Hurricane Jeanne...

[pale scotsman]

Anyone hear from Bill Bove, Keith A, and the other peninsular Floridians? Looks pretty bad (again) :crap: . Looks like RA might get a little something her way. Well anyway I hope you guys down there are OK.

[Bruce K]

I spoke to my Dad this afternoon where he lives just outside West Palm Beach.

He lost power for about 12-16 hours, had LOTS of wind and rain, but seems to have made it through OK.

Bill is very close to him so I am assuming he had a similar experience.

I IM'd with RA last night and there was nothing going on there yet.

BK

[RABikes2]

T. S. Jeanne has been here for a few hours. :crap: Lots of high wind, gusts, and hard rain. The schools have been closed for tomorrow. I don't have cable, so waiting to hear the latest on the 11:00 news. Bathtub is filled and a Thermos of hot coffee is made. Thanks for caring...my Serotta and I are home by ourselves tonight. :p

[SPOKE]

RA, glad to here you're ok. looks like the storm is starting to make a turn toward the carolinas. we're expecting a bit of rain that will cause some flooding. just hope the forecast is wrong.
cheers.......

[RABikes2]

Hi Spoke!

The wind and rain have been intense for the last three hours. Tornado warnings in quite a few counties. Hope the system weakens before it comes your way. Batten down your Serotta's! :banana:

oohhhh...thunder :eek: Computer off...

[Bill Bove]

I just got my power back at 4am. I know what time because I eas sitting sweating in the dark. I'll have my power days before most because my town owns it's own power station so we don't have to wait for FP&L to get to us and I'm on the same grid as the police station. My shop is on the outskirts of town though so I may not be juiced up there for a week. At home, no damage but it sure shook for a while. At the shop, more collapsed cieling panels. we've had a bad roof for a long time and all these pesky hurricanes haven't helped it any. The landlord thinks his insurence is going to buy him a new roof, I doubt it, the damage was caused by exsisting leaks compounded by the hurricanes. So I've got a hell of a looking cieling and an empty promise of a fixed roof. At least it's still there and the walls are still up. I'm afraid Kieth A may not have fared quite so well though, he was on the north side of the storm. Once again Fort Pierce and Port St. Lucie bore the brunt of it, twice in three weeks. That has got to be some kind of record.

[Bruce H.]

This will go down in the weather history books. Good to hear at least two of you made it ok. Hopefully when power is restored the rest will be ok as well. Property is replaceable, but life is not.
My wife has given up and will go down to Key West to gather her things for a permanent return to Pennsylvania soon.
I am up in Syracuse and have missed out on the flooding in our area of Bucks Cty, Pa. I heard we had to change our rides due to a million dollars worth of damage to our routes. Now with more heavy rains the floods will probably return. They were the worst since the mid 1950's from what I have heard.
Hopefully, Jeanne will be the last of this crazy season! Best to all down south
Bruce H.

[Kevin]

I am glad to hear that all we lost in Serottaville were a few items of property. Lets hope that the real losses are kept to a minimum.

Kevin

[SPOKE]

glad to here you're ok Bill. i can only imagine the mess that you've had to deal with due to these storms.
take care......

[RABikes2]

So glad to hear you're okay Bill! I was thinking about you and our other east coast Serottan's when Jeanne started in your side for the visit. Hope they made it through alright.

My power kept flickering last night, but I didn't lose it. It's still raining and windy here, so I haven't been outside to see the results. I live in the woods and can see up my driveway; lots of forest debris, branches, etc. everywhere.

I hope everybody is recovered enough so we can meet up at the Gainesville rides in late October. I plan on coming in for the Horse Farm right now, but might consider the Santa Fe, too. Provided everything is a go, who else plans on coming in?

RA

[Keith A]

I'm alive and survived. More damage this time around...
o 5 palm trees down
o tons of shingles off, but not down to the bare wood
o water in the house from the ground
o phone, but no power
o At my office we spent a good part of the day ripping up all of the carpet on the window offices (including mine)
o 1 hour car commute for what is usually 15 minutes, but it only took me 21 minutes this morning on my Serotta :D

Big thanks to Russ who called me to check in on me Saturday!

Sorry to be short, but my list of things to do for myself, friends and family is sooooo long.

Edit: Assuming all things go well, I'm planning on doing the Sante Fe Century (not the Horse Farm 100) -- I need a break from all this mess.

[Bruce H.]

good to hear you are well Kieth and all the rest. get what needs to be done, taken care of. Stay well.
Bruce H.

[Dekonick]

I feel for yall... sure hope this crazy weather calms down.

[Elefantino]

Great news that you're OK.

Enough, already!!!!!!

I'll probably be at both Santa Fe and Horse Farm. Look for the group in the Mr. T (A Team) jerseys.

Ride on!

[RABikes2]

Sorry to hear about the damage Keith, but glad that you and your family are okay. Hope everybody else is alright, too.

Elefantino...I will be looking for the A-Team jerseys! My two weekend jerseys will be: the Serotta Open House Forum "BANANA/monkey" jersey :banana: and my beautiful, absolutely gorgeous, Davis Phinney Foundation jersey from the Sunflower Revolution fundraiser. If you haven't seen these jerseys...WOW! they are awesome! And, of course, my sweet Legend Ti will be with me! :p

Glad you will be taking a break from the mess, Keith. I look forward to meeting everybody. Bill, will you be coming up?

RA

[Keith A]

Thanks for the notes of concern!

Life is slowly returning to normal. We got our power back this past Saturday evening, so we were without electricity for almost 8 days from Jeanne -- but I now own a sweet little Honda generator :D For all three storms we lost power for a total of 17 days!!!

This past weekend was a blur of activity. I spent from 6:15am Friday to 6:00pm Sunday helping coordinate about 300 volunteers that came down from Georgia to help recover from this disaster in Palm Bay (altogether we had about 1000 people come down from Georgia to help in Brevard County). Our church worked in conjunction with the cities in Brevard County to provide assistance to those that needed help recovering from the storm(s). We tarped homes, cut down trees, cleaned up debris, put up fences and mowed at least one lawn. Many of the people that we helped were elderly or less well off and really needed the assistance. There were many tears shed as so many of these people didn't know how they were going to cleanup and keep the water out of their home. In many (most) cases, they couldn't afford to pay someone to do this. Although the work was exhausting, it was great to be part of such a tremendous effort to provide assistance in our community.

I was so far behind on my own hurricane cleanup, that I took yesterday off to try and get a few things down around the house. Before I started, I hopped on my Serotta and rode down to Barefoot Bay, which is a huge mobile home park with mostly seniors living there. This is about 20 miles south of my house and was closer to the center of the storm. This place was a wreck! Aluminum siding and roofs were all over the place. Restoration is underway, so there are huge piles of debris. It appeared as if most of the homes were damaged to some degree with some of them being completed destroyed. If you want to read some about the destruction in this community, click on this link of news stories (http://news.search.yahoo.com/news/search?p=barefoot+bay&ei=UTF-8&fr=FP-tab-news-t&fl=0&x=wrt) It was really sad to seeing this in person.

On my way back home, I rode north on US1, which goes right along the intercoastal river and saw some more affects from the storm. The east most lane of this 4-lane highway is closed for miles due to sand and debris on the road; and they are also trying to restore the riverbank so that the road doesn't cave in. At one point, there is a road that runs parallel to US1 that has several nice homes right next to the river. This road has several chunks that have been washed away. I also saw several boats (one large one) that are now sitting on the WEST side of US1. I don't know if the water washed over the highway or if the wind blew them there, but it was still a shocking site. There are also a bunch of boats that are now sitting on the bank or sunk in the river.

Here is link (http://www.floridatoday.com/!NEWSROOM/hurricane/jeannegallery.htm) to our local paper that has a bunch of photos from the aftermath of the storm. I live about 60 - 75 miles north of where the north and I can't imagine what it looks like where the strongest part of the storm came ashore. Amazingly, both Jeanne and Frances took the exact same path as the storms approached the coast and came onshore. It will be a very, very long time before the costal (and even inland) communities completely recover for the affects of these storms.

I consider myself fortunate to have as minimal damage as we do -- it could have been so much worse! I think Florida has had enough storms to last us for a couple of years.

BTW, my office now has the latest rage in flooring -- glue covered cement :D