Mouse Slayer

We came home last night from our outing to New Orleans and found a dead mouse in the middle of the living room carpet. Since the bus was dark, I found it by touch, ew! The mouse was extremely dead and covered with cat spit. Opal was locked in her kennel and very agitated, having watched the entire thing. When we released her, she promptly rolled on the carpet where the mouse breathed its last.

Angel has been quite focused on the cabinets and under the couch for the last several days. She's an odd cat, so we ignored her. Now we think she was probably hearing the mouse move through the coach's inner recesses. How it got there is a mystery, but we sleep soundly knowing no rodent will get far in Odyssey.

In a Groove

Our days here at RCHQ have moved into a certain rhythm, most of which is not all that interesting to blog about. We typically get up around 6:30 or 7:00 (very early for us!) and eat a large breakfast to sustain us through a long morning. We walk back to the bus around 1pm for a healthy lunch and to walk Opal. The afternoon is not quite as long now; HQ closes at 6 instead of 7, and we now have Sunday mornings off. Since Saturday happens to be our day off, it makes for a real weekend.

We eat alone for dinner about 2 nights out of three, joining our coworkers on the third evening. Last night a big group went out to wish farewell to our warehouse supervisor, but we ate at home. Sean had spent the entire day in Alexandria, LA, picking up equipment from a large shelter that is closing. It is at least 5 hours round-trip to Alexandria, so he arrived home late and tired. We have been assigned a large RC car (some sort of truly awful American SUV) that just sits next to the bus most days, but on Sean's occasional field days is helpful to haul phones, computers, switches and stuff.

I am temporarily acting as the supervisor for my department while my boss is on "STDO." I think that stands for Special Travel Days Off or some such. If you serve two three-week volunteer terms, the RC may pay for a trip back home to take care of the rest of your life and then bring you back for another term. STDO is for three days, plus a travel day each direction, so I am in charge for five days. Since our term will be pretty much over by the end of the five days, I'm just pretending that I got a promotion. I'm enjoying having a new set of tasks to do, although I sit behind a counter in a back room and do not interact with as many internal customers.

One of my new tasks is to coordinate hotel rooms and cars used by our department. Three weeks goes by very fast and in a group of approximately 30 people, someone is leaving or arriving pretty much every day. There is a lot of horse-trading for desirable cars and someone needs to know who has what. This gave me the opportunity yesterday to trade our ugly SUV for a convertible (why the RC has rental convertibles, I do not know), but I resisted the temptation. It was great to have the big car on laundry day, and the convertible would be terrible for Sean's work. Besides, the weather has just turned cold in the last few days, with overnight lows in the 40s (thanks, Wilma!) and we don't really have time for open top cruising.

Tonight a group is driving down to New Orleans for dinner and drinks again. Folks from our department drive down about once a week, with a well-coordinated chart of who is in what car with whom as designated sober chauffeurs, called the Drivers/Drunks sign up sheet. Since there are always new faces, this is a really great way to make sure we don't leave anyone unfamiliar behind. Everyone has a copy of the sheet and helps herd the cats in to the cars. "Bob, you are a rider in the red mini van with Fred, Joe, Frank and Linda. If there aren't five people in the van, don't leave!" While Bourbon St. isn't the destination it used to be, every new person wants to see it and it is a great way to bond with the group and have a little fun. We all have to be at work at 8am, so there is always a designated Early Return Car for us old fogeys who need their sleep. I never could party late, as my college friends will attest. Party early, then early to bed, early to rise.

Movin' on up

We've moved to a better neighborhood. Instead of being parked near the Large Low End Clothing Retailer, we have this primo spot in the Large Warehouse Hardware Store lot. It is quite foggy this morning, so I tried to take some "arty" shots. This is the best I could do. You know how you're not supposed to use your high beams in fog? Camera flash is a no-no as well. In all my other pictures, the flash reflected off the fog. Doh!

In any case, we're pretty stealthy here. The Spirit of America departed, leaving us very exposed to the busy mall, so being nestled in among these 15 ft. trucks feels more hidden. Plus, we have a patch of grass immediately to our driver's side and two trees (just visible in the photo). Big bonus: we are now a 1 minute walk from work instead of a 4 minute walk.

Report from the field

Today I went to Lake Charles (map), two hours west of here, to support the opening of a shelter there.

I admit to being caught a bit off guard by this, since we are now in the phase of the disaster where we are wrapping up and closing down shelters, not the other way around. This particular situation was necessitated by what is known in the disaster relief business as "secondary effects." The main disaster in Lake Charles, Hurricane Rita, is long gone, but the people coming in to this shelter are newly homeless: their apartment complex has been invaded by black mold, and they are being evacuated.

Making matters worse is the fact that the shelter facility itself was damaged by the storm, and has a black mold issue of its own. A good part of the building has been sectioned off with plastic sheeting and is undergoing decontamination. The damaged section had, ironically, been a refuge for Katrina evacuees before Rita hit.

As is often the way of things, we had just recently removed computer, networking, and telecommunications equipment from this facility. If only the mold had announced its intentions a little sooner...

I did get to have lunch at the shelter with the clients and other Red Cross workers. This facility also happens to be one of our contract kitchens, cranking out some 20,000 meals a day, and I have to say that no one goes hungry at a Red Cross operation. Lunch was spicy andouille sausage gumbo over white rice, with corn and biscuits on the side -- superb.

On the way back we had a chance to see some of the extensive damage to Lake Charles, including hundreds of pleasure and fishing boats piled onto the lake shore embankments, and Harrah's casino askew in the lake. Quite a contrast from when we passed through it in Odyssey exactly one month ago.

Mash Note

On his way out of HQ yesterday, an older gentleman handed me the following note. It was photocopied onto a small slip of paper; clearly he had decided to hand a number of these notes out. I was honored to have received one.

"Dear Friend,

I have had the privilege of working in the Louisiana Headquarters for Disaster Mental Health Services (DMHS) in Baton Rouge during October, 2005.

Among the hundreds of people I have encountered during my service time, you made an impression on me. Through your smiles, thoughtfulness, and helpfulness, doing what it is you do, you became the face of the American Red Cross for at least this volunteer...I could not have been effective in carrying out my responsibilities without the aid and assistance you personally provided to me.

Thank you for what you have done for the ARC and the people of Louisiana and for helping me maintain my mental health while I shared the experience with you.

-R. Telsch
Virginia"

So thank you, Mr. Telsch, for reinforcing my belief that it matters not at all what one's job is; for as long as the job is done with kindness and humor it can make the world just a little nicer place.

Our closest neighbors

Emergency Response Vehicles, or ERVs. While they may look like ambulances, they are actually designed to deliver meals and snacks in areas where people cannot come to the shelters. On the passenger side, there is a large window where the food is passed out. I have met quite a number of ERV drivers now, and they are justifiably proud of the number of meals they have distributed.














Odyssey parked next to the Spirit of America, a large mobile kitchen. This vehicle is capable of cooking and distributing very large numbers of hot meals. The RC has two of these big boys. We are particularly grateful to be parked in this one's shade in the hot weather.

Sean checks the problem log.

Louise demonstrates a cell phone to a RC volunteer. Actually, this photo was completely staged. The guy wielding the camera gave me a hard time for taking off my glasses first.

Settling In

After working here only three full days, we are definitely not considered newcomers anymore. I have already trained two people in my area, and Sean is fully immersed in problem solving. The 11 hour days go by quickly, and we are tired and sore at the end.

We have met quite a number of other DOVEs here. Monday evening, we went out to dinner at a local Cajun restaurant with a group of five others. It was just like old times in Silicon Valley...talking shop and cracking jokes and overeating, but with the added twist that instead of griping about real estate prices, we swapped tips on RV living in Red Cross parking lots. We learned that there is a service that will come out and pump our holding tanks for free.

Our presence in the truck parking lot has already foiled one dastardly crime. After dinner, we heard voices outside and looked out to see an Acura parked between the two 24 ft. Budget rental trucks to our left (Budget, Ryder, and Enterprise have all donated trucks.) Two young men got out, and positioned themselves in a familiar way facing a truck. Sean immediately shouted out the window, "Put it back in your pants, and hit the road NOW or we're calling the cops!" They zipped up in a hurry and took off. Why on earth anyone would pee on a truck in a suburban mall parking lot is beyond me, but at least we saved some other RC volunteer from an "ew, ick" moment.

Caring and sharing

An inquisitive reader sent me a few questions and comments about my last post, so I thought I'd answer here on the blog in case anyone else cared.

"With all the veterans moving out and new recruits coming in, it sounds a little like Vietnam."

You're probably right. During orientation training here in Baton Rouge, they spent quite a bit of time talking to us about poisonous insects and snakes, alligators, and the importance of drinking water. The perky gal who did the training was a former junior high teacher; similar to a drill seargent, but cuter.

"It could be like Ground Hog Day on the cell phone desk."

You'd think the cell phone desk would get repetitive, but just as every unhappy family is unhappy in its own special way, every cell phone problem is unique. Today, one woman who deals with higher-ups in the government told me her old phone had been stolen and someone was hacking her phonebook. Could I please get the number de-activated? This struck me as something I really ought to put at the top of my list, before someone called Dick Cheney and asked him if he had Prince Albert in a can. Someone else dropped their phone into the shelter toilet and we carefully bagged it as bio hazardous waste. And then there was the imperious woman (a fellow volunteer, mind you) who didn't have all her paperwork together to get a phone and demanded that I wait for her to go back to her desk and "don't start on anyone else while I'm gone so that I have to wait in line again; I know how you people are!" The line she waited in was exactly two people long and lasted 3 minutes. So I issued her the phone that had been targeted by a collection agency to receive hourly computer-generated calls about some overdue bill. Okay, not really. I mean, we really did have a phone like that, but I didn't give it to her. I thought really hard about it, though.

"Are the field returnees debriefed?"

We actually do have mental health professionals who meet with the shelter volunteers before they are sent home. In order to have some modicum of privacy, these interviews are done in makeshift offices. They look like a cross between a confessional and a decontamination shower: plywood walls and red velvet curtain doors. I guess someone donated several bolts of crimson cloth. Then the worn-out volunteer gets on a plane for home sweet home. I overheard one guy talking long distance to a travel agent today, trying to fix his flight back to San Jose. "There seems to be some problem with my ticket. (pause) San Jose. (pause) That's in California. (Pause) Yes, I'm sure I don't want to go to Costa Rica!" I felt his pain.

"Are you eating in the mess hall?"

There is no mess. There is a snack bar on site called the Oasis, which has donated chips, crackers, candy, fruit cups, soda, and everyone's favorite, Beer Water. Anheuser Busch donated about 8000 cases of much-needed water in cans with their logo. It tastes just like Bud only not as flavorful and robust and of course, without the alcohol. There's a pretty good reason why "It's the Water!" isn't the Budweiser slogan...

The whole operation is literally across the street from a going-concern shopping mall complete with food court, so no mess is really required. Since we are parked between the mall and HQ, we just walk home for lunch and eat healthy stuff and walk the dog.

"Are you dry camping? How will you dump your tanks?"

Yes, we are dry camping. The weather so far has been cool enough that we really haven't needed our air conditioners, so leaving the pets in the bus hasn't been a worry. There is a Flying J truck stop along the interstate where we can dump our tanks on our day off. We work 7 days on, one day off, so we'll be free on Saturday.

The War Room

Yesterday was our first full day of work here at Baton Rouge Red Cross HQ. Sean has been assigned to Response Computer Operations, which means he fixes other people's computer problems all day. I am working in Response Customer Service, which is really a misnomer. It is more like Inventory Control. I spent the entire day issuing cell phones to new volunteers and taking back phones from folks finishing up their tour of duty. A typical assignment is 3 weeks, and most of those leaving looked pretty tired. Those arriving looked nervous.

HQ is in an old big-box store that has been stripped down to the bare walls. It looks like a war room, with several hundred workers in makeshift cubicles or huddled around groups of folding chairs and tables. Giant signs designating departments hang from the ceiling, and maps of Louisiana line the walls. Some maps show flood zones, others show shelter locations, yet others indicate where power, postal or telephone service is "full, intermittant, or none." White butcher paper is also everywhere on the walls, with handwritten updates, meeting announcements, phone numbers.

There is very little sense of drama here, though. In the RC training videos, there are many images of people confronting their losses: fire, flood, injury. In showing what the RC does, we also watched lots of footage of clients receiving food, blankets, and hugs. Good human-interest stuff. There are no clients at HQ, and the flooding is far off. It feels very much like a large office or commerical warehouse. Only those tired field workers and nervous new arrivals mark this as something different. While it is a little disappointing to not be helping clients directly, it should be very good experience for us to watch the background operation in great detail and to be able to at least help other volunteers with humor and compassion. Gosh darn it, I can make your cell phone issuance the most heart warming and meaningful exchange of electronics of your entire day!

Disaster Relief HQ, Baton Rouge

We are finally in Baton Rouge (generic map) at the American Red Cross disaster relief headquarters here. Note that I have not posted our exact location since the headquarters site, while not a state secret, is not open to the public, nor are there any direct services or resources here for those affected by the disaster, and the Red Cross is, therefore, not publicizing its location. (Persons affected by either hurricane can find their closest shelter or service center, or get additional information, at this American Red Cross web site dedicated to the disaster.)

For anyone who cares, I managed to fix my computer and fully recover all my data by yesterday morning. So I am now back on email, and have full access to my calendar, maps, and other files. Some configuration settings are still a bit messed up, but things are mostly back to normal.

As Louise has already mentioned, we spent Wednesday night at yet another casino, in Greenville, MS (map), just a few miles west of our laundry stop in Leland. The casino itself was in a "riverboat," but the body of water adjacent to Greenville is actually an oxbow lake formed by a now-bypassed loop of the river. Hundreds of these lakes exist on both sides of the current river alignment, and it is interesting to see that the state lines, in many cases, follow a historic path of the river, often now on dry land. Greenville is such a place, with the state line running down the middle of the lake.

We left the casino yesterday morning, crossed the river into Arkansas, and proceeded south on US-65. We crossed back over the river from Vidalia, Louisiana into Natchez, Mississippi on the same bridge we traversed a month ago en route to Texas. After arriving in Baton Rouge, we made a stop at the mall to return some software to CompUSA that I did not need in the great computer debacle, and did some other shopping while we were there. We spent the night at a Wal-Mart not far from the headquarters. Interestingly, while this Wal-Mart is normally a 24-hour store, the demands of supplying the thousands of evacuees that have inundated Baton Rouge have forced the store to close from 10pm to 6am nightly just to clean up and re-stock, and a parade of semitrailers arrived throughout the night.

As of this morning, we still had not received official deployment orders from our chapter, so we went over to headquarters as walk-ins. Unsurprisingly, I was immediately swept into the technology group (known as "RTT"), an area for which we did not officially "train," but which is probably a natural fit (and chronically short-handed -- it's a lot easier to find shelter workers, truck drivers, and food servers than computer, networking, and communications experts). That pretty much means that we will be assigned here to headquarters, rather than deployed further into the disaster area. Louise has also taken an assignment with RTT, just because splitting us up is difficult since we are living in Odyssey.

So our home for the next few weeks will be a parking lot full of rental trucks and Red Cross "Emergency Response Vehicles." Right now, we are parked next to a giant tractor-trailer, containing a mobile kitchen, known as the "Spirit of America." Disaster headquarters is in abandoned retail space in a shopping center, probably donated by the landlord, and other stores in the shopping center are open for business, so we see an odd mix of Red Cross volunteers and random people starting their holiday shopping pass by the coach.

Odyssey now has a very official-looking "American Red Cross Disaster Relief" sticker in the windshield, and it is somewhat amusing to wonder just what the random store-goers think her purpose might be. If we get some time in the daylight hours in the next few days, perhaps we can get a photo or two posted.

I should also add, here, that we are living in the lap of luxury by local standards. The scale of this disaster is so immense that most of the volunteers (and over 97% of the resources deployed are volunteers) are being housed in shelters rather than the customary hotel rooms. That is, in large part, due to the fact that every hotel room within a hundred miles is sold out (or was rendered unusable by the events). Most of the people here are on three-week deployments from their home chapters, and a good number of them will spend the entire three weeks on army cots and have to line up for showers at the end of each day. Something to bear in mind if you have a friend or co-worker who took leave to come here and help out.

En route to Baton Rouge, we passed through the town of Vidalia, LA, where the Christmas decorations are already in place. This photo was taken October 6th. Yes, that is a light-covered reindeer proudly rampant on a telephone pole. We also saw light-covered Christmas trees, candy canes, and candlesticks. We know these aren't leftover from last year because we were in Vidalia only a few weeks ago.

After our visit to the Henson museum and laundromat in Leland, MS, the sun was setting and we drove just a few miles west to Greenville to spend the night at another riverboat casino. Its just parking lot dry camping, but after a long, hot day it is a welcome safe harbor.

The laptop is dead; long live the laptop

Lots to update today, since it has been a while. In case I lose you somewhere in the tenth paragraph, let me first make an important announcement: As Louise has already noted, my computer is dead, and has been since Friday night some time (after my last post). I am posting from her machine at the moment.

The reason I mention this is that I know I owe some folks emails and/or phone calls, but I can not access any of the email I received before Saturday (although I have limited web-based access to anything that came in after that, when Louise deigns to let me borrow her machine), nor can I get into my calendar or address book until I somehow resolve this. So I apologize if you are waiting to hear from me for some reason -- I'm not really trying to blow you off.

In particular, there are a couple of people in the midwest who had inquired about possibly getting together while we were in or near Du Quoin. As much as we really wanted to do that, our training schedule was quite packed, and, due to the hurricane aftermath in the south, we are expecting to be immediately deployed.

Which brings me to our current whereabouts. We have not actually received a deployment order, but we talked to our Red Cross chapter (in Elkhart, Indiana) and they have indicated that Baton Rouge Headquarters is our most likely target. Out of the three main disaster headquarters (Baton Rouge, LA; Montgomery, AL; and Houston, TX) we have indicated a preference for either Baton Rouge or Houston. Consequently, yesterday we headed due south from Du Quoin (after a brief stop at the Red Cross chapter in Herrin, IL to return all the training materials) via interstates 57 and 55 to Memphis, Tennessee.

In Memphis, one of the few major cities on our route, we stopped at the Allison Transmission dealer for some much-needed transmission fluid and then at CompUsa for a replacement hard drive and some drive-copying software to try to fix my laptop. Our next goal was a stopping point with a laundromat, since we were basically out of clean clothes.

Although by this time it was really time to stop for the day, the only reasonable choice with a coin laundry in Mempis was the Graceland RV Park (really) for $34, and we opted instead to continue 20 miles or so south on the great river road, US-61, to casino-land, otherwise known as Tunica County, Mississippi. Our guide books indicated that two of the half-dozen or so casinos there had nice RV parks with coin laundry and other ammenities, and we thought we might find a nice dinner option there as well.

To make a long story longer, we picked the Hollywood Casino which claimed to have 100+ spaces, pool, laundry, and the best steak house in the county. Unfortunately, we discovered upon arrival that the RV park was full, which amazed us for a Tuesday night in October. By this time, we were dog tired, it was well after dark, and we did not feel like trudging the dozen miles to the other casino option. Instead, we parked in the large-vehicle lot, had a really nice dinner in the steak house, and just spent the night there in the lot (map), as we so often do in casinos.

That still left us wanting for a laundry, so today we continued south on US-61 to Clarkedale, MS, where we inquired for one at the chamber of commerce. The two persons there had no map skills whatsoever -- 45 minutes and 25 miles later, we left town without ever finding a laundromat, an narrowly avoiding an 11'-something underpass, a corner too tight to negotiate, and several low trees.

We shook the dust of Clarkedale from our feet and ended up here, at a laundromat in Leland, MS (map). Leland is also the childhood home of Jim Henson, and, Louise's mom being a Kermit fanatic, we just had to stop at the little museum here, which referred us to the laundromat here.

The laundry is now done, and we will head out of here in search of a place to stay just as soon as Partition Magic finishes its current pass on my old hard drive.

Fixed and broken; family found

Sean managed to fix the camera, but break his computer, which is much more serious. He thinks the disk drive has gone bad. All his data is there, but only intermittantly accessible. While he works on this problem, his blog posts will be on hold.

Of course, I'm sure it seems like we stop posting when we stop traveling, because, well, that's true. We've been here in Du Quoin for over a week and don't have too much to report. We have taken four Red Cross classes, met some very nice people, attended a potluck, gotten rained on, listened to flat track motorcycle races in the background here at the fairgrounds, and generally had a productive time. Opal seems to be completely recovered from her illness, although her fur will take some time to grow back so she is pretty ratty looking. She's certainly feeling uppity enough to lunge and say four-letter words to all the other dogs here in the campground.

One of the couples here at the training came up to me, waving their hands and pointing at their nametags: Caroline and Jerry Hornor. They had never met anyone outside their immediate family who also spelled the last name with two o's. I never have, either, so we exchanged hugs and became instant family. They have been in West Virginia for many generations, and my Hornors have been in California for that long, so any common ancestors must be quite a ways back. They did say they had traced the name to the 1700's coming from England.

I took a lousy photo of their rig, but if you click on it to enlarge it, the name Hornor is visible.