Isablog
As a member of the “Axis of Isabel”, I suppose I should post my (cue sappy TV-Movie-Of-The-Week intro music) dramatic story of survival, or something like that.
But my story isn’t terribly dramatic. I had already planned to leave town for the weekend anyway, so I did, departing Richmond at 11:45 AM on Thursday. After the VT game, I spent Friday with my girlfriend, saw her off on the Wesley retreat Saturday morning, then did a little bit of disaster preparation before heading north: I washed dirty clothes from the previous two days, then stopped and picked up water and cash from the Salem Wal-Mart.
Since I’d heard that water service was probably out at my apartment, I decided to make it a two-game weekend and catch JMU’s Saturday night game against Hofstra. (Hokie fans should note that JMU’s Demetrius Shandley didn’t start, but he played plenty despite coach Mickey Matthews’s post-VT promise to suspend Shandley for the next game.)
After the JMU game, I started to head back east. Quite a few highway signs along I-64 were bent or just plain missing; the overhead sign for Exit 118B in Charlottesville had come completely down, and the green sign had been hastily mounted along the side of the road. The roadway was clear all the way to Short Pump, though, which was where I pulled off to head for my apartment.
Fortunately for me, Henrico County had restored water service by the time I got home, although the county will remain under must-boil orders for drinking water for the next three days. On a larger scale, power and water are mostly functional in Western Henrico; on a drive down West Broad Street into the City of Richmond, about 80% of traffic lights were operational. Restaurants are hit-or-miss; the ones that are open are doing plenty of business, although they’re probably handing out soft drinks in cans and serving meals on paper plates. Comcast cable Internet is completely functional, though the TV service is a bit hosed — while my digital cable box is still showing me programming information, digital-only channels are unavailable and the picture on available channels is very snowy via both analog and digital connections.
One place that isn’t hurting one bit is Short Pump Town Center, the new upscale mall about a mile from my house. Although several restaurants there are closed, the rest of the mall was doing great business on Sunday afternoon as I wandered over there for the first time since its opening three weeks ago. The Apple Store could be a serious hazard to my wallet, particularly with the recent price breaks on SuperDrive-equipped 12” PowerBooks.
So there you have it. Things aren’t perfect here yet, but they’re rapidly moving back toward normal. Relative to what Richmond or Tidewater faced, I personally gave the whole thing a miss, tolerating merely 40-mph winds and about 3 hours of driving rain. Overall, Isabel wasn’t too bad for me.
21 September 2003 / 1 Comment / Tags: life