Hurricane Report

Charley came through our neighborhood last Friday night. Our street suffered minimal damage. Our neighbors across the street lost their back fence, but it looked pretty old. Their next door neighbor had the worst luck, a tree fell onto the screen cage around their pool and destroyed it.

Our neighborhod has lost a couple of hundred trees. Unbelievably, only a few fell onto houses. About every third house has some lost shingles. Everyone has branches down, including ourselves.

We have not had power since 8:00 Friday, and probably won't get power back until around next Saturday. Today, however, the phones are back up and we have internet access.

Most streetlights are either working by now, or at least flashing. Gasoline is hard to come by, as we had close to 800,000 evacuees from Hillsborough and Pinellas come here to avoid the projected path of the storm. Everyone filled up their tanks here before driving home, leaving us empty.

Everyone here is fine. Just a bit cranky. Cold showers, hot, muggy house. Waking at dawn, bedtime after dusk. It's similar to a weekend on the boat, but without the nice views.

We'll post pictures later.