See, it wasn't so bad not having electricity: it was seeing everyone literally as far as the eye could see not not having electricity. Five buildings in a forty building complex with no electricity. All of the residences and businesses south of what may become an increasingly definitive artery in this area- West Belford Boulevard- all lit up. I watched my unopened box of Klondikes slowly but completely leak out upon the freezer bottom.
That was the last straw.
But mind you - and this was utterly important in my decision making processes: I was not hiking away from Ike. Houston is beginning to learn that New Orleans and Katrina is a special case of a city built under the coast it sits on. You sit on your porch in New Orleans staring at the levees 50 yards away. New Orleans, quiet as it is kept, is zero miles from the Gulf of Mexico. Houston is 50 miles inland. A 50 foot storm surge is not going to travel 50 miles inland. So we are learning to hide from the wind, stay our bucks off the freeways and let the people who really need to flee the surge do so.
So I was not running from Ike: this was a pull in the after wake of Ike. How do I telecommute with no electricity?
Frustrated, I went to San Antonio.
Now remember, as far as the eye could see was lit up. I was thinking to myself: there's something else at work here. Something not in the ordinary . . . so let me check the ticket sources to see if the Silver Stars have any games left in their WNBA season. Sure enough there was a game showing for Saturday. And versus Sacramento.
I had seen a line of something somewhere suggesting that Ruth Riley was with San Antonio. That alone would have gotten me to a San Antonio game even without Ike. Then there's the knuckle head who thought like most Americans that the Cold War was over: excuse me, with even just week's left in his presidency, and I'll leave that there.
But I knew that Sacramento would never part with Nicole Powell, and to me she is an incredibly beautiful spirit. But I really wanted to see Sacramento, though, because of Kara Lawson: I loved her Olympic gold medal game. Kara came in halfway through the first quarter, and said: "This game is over." It was never close again!
Wow, sistu!
I was still in SA for game three. Caught that one, too.
I am back in Houston, commuting to the brick and motor (by car, by rented car) 60 miles each way in, not Houston's, but the nation's worst traffic situation.
But I'll be back in SA Saturday v LA.
