Katrina: The Devastation

Last week I went with about 79 or so others, including over 60 current Asburians, to Pass Christian Mississippi.

The first thing you may notice on a drive to the Gulf Coast is how many trees are down. Mississippi, like much of the eastern United States, includes plenty of roadside forests. I was about 100 miles away from the coast and started noticing lots and lots of trees down. Now, my family lives in Central Florida and had three hurricanes travel through their county (Osceola) in 2004. Well they are in the middle of the state, so they only experience catagory 1 winds, but last Christmas when I went down to visit, it noticed lots of damage and lots of trees down. But nothing comes close to what I saw in Mississippi. I knew it would be bad because of how many trees where down an hour or so away from the coast. Now the group traveled down in 9 vans and we stuck in groups of three, which we affectionally refereed to as “Triads”, but back to the story. My triad was the last one in, and it was already dark when we got there, but as we were driving to the Church we were meeting at you could tell that past the darkness that there was some significant destruction.

When the sun rose the next morning, and really the rest of the week for that matter, we had to continually pull our jaws off the floor. A doll in the dirt, a house that had been turned into an parallelogram, a school bus that looks like it was blown up, an entire house sitting on train tracks, slabs on concrete that used to be the foundation for a house, tombs on their side, a car under a house and countless more things that nearly brought me to tears. Now keep in mind, this trip started over two and a half months after the hurricane finished, but it looked like it could of happened last week. I can’t imagine what it really did look like one week after the storm.

Last Christmas in Osceloa country Florida, almost every house was damaged in someway, or at least severe tree damage. In this town, almost every house was completely uninablitable. In fact I did not notice anyone living at their home, the closest I saw was a trailer in their front driveway. And to think we weren’t even in the worst of it. We were in Pass Christian, the towns on either side of this one, were so bad that you had to have a special pass to get in. It wasn’t open to volunteer groups like ours just showing up. And to think that we were in one of the smallest towns in the area. I think criticism of FEMA, the Red Cross, Bush or who ever you want to point fingers at for a slow response are unfortunate. The destruction is so broad and major that I can’t imagine where to start. There are not enough employees, volunteers or housing to go around to handle the significant portion of the population of this county affected by the storm. They could have cleaned off every trailer lot in the country and it wouldn’t even come close. The relief might have been slow, but how to you find places for hundreds of thousands of people to stay in a day or two. Feeding them all would be hard enough. Its a crappy situation, but its amazing what has been done to this point, and amazing how much still needs to be done before the area actually looks like people live there again.

Check out My photo gallery, Asbury College’s Photos (of which I took a couple) and WilmoreToThePass.com for some early pictures and updates of what we did during the trip. I will be posting more pictures and stories in the weeks to come.

New Year, New Site

I haven’t spend time updating this blog recently but that doesn’t mean I don’t know how to waste my time on the internet anymore.

It’s been a while and I am sorry to disappoint this entry is more informative then educational or entertaining. At least its good news. You might have noticed that this blog only gets updated about every month or so. Well I can’t promise that that is going to change anytime soon, but I do have some other great updates for all ya all.

First off, we have launched Pete & Jay’s Tip O Da Day. In it, Jason and I pretty much just make up some crap everyday. So where my blog isn’t getting updated, just check out the Tip of the Day for a daily something or other.

Most of you already knew about that one, but here’s something I bet you didn’t know. Tonight I updated Pappy’s Pictures. I still don’t have any from 2005, but I’ve pretty much got 2004 covered, and as an added bonus there is a new page on there called Matt in Action and of course the update of a county favorite Crazy Headshots. And if you order within the next 10 minute I’ll throw in a new Crazy Jason Pic and AFS. I know there are a lot of great pictures out there that should be posted, just send em my way!

One other fun item you might notice is that pretty much all the new sites are at PeterVCook.com Yes, I bought my own domain name and am pretty much now, officially, a complete geek. So please people, call me up lets go to Chili’s or something, cause at this second I feel like all I do is update my sites (aka. I’m no longer cool).

September 11, 2004

Doesn’t is just seem waaayy too normal today to be September 11th?

Just three years ago today a major tragedy happened, but looking around you would hardly even know it. A quick check at Google News and there’s not even a mention of it on the main page (at least at the time of this writing). Ya the news outlets are mentioning it today, but there weren’t the myriad of TV news and special reports leading up to it. I wouldn’t be surprised if next year we went from September 10th to September 12th and skipped the 11th all together. Ok, its not that bad, but Have we forgotten how bad it really was?

Its funny how things that we never thought would leave the front of your mind, have a hard time from falling out the back.

Summer Vacation

Times changed and now a summer vacation is one week, and we feel guilty case there is tons of stuff to do at work. But I had an absolute blast in Florida, everything I had envisioned doing I did, and more. That one week was better then most whole months of break.

I just got back from a wonderful week in and around Orlando, Florida. It was my good friend’s Steve Webb’s wedding. He asked me to be one of his Groomsmen so I knew I needed to get there a couple days early to help him with stuff and since my family lives down there I figured I’d make a week out of it. That was back in January.

It was just so good to go home, haven’t seen most of my family since Christmas and so I jumped at the chance to make a mid summer run to Florida, where its always hotter and the seaweed is always greener. (Mainly because there is no sea near Kentucky but I don’t want to get caught up in all the details.) I went down Saturday. I knew I really won’t have any wedding related activities until at least mid week, but when that started I would be slammed. I had to take advantage of that lull to spend plenty of time with family and old friends. I go with the fam to this new church they’re going to, it was really good. Funny that it was my first time at that church, but I saw so many people I knew that the rest of my family was waiting for me out in the lobby.

At about that point I knew I wouldn’t be board this week. I was able to see every old friend I had hoped to and more. From people I met once 13 years ago to people I haven’t talked to in 4 to the few friends I always spend almost every day with while in Florida. Then Jason flew in tuesday night, we had to drop off a CD on the other side of Orlando and my car broke down on the way back. Luckily and thankfully the only thing I had planned for wednesday was to go to the beach. We were able to delay that till late afternoon because after $150 my car was fixed. I am so thankful that it happened tuesday night, any other day I would have had tons to do or worse be driving to or from Kentucky.

When thursday came I was in full wedding mode, driving all around town, picking people from the airport making last minute plans, designing labels and generally trying to keep Steve from worrying about stuff. The rehearsal came friday night. Then we were in for a very cool and unique wedding and an awesome weekend. At the rehearsal dinner and all weekend they’re were some great speeches saying how important and proud everyone is of each other. Surprisingly everything was a mere five minutes late on Saturday, about the best you can hope for and everything went off without major problems. The reception was awesome and people did not fear away from the dance floor.

After a 15 and a half hour drive back to Kentucky all I have to say is “Thank you Steve and Mel for throwing a great celebration. Good luck and I am praying for you!”

Pictures are coming soon!

My Personal Pastime

We went to King’s Island yesterday. Its a fun ol theme park with a ton of coasters. It was only my second time going to King’s Island, my first was about a year ago. As soon as I walked in the park, my mind thought “ok, here we go, its time to have fun!” The next move was to grab some maps, one for everyone in the group. Then my sane side spoke up. “Ok, lets not be the theme park nazi today. I’ll just go with the flow.” For the most part, I held back my urge for theme park efficiency, wherein it is unacceptable to pass any one area of the park more than twice.

It the end it was a super fun day, totally wore me out. Got in the gate around 11am, stayed till the close at 10, and rode everything we wanted to. The crowds were mild and all of the lines were reasonable. Kyle, Julie, Rach and for part of the day Jen turned out to be one of the best groups of people to go theme parking with. If someone asked me what my favorite thing to spend a day doing, it would definitely be finding a good theme park and spend the day there. Growing up in a town with 7 major theme parks, it is my personal past time. I love it! Every day that ends with sitting in the front, riding The Beast at night and swallowing a couple lighting bugs has to be good!

Battery Explosion

Its not every day that stuff explodes in my life. For those of you who are secret agents this kind of thing might bore you but for us regular people its a little interesting.

This story is way old (2 months old), I was just waiting on pictures before I posted it.
We’ll I have some now, so here it is!

So, my battery blew up last Sunday. I was about to head over to the new house, to drop off some stuff and meet Jason and Rach for Church. As soon as I turned the key to start the car, BAM. The car didn’t, but it sounded like something blew up. After a bit of smoke, I opened the hood and this is what I saw:

Good thing for Triple A. So I call them up, thinking this $50 or whatever I pay a year is so worth it, only to realize that my member ship has expired. Good thing for roommates with Triple A.

New House

So far in my life it has been exciting every-time I’ve moved. It looks like I’ll keep that streak going.

The lease at my current apartment is about to come up and its been nice but I need to move closer to work. So it was time to start looking for a new place. After waiting too long and missing a nice town-home, my future flatmates and I just today signed the papers for our new house! It is sooo exciting. Its brand new, the sod isn’t even in yet! Its a nice 2 story, 3 bedroom, 2 bath and 2 car garage place near Nicholasville RD and Man O War. It should take less than 20 minutes to get to work, less than ten to get to church and they’re putting in a new movie theater nearby. Jason has been real productive and already put in orders to get the DSL, water and electricity set up.

Race Day

Ahh, the big race is today. The Haggin Hospital Sunset Run 5K at Shakertown, starts at 6 tonight. It will be my first race since high school, which has been a long time. I don’t know what time to expect, haven’t really been timing myself in training, and this is a very hilly course. My personal goal is just to finish the race strong and at the end feel like I had a good run. Right now I’m starting to get excited and nervous all at the same time. I’m not fully excited or nervous yet, but just ask me again at 5:30.

Wish me luck!

Sorry for the Delay

The program I use to blog with keeps screwing up the look of my site. A bit frustrating, and has made me devote my blogging time to fixing it, rather then blogging.

Its been a fun filled week, and about time for me to get a full sized blog in. I can’t believe that Easter was this week. I want to echo what Rachel and Julie said about how good of a time we had on Sunday. Its nearly inexplicable, we went to the 7 am service at church (I woke up at 5:30), then came back and had brunch (I was unhappy with how my waffles turned out), sat around and watched TV (I had seen better movies before), then went to a low scoring baseball game (I have done more exciting things in an afternoon). But, there was something about the whole day that made it sooo good . It was the kind of good, that makes me want to think we went to a theme park, watched the best movie ever, after eating waffles to die for and woke up at a comfortable 9am. We didn’t, but I have a hard time convincing myself that because those would have been my ingredients if I were trying to create a day that felt as good as Easter Sunday 2004. I can’t really explain it but Sunday had “it”.