One decision made

Went out car shopping this afternoon.  I wanted to try the Mazda3 turbo rice burner.  Ok, so I tried it.  Then I went down the block to the Volvo dealer and asked them to get me what I had, only newer (and not steeped in sea water).  I told them I'm flexible on time.  They'll call me when they find it. 

Now if only I could get the house repairs under way....the waiting game is driving me crazy.

Water and stories and such

I have a bunch of photos I took as Sandy was coming at us full force.  I even have one which I think is of my car being drowned, at least I'm guessing that's what it is, since that was the only time there were any lights to be seen during the assault.

At the moment, tho, I find I can't look at that stuff.  Now, I don't feel as though I am particularly traumatized by having been in my house for the duration of the storm, but it must be in there somewhere, or I could process the pictures and upload them here.  Any maybe even talk about them a bit.

But no.  Can't do that quite yet.

Instead, I'll tell a story or two. 

One comes from my sister, who lives on (and occasionally in) the river upstream from me, in Little Silver, NJ.  She, or her neighbor, after the storm, found a mailbox in the yard.  It was closed, so they opened it, and found mail inside.  The mail was addressed to someone in Staten Island.  We looked it up on Google maps, and found that the mailbox had traveled roughly 28 miles on the storm surge to get there.

Now, my mailbox is also MIA.  Looked around for it on the grab and go visit, no signs of it.  I wonder if my mailbox floated up to Staten Island in a weird sort of exchange program?

Next story.  One of my neighbors also had his car on our block when the road got too flooded to get out.  He had a Jeep, one of those big square ones that look so imposing.  Well, we learned during high tide that while Volvos (my car) don't float, Jeeps do.  His Jeep took off around a corner from where he had left it, then floated down the block, apparently to where the river coming up met the ocean, came back towards the ocean, floated back to the river, etc, several times.  When the water finally went down, it had turned around to face the opposite direction from which it had begun its trip, and nestled against a wooden fence.

Another one, from a gentleman who I was speaking with while on line for the grab and go bus the other day.  He had a boat, sounded like some sort of power boat, I am not a boat person so the specifics go right past me.  Anyway, during the storm he had been across the river in Rumson, trying to see with the assistance of binoculars how his boat was faring.  He hadn't taken it out of the water, and was of course concerned that it was ok.  While he watched, it started moving, and floated away down the river, with its owner no doubt having a freakout.  After an extensive search, his boat was finally located.  In Staten Island.

So.  Enough of this for now.

Post Sandy, pre cleanup pictures

Ok, so here's a couple of pictures of what Sandy did to the north beach section of Sea Bright.  These pictures were taken by me on Tuesday, 30 October, the day after the storm.

Looking south on Ocean Ave from my house.  The road is ordinarily black with a double yellow stripe down the center.

Our beach, which used to have dunes and plants and things.  The jetties are showing, we haven't seen those since the beach replenishment in 1995. This is at very low tide.

Looking north on Ocean Ave towards the Highlands bridge.  The foreground is the sidewalk, the road is to the left.

Lands End condo's sea wall deck, or what's left of it.  The only reason it didn't end up in the middle of the street is the street sign upon which it is impaled.

The sand is in the roadway.  The beach sort of moved west, onto the wrong side of the sea wall.

Normal height hydrant up to its waist in sand.

There used to be a double-stairway public beach access and deck here, this is directly across the street from my house.

Here's part of one of the missing decks that were across the street, on the sea wall.  It perched itself on top of the wall, nobody put it there.  There's another piece of it in my back yard.

Ocean Ave north to the bridge.  The sand was over 3 feet high in most of the roadway, and deeper on the sidewalk.

We really got lucky on our end of town.  I thought this was bad until I saw the rest of Sea Bright.  This is nowhere near the destruction that happened downtown, as you can see in the video linked in one of my earlier posts (Nov 5).  For the most part, the houses in north beach are intact, some have severe water damage inside, but many escaped that indignity.  Of course, the ones at ground level suffered the most.  A lot of the residents have lived here a long time, and none have ever seen anything like this storm.  I hope we never see it again.

My house

For everyone asking about my house, here's the story.  I have a bit of siding off on the south side of the house.  I have a basement full of ocean, effectively killing the furnace and water heater.  My air conditioning unit which resides outside (the condensor???) was partially submerged, so I suspect it is also shot.  A bit of leakage in the living room, so a bit of ceiling drywall damage.  Nothing new, not the first time I've redone that ceiling.

The garage roof is sort of shredded in the corners.  It's a small garage, and I was interested to note the roof on it is a couple of layers thick.  The garage door buckled, but I was able to close it yesterday, when we went in for the grab and go visit.

Of course, everything in the fridge died an ugly death.  And my car drowned in the back yard.

Compared with a lot of the other houses in town, I didn't do too badly.  Still, due to various regulations and requirements, it could be months before I can live there again.  Being a nomad sucks.

I'm too tired to post, but....

We went into Sea Bright today to do a grab and go, and cleared out the refrigerators at my house and my Mom's apartment.  What a mess.  My house looks good compared to a lot of what is left there.

Why I'm here at the moment, tho, is to post a link to this video, which is of downtown Sea Bright:

http://youtu.be/4BiWZ7w_vhM

It's about 12 minutes long, and very well done.  If you've ever seen Sea Bright, better have some tissues close at hand.

And for my friends, I will reiterate, my house is not in this area, and is nowhere near this bad.  I'll try to put some north beach pictures up later or tomorrow, when I feel less exhausted.

 

Finally back online!

Rough week here.  Which is probably the understatement of the century.  Tonite I'm tired, so I won't write much or put up any pictures, but tomorrow is another day, and after I finish what I absolutely need to get done, I can get in here and report what's been going on.  But after spending the time since Weds morning in Holmdel at my sister's house, which has a gas stove and water heater but no electricity, and freezing my tuchas off, and eating whatever was expiring in the freezer, we moved today over to my niece's house in Atlantic Highlands, where the power was restored yesterday and earlier today, depending on the exact location.

Warm is nice.  And we went out for dinner to a really fine Thai restaurant on First Ave.  So some things feel better, finally.

And I brought back some Thai duck for Pablo, who gobbled it like he hadn't eaten for a week, which is patently untrue, he's been eating like a horse.  I guess he's a stress eater, like me.

The Sea Bright town meeting was more pleasant today than the one last Weds, and it sounds as though actual progress is happening, and we might be sort of back to being able to go home in a few weeks rather than several months.  I hope.  Everything needs to get a new certificate of occupancy, tho, before anyone can live there again.  Gonna be a long haul.

They said the sea wall was breached in two places, and they are attempting repairs in time for the nor'easter we are expecting on Weds.  Just what we need, another storm.  Kick us while we're down, why don'cha.

Let me say right now, Pablo has been a real trouper through all this, even deigning to be carried in his tote bag across the bridge when we finally were able to make our escape from Sea Bright.  I wore my bright yellow scarf for that hike, yellow for sun and positive thoughts and coming back against all sorts of odds.

i am ok, house is a mess, sea bright is a huge mess but pablo and i are ok.

2.00 Monday afternoon and all is still sorta ok

The wind has picked up within the last half hour, and now it's really raining kind of hard.  Sort of horizontal, though, so I expect the rain might go right into the river, instead of landing on us here (that is an attempt at a joke).  Power and internet obviously still on, sump pump is working.  I hear the other side of the bridge is bad, trees down and road flooding, so it looks like we're going to stay put. 

Making more tea.  Need lots of tea, and doggie treats.  Pablo is still relatively calm, but very clingy.  Can't say I blame him. 

Just watched Il Tabarro from San Francisco Opera.  Pat Racette, Brandon Jovanovich, and Paolo Gavanelli.  Wow!  Nice distraction, hope the power and internet stay on so I can watch some more opera.  It's kinda cozy with the dog curled up in my lap.  Strength in numbers, I guess.

News from outside

A neighbor just walked in from Highlands, where he was checking on his new house that is under construction.  He said the road coming in over the bridge is barricaded, but you can still get out.  He also said the flood on Ocean Ave was only about two blocks' worth, the rest of it was clear.  At the moment, the whole thing is clear, the water has gone down on my corner, too. 

He told me that Highlands (the low part of it) is under water.  And there are lots of people on the bridge, taking pictures.  In 50 mph winds, with rain (or sea spray, hard to tell which), on a 65 foot high bridge span.  I think I'll stay indoors.

Morning on Monday

It started raining during the night.  Not a lot of rain, but enough.  Power and internet are still on, obviously, for the moment. The sump pump is working, as long as the power stays on.

First high tide this morning, the river came up to the corner of Southway, which runs behind my house.  Ocean Ave is running about a foot and a half deep in water.  It's receding now, next high tide on the ocean is 9.37 tonite.

Here's the river:

The fence is the back of my backyard. 

And here's Ocean Ave:

The water covered the sidewalk.  It's receding now, the river is down to the white house, and I can see the double yellow stripe in the middle of Ocean Ave again.  Low tide on the ocean is at 3.35.  If Ocean Ave looks passable, I'm probably going to leave.  Because this was just the first of the high tides, we've got two more to go (at least) that are under the influence of the storm.  I expect they'll get worse rather than better.

The good thing is, my car is here.  The bad thing is, my car is here.  Cuts both ways.  The house is probably high enough to withstand the water level.  Unfortunately, I can't get the car to climb the back steps and come inside.

Weather Undergound now has the storm center making landfall around Cape May sometime tonight.  So they moved it farther south, but I'm not sure that helps us here, they are saying the storm surge is worse on our side of the center than south of it. 

Will keep updating as long as I have power and internet.