Just as Chelsea was proofreading the posted blog yesterday, Claire came out of the back office heading towards us. We hurriedly started logging off, knowing that the office closed in less than thirty minutes and that we needed to be on our way.
To our shock and total delight, Claire had another plan for us. She and her sister Anne, whom we had met first out in the parking lot (the two sisters and their mother own the real estate business), had decided that they were worried about us, and didn’t want us out in the rain. Anne came up with an empty condo, one of their stock of rentals, and they both decided to put us up there instead of having us go to the closed Galveston State Park.
Within minutes we had the bikes and trailers outside, and we were following Claire over to the condo.
We can’t believe our good luck. We stayed last night and we’re staying tonight in a very nice three-story condo overlooking a lagoon and a country club swimming pool, with a view of Texas City and Houston over the water on the northwestern skyline.
It’s really, really quiet here, partly because the season starts next week, and partly because of the severe damage from Ike – many of the homes haven’t yet been repaired, or they’re in process. We are loving the silence and the alone time. We’ve got a washer/dryer here, so we’ve gotten all our laundry done (we’ve been hand washing our clothes forever); we’ve gotten some clothing sorted out; we’ve finished some writing tasks that needed finishing; we wrote our couchsurfing references for our hosts; and I made progress on outlining more articles and gathering together our notes.
Our day started wonderfully – we sat on the third floor deck off the kitchen and living room watching birds and enjoying the peace; then when we logged onto our Gmail, we had notes from no fewer than three of our very favorite people in Gueydan, one of whom just got online for the first time (with her own email account) and one of whom we hear from very rarely (he hates writing).
Last night was a treat too. Claire was expecting a close friend for dinner, a woman who works in public affairs at UTMB (University of Texas Medical Branch). She’s retiring in a matter of weeks, and is planning her next world travels. Claire herself took three full years off starting in early 2002 to travel the world with only her rolling suitcase. We enjoyed the dinner with the two women tremendously, and would love more opportunity to see them.
Meanwhile we are all set to go, after a wonderful and peaceful and productive day. We’re going to watch sunset off the porch with a glass of chocolate milk, then have our dinner of instant brown rice, roux gravy, and packaged chicken. It’s early to bed for us, as Chelsea is still feeling under the weather, and we are both tired.
We are headed out tomorrow for Surfside; we are delighted that we have a great tailwind for the whole day.
Signing off from Pirate’s Beach