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Published: January 19th 2008
Leaving New Orleans
much of this area was under water for several weeksToday we hired a car and drove to Alabama to watch Robert play basketball. We drove via the Gulf Coast which is where "Katrina" hit. When we drove out of New Orleans you could see the desruction .... miles and miles of damaged/destroyed housing.
To my surprise alot of it was not the ramshacked timber places we saw on the news but they were just ordinary suburbs brick houses on cement slabs. Spoke with Mike one of Robert's team mates and a local when they came back after Katrina and went into this rea they couldn't believe it these houses complete with slab had been lifted and moved...hard to comprehend, But more about that in another blog.
Anyway once we left New Orleans we decided we would take the scenic coast route as we had plenty of time. We travelled along the Gulf Coast Hwy which is literally on the coast the road and the sand then the Gulf of Mexico. It is not hard to see why there was such destruction here there was absolutley nothing to stop the wind or the waves as you can see in the pics.
There was mile after mile of empty
blocks where obviously there had been houses as there were driveways every few feet as you would expect but these driveways led to a slab or nothing, as you will see if you have a look at the video... all the houses immediately on the beachfront are gone. Some houses have been rebuilt or repaired but so much of it is still empty..
The Gulf Coast is famous for it's Casinos and is the life blood of the area... they are up and running and boy was it busy. We stopped at probably the largest one for the "Champagne Brunch" as you can see by the photos there was no shortage of food. And plenty of bubbles.
After a leisurely lunch we continued on and it reminded us a lot of what the Gold Coast must have been like at the start miles of highrises maybe about 12 to 15 storeys built right on the beach like right on the beach and the sand is real fine hopefully there is some bedrock not too far down that they are built into otherwise next Hurricane there will be whole buildings floating out to sea...
We arrived in plenty
of time for Robert's game. We weren't sure where the school was but quite byaccident we came across their bus so we were able to follow them.
For those of you who go back to St Kilda days may see a similarity in the tracksuit pants that Spring Hill College are wearing...not sure which ones are worse.
It was a very exciting game Loyola hit the front for the only time in the game with about 1.5 mins to go but I guess that is when it counts, and managed to hold on for a win. Apparently there is alot of "bad Blood" between these two schools as there was an "investigation" into the last game they played which was for a finals playoff spot. So everyone was very happy.
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