Originally Posted By: wavinwayne
At last check, the projected path of Ike has it headed for (drumroll please) the Lousiana coast. If it stays a Cat3 or lower, I think we'll see a lot fewer people flee New Orleans for this one. Having to evacuate your home 2 times in 2 weeks would really suck.
With large sucking sounds, too. I really can't afford to run from this one unless I leave early, as I did for Gustav. Yes, there's lots of room on my credit card, but a big chunk of what I spent in AL was for vet care for my 11-year-old cat, and who knows if she'll travel well this time.
I think in the weeks to come (if Ike doesn't hit New Orleans or nearby, of course), we'll begin to see newspaper columns about the changed mood here. Having to evacuate twice in three years is too much to sustain the grim but light-hearted mood we saw here after Katrina; see the comic messages people painted on their abandoned refrigerators in late '05. I think people are starting to loudly question the wisdom of living on the slope of Mt. Vesuvius after Pompeii gets whacked.
I chatted with several people, all ages, outside the grocery as we waited for it to open today (and at that it had almost no perishables yet). None of them had anything good to say about NO or the way the contraflow was handled; most had good memories of wherever they fled to. Like me in my young adult years, a lot of folks here have had their eyes opened now by the way things run in other cities. We know it doesn't have to be this way: a city doesn't have to sport cracked streets, rare left turn lanes and lights adding to congestion, high crime, a lousy economy, low pay and high rents, public and unabashed corruption, and nasty weather plus occasional whirling storms, to have character.
My new hobby is job-hunting in a serious way. I've already applied for 4 jobs at the U. of Alabama. Wish me luck.
