August 31 Playing with Hurricane Gustov

This has been a crunch week. Thursday I drove to Florence…765 miles…  pulling 20 foot trailer full of machinery for the shop…compressors, drill press, radial saw, etc. It’s a long drive but can be done in a day. Made it in about 13 hours. Unoaded everything with the caterpillar on Friday and then decided that I needed to get back to Houstobn because Huricane Gustov was headed this way and I have wife, mother-in-law and nine donkies to take care of back home. If I left my wife with the donkies to ride out the storm while I was in Florence, I would be dead anyway. Might  as well have plastic surgery, change my name and move to another state.  Or maybe I could get into a Federal protection program.   Got back in the truck and drove the 765 miles back to Houston yesterday. Left Florence at 4AM with the idea that I would be back in Houston in the late afternoon. That didn’t happen. It never dawned on me that they would be in the process of evacuating New Orleans and all of southern Lousiana. I went south to interstate 10 and got hammered in Lafayette. Traffic was bumper to bumper moving about 10-20 miles per hour from Lafayette Lousiana all the way into Houston. Unfortunately there is no real good alternate route. I thought it might break a little when I got into Texas but unfortunately they  were evacuatiing Beaumont and Port Arthur Texas also so that added to the mayhem of people tryng to get out heading west.  Gas stations were out of gas and people were stuck along the roadside out of fuel.. People we driving like lunatics racing down the shoulders tryng to get somewhere fast but in reality going nowhere. I had brought about 100 gallons of diesel fuel with me along with as many Jerry cans of gasoline as I could round up in Florence. So I was well prepared in the fuel department. I finally got into Houston about 10:30 last night… 6 hours later than I planned. Now were are sitting here watching Gustov on TV trying to anticipate where it’s going and what we should do. As of right now it looks like Lousiana is the target but if it turns westerly at all it could come this way and end up right over Houston. We have learned over the many years living on the Gulf coast that these storms can turn at the last minute and miss the targeted landfall by a couple of hundred miles as was the case with Rita. If that happens we have to get the donkeys out of here.  Just getting out of Houston with a trailer full of donkies could be a good trick but I know a lot of the back roads of East Texas so hopefully we can get out of here if we need to without getting on the freeways or interstates. Houston learned some things from Huricane Ritae and now they have a contraflow plan so that they turn  in-bound lanes of the freeways into contraflow outbound lanes so that they can handle the traffic. Problem is that once you get on, you cannot get off. ..so if traffic is stopped you are stuck with no alternatives. 

We have to make a decision by this evening if we are going to go or stay because by tomorrow it will be chaos getting out of town. It will take us several hours to load the donkeys up. Trying to get 10 donkies into a trailer is a real task. Getting the donkies into the trailer is like taking your kids to the pediatrician. They know that something bad is about to happen. Why would a donkey want to get into a trailer that has no grass growing in it….duh??  We have decided that getting miniature donkeys into a trailer is a new sport. Second only to bull-dogging and steer wrestling it will be introduced as a new sport in the 1012 Olympics known as the Donkathalon.  It’s a timed event but best done in the mud after a heavy rain when its 102 degrees outside.

So right now we are waiting a little to see what happens.

Meanwhile back in Florence…the house goes on. Barn/shop is almost finished and we are working on the fence to contain the animals when we take them up there.

The roof is framed us and they should begin decking the roof over soon. The hurricane may stall things a bit as there is alot of rain coming with it that will probably affect Florence. No real projected completion date yet but it’s possible that it could be late December or January.

 

 

 

May update tomorrow after the storm moves in toward land a little.

 

Ron Beberniss

League City, Texas

 

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Back in Florenece August 16

It’s been nearly 5 months since I posted on the blog and well over due.  Carol and I  have been bouncing back and forth between Houston and Florence, Alabama. After we closed on the land we started construction on the shop/barn and it is nearly finished. It’s bigger than the shop in Houston. It lacks a little trim. and a cement pad in the front and garage doors. Hopefully all of this should be done within a week to ten days.

 

  We have been in Florence this time for about a week and a half. We both  drove up and each of us pulled trailers on the trip up. I pulled the 20 foot flatbed and Carol pulled the horse trailer. Most everything on both trailers came from the shop. I was going to bring the tractor up this trip but decided that if I did there was nothing left  to load the heavy machinery on the trailer with so it stayed behind and it will probably come up next trip. I need the tractor  to continue clearing the pastures for the donkeys  down by the creek. And in reference to the donkeys, we had an addition to the herd during out last trip to Florence. One of our Jennies dropped us a surprise package, a little jack. He’s as friendly as can be. His mother’s name is Boo. We bought Boo this spring but had no idea she was carring a baby although she was looking a little broad when we left Houston last time. We haven’t decided on a name yet but since the donkey is the symbol of the democratic Party and since he’s black, just arrived on the scene abd relatively clueless it has been suggesyed  by my good friend John Moss that we name him  Obama. Another suggestion was that since we don’t know who his daddy is and his mother’s name is Boo we could call hin Boo-Who?

Mr Big Ears

And back to Florence….When we bought the land we were planning on developing about half of it and selling the lots to the guys that are building our house. I spent a week and a half at the courthouse tryhing to discover all of the hoops we were going to have to jump through to do that. The plan was to put in the roads and then the City of Florence would put in the utilities. It appeared that the whole process was going to be  a rather lengthy one and  that it might take as long as a year or a year and a half before utilities were available and we didn’t want to wait that long. We ended up buying a lot in the subdivision adjacent to our property.  The utilities we already in and it was ready to build on . We are in the process of building the same house that we are ultimately  going to build down on the Creek. We plan to finish the house move into it and live thre while we are sorting out how best to develop the land. Then once the roads are in we can start construction on the final house down on the creek. This way we will be able to live in the house and make whatever changes we want when we build the final version. 

Excavation of the basement

Settiing the forms for the basment walls

Pouring the walls for the basement

 

This is the basement after they had just finished pouring the slab. The walls of the basement are poured cement. It costs a little more that traditional masonary block construction but is a betterprocess, stronger with virtually no change of leaks. This is where we left things when we left Florence three weeks ago.We arrived here a week ago and the framing on the first floor is just about complete. They started putting the roof rafters up yesterday.

Stick framing

From down the street

Carol’s mother Vera is hee with us this time and the girls have been out seeing the sights of Florence while I have been working out at the barn. We are trying to get Vera accomodations as a local independent/assisted living facility here in Florence called Merril Gardens. She is on th e waiting list and as soon as a vacancy comes up we wil move Vera up here. Once that happens we will probably spend most of our time here in Florence living on the boat and getting all our thing up here. There are probably about 5 or 6 trailer loads of things to be brought  up here….and then we have to contend with transporting donkeys up here. At the rate they are multiplying I think we are going to need a much bigger trailer to get them all up here if we do it in one trip. Not sure when that will be as we still have to get he fences completed. We have about 3/4 of a mile of fence posts already up but need to put the board up to keep the critters contained.

We  will probably head back to Houston next week. Likely that I will do a quick turn-around load up the tractor and whatever else I can get on the trailer and come on back up while Carol stays in Houston with her mother. We don’t know when the house will be finished. It’s possible that we could be in by Christmas but more likely weill be January or February. Either way it’s not a big deal. When were here in florence we stay on the boat which is like being on vacation anyway.

We have some friends that will hopefully join us in the fall and will take a few weeks off and take Annie up the Tennessee River to Chatanooga or maybe even further up to Knoxville. Rhat will be in October of Noverber  when the trees start changing colors. Looking forward to getting Annie moving again.

I am ading a few photos taken from the aft deck of Annie on the Fourth of July. It was pretty spectacular and didn’t even have to leave the slip!

Fireworks at McFarland Park right next to Florence Harbor Marina

And this my friends is what we have to look at every morning as we drink our coffee overlooking the Tennessee River

Ron and Carol Beberniss aboard Annie

Florence Alabama…Paradise on the Tennessee River

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