For those of you who somehow missed the news, we were recently hit by Hurricane Ike, a Category 2 storm with a storm surge more typical of a Category 3 or 4 storm. We were fortunate to have avoided any major damage, and our power has been restored after nearly 60 hours. More than 2.2 million folks in and around the Houston area are still without electricity. Our story follows…

On Friday, September 12th, we began preparing the house (and yard) for Ike. We setup a shelter in my garage office, since it is the most secure part of our house. Had an air mattress, the kiddos’ sleeping bags, battery-powered lantern and other goodies in there. Outside, I spent an hour tightening up our fence, and then took the reflector from my satellite dish down, since it had the biggest potential to be torn off in high winds.

We spent most of the evening hours in the cul-de-sac, visiting with neighbors who rarely spoke with us otherwise. That was probably the most enjoyable part of the experience.

The kiddos crashed early, and the sound of the portable A/C drowned out the noise outside, which was probably a good thing for them.

I got up pretty much every hour throughout the storm to look out the front and back windows, and to shoot some video. Finally around 4am, the storm reached its peak at our house, and the wind was pretty fierce. We lost power around that time.

I was able to access the nearest WeatherBug via my iPhone, which was really handy for monitoring wind. Our sustained winds were around 50mph, with gusts as high as 89mph.

At one point, I heard a strange sound, and since the wind was not too bad (in between gusts), I put on a rain jacket and ventured outside to take a look around. The back yard was littered with branches, but otherwise okay. When I went to the front, however, I discovered that my neighbor’s small live oak tree had been blown over on top of my car!

There was no way I could move the tree by myself, and I figured that if I left my car where it was, the winds would eventually scratch it to hell. I decided to grab my keys and back it out; even if it got scratched in the process, it was bound to be better than what the wind would do. I backed it out and decided to wait until morning to see what damage, if any, had been done to the car.

The next morning, the wind was still gusting and obviously, it was raining. We were able to manually light the natural gas stove to boil water and fix hot oatmeal and coffee. As the weather continued to lighten, I made another tour of the outside of the house.

We’re surrounded by two-story houses, and that probably ended up being a good thing for us. Our neighbors had lost numerous shingles, and there were tons of branches of various sizes strewn across the yard. I found one of my gutters in my side yard, but otherwise, our house had no damage whatsoever.

Best of all, my car had no scratches at all! My front right bumper had been popped out, but I can easily fix that. A tree fell on my car, and it was virtually undamaged. How about that???

We spent most of Saturday listening to the battery-powered radio and trying to keep the kiddos entertained. We limited our trips to the refrigerator, but had plenty of food and water to keep fed for days, if needed. In the evening, we fired up the charcoal grill and enjoyed pork chops and sausage.

The kiddos were a bit scared of the dark, but we enjoyed a candle-lit dinner and moved our “camp” to the living room for the night.

Sunday, we spent most of the day cleaning up the debris from our yard and visiting with our neighbors. At one point, we climbed into my car to recharge our iPhone batteries via my portable power converter. Cell phone network availability was horrible, and even text messages were slow to send and arrive, often coming in bursts of 5-6 messages at a time. AT&T’s 3G network was completely unavailable, and the EDGE network was down more than it was up. Voice calls were nothing but an exercise in futility.

Sometime during the late afternoon, we suddenly heard hoots and cheers from all around the neighborhood as the electricity came back on. I am not kidding when I tell you this, but the sun actually began to shine at the exact same moment!

But perhaps the best line — and a comment on our culture — came from one of our neighbors who called out, “See you all next year!” as he and his wife returned to their house.

We all rushed back into our houses, and cranked on the A/C, happy to be returning to normal. We turned on the TV for our first look at the pictures and were shocked at the extent of the damage in Galveston.

However, the power went down repeatedly, and after only about three hours, it finally went down again for good. Fortunately, the Houston area received a cool front, which was a welcome relief from the hot, humid and sticky air.

That night, we set up camp in our master bedroom, with the kiddos in sleeping bags all around us. With windows open, we slept fairly well for the first time in three nights.

The next day following breakfast, we went to the park to enjoy the cool air and let the kiddos burn off some of their cabin fever. The weather was so beautiful, it was easy to forget that we had all just come through a hurricane!

When we returned to our house after a couple of hours, we were delighted to discover that our power had been restored — this time for good.

All total, we were without power for nearly 60 hours. We went through the milk and other perishables. But we had plenty of water and could have continued to cook on the natural gas stove for a few more days, if needed.

Today, I’m back at work, since apparently, our bills aren’t going to give us an extension due to the hurricane.  :)  But it is nice to be returning to normal, and our attention is turned toward the hundreds of thousands of other Houstonians who will not have power or basic supplies for some time to come.

Time to be our best selves!