on the island that I saw, was completely unafraid of people and walked straight up to my bike helmet and attemped to get in, thinking that it smelled like food rather than the bag right next to it. It was adorable and attracted quite a crowd!

I finally made it away from Thomson Bay and took my rented bike north towards Bathurst Lighthouse, which stands at the northeastern point of the island. It was under this lighthouse on Pinky Beach that I enjoyed my lunch while lying out on the white sand. What a tough life, huh? It was at this point that I really began to regret not planning better and spending a night at one of the hostels on the island because I knew that 5 hours would just not be enough to do the island properly.

From there, I climbed up to the lighthouse to get a bit of a bird’s eye view of the northern coast before hitting the road again. I traversed a good half of the northern coast, passing turquoise waters and white sand everywhere, as well as the occasional settlement (at Geordie Bay), wind turbine, quokka (two of them were browsing on the side of the road, one of which walked up and started pawing my tire when I stopped), and brown lizard (which I nearly ran over before it zipped out of the way surprisingly quickly). There are very few vehicles on Rottnest, which made cycling a joy. The only downside of cycling was the hunching I inevitably had to do to hang on to the handlebars, which compounded with the backpack on my back didn’t do my back a world of good. I ended up stopping and relaxing at Little Armstrong Bay, a secluded beach with only 5 or 6 other people on it. Just off the sand started coral reefs, which a little boy was snorkeling over. I was jealous, wishing that I could get in the water as well without the chill causing problems in my back. Oh well…just another reason to come back to WA to visit!

The ride back to Thomson Bay took me past most of the big lakes on the island, which were nice, but not nearly as stunning as they look from aerial views. I peddled the 3+kms pretty quickly and ended up having about half an hour to spare, which I enjoyed having a cold drink in the shade (but still with a great view of the beach and the Australian mainland) at the very-under-construction Quokka Arms Hotel. Overall, it was a great day and a great way to do my rehabilitation exercise without just sitting in a gym!

The other big news I have is that I’m heading to Brisbane on Thursday morning. That made last weekend very sad, since it was full of goodbyes–a wonderful goodbye dinner & drinks at the Olive Tree on Friday followed by a goodbye BBQ hosted by my flatmate (and very good cook) on Saturday. I enjoyed them, but it made me realize just how much I am going to miss the friends that have been there for me in the last five months. As I said above, yet another reason to come back and visit! I am excited about going to Queensland though, because I’ll get to see James and I won’t have to do any more packing for a while! Plus, if I get lucky, I’ll find a job there and settle down somewhat permanently, which sounds great to me after what’s amounted to 8 months of being a nomad (even though I was living pretty normally here, it was just rather fleeting).