We're evacuating......weeee. Third time for me, so reasons for my mock excitement are solid and valid. We meet at the base theatre @0730 and stand around until 1400. I'm not quite sure why they 'pretend' to have a system, makes 'em feel grown up I guess. Anyway, the C-130 closes us in cooks us for an hour then 'ding', we're done and the door opens in WPB. We clear customs, jump through the flaming hoops that the ring master is juggling, and they give us a sixty dollar treat and 'safe' quarters for at least the next 3 days. Once checked in at the Holiday Inn we relax for a bit than hit the Ale House with Tambi. Drink a couple cocktails rent a few movies, spend some quality time with a Papa John's Pizza, and 'The Big Bounce', Owen Wilson sucks by the way. Tambi takes us back to our home where there's no bar, so we retire for the evening.

Day 2. We wake pretty early, read alot, and make plans. We actually do precious little, which makes our stir crazed tendencies start early on in the psycho circus, so by the evening time we are ready for some much needed entertainment. We call Kari who is game for some liquid entertainment, and sustience. So whilst we're waiting barside for the hotel shuttle, Ody finds us and wants to tag along, so our party of 3 grows. By the time dinner is served our party is now 11 strong and most are at least 3 Jager Bombs into the ballgame. I made the waitress swear on all that waitress' consider holy that Gorgonzola cheese )is not a 'smelly' cheese(I'm loudly saying I saw a movie where this shit ate Tokyo), because they have a steak that's covered with it that I'm toying with the idea of ordering. She so swears, and returns with something which the smell would've repulsed the brain eating zombies in 'Dawn of the Dead'. Ody disappears, Kari pees on her own foot, and we make it home alive.

Day 3. Winds hit 50kts tonight, curfew is in effect. Lunch at the hotel was $15 per person, so much for per diem. Got a 12 pack of Corona and a bottle of Jack Daniels, couple cans of Pringles, and some Cashews, I think we'll be ok. Weird John is in our hotel so we gathered our instruments and played for the hotel, we were pretty well received all things considered. Hungry Howies are delivering until someone dies!! We order enough pizza and hot wings to feed a small county, which is exactly what we have here. Island faired well, only lost a couple trees and a shed. I wrote Hurricanes Blow on our evacuation information notification board, and someone else circled it. Good to see we're all on the same page here.

Day 4. The proverbial fan was hit, and hit hard. around 1130 the hotel lost power, so the lobby is just filled with all sorts of characters from all walks/crawls/slitherers of life. Lots of large scared eyes in the lobby, scared of what? They have no idea, but scared all the same. Looks like a scene at night on the jetty wall. Shine a light under a rock and watch the eyes reflect red light back at you. Generator is running emergency lights and elevator and select outlets. Through some creative wiring we have the Television to advise us about the storm, and stations to charge cell phones. Winds are topping out now at around 75kts. Out of boredom we turn in for the night.....after midnight it got real interesting.

Day 5. Around 0030 our generator gave out, that means no elevator, no emergency lighting, no anything that uses power. Unofficial estimates put the winds around our hotel between 100 and 110. Good thing for us that Gene is a genius, he fixed said generator around 1130, so we have emergency lighting. Stir craziness is really starting to set in now, these beasts are pacing back and forth like caged tigers, sniffing the air for a hint of what's next. The hookers are really starting to look bedraggled. Never did I think I would live to see a time when AUTEC people forced onto an unsuspecting society would be able to look around at others and awe over their lack of stabilities. Good to know that we aren't that far off the scale when it comes to society as a whole. Of course it doesn't hurt that every whack-job between the 26th and the 27th paralell have decided to call the Holiday Inn home till this passes. Kari picks us up and we go in search of anything edible, south is a better guess than north, so we travel. We drive and drive till we hit Boca

Day 6. We give, we fold, our mettle has been tested and we've failed miserably, alergic reactions to mold, and weirdos have gotten the best of us, too many odd smells in the stairwells for our tastes. We're waiting the rest of this out with Tambi, and Ody's coming with us, for a while at least anyway. After migrating toward Singer Island to help a friend with some felled trees in her yard, and view some of the devastation this foul system reeked on this community(as a boat owner my heart sank to see all the beached boats, there was even a Catalina 22, which made me shudder and wince), we found a chinese place that was cooking. I've never eaten Chinese due to a phobia of foods which resemble items found in one's own nose. We got the food, which was delicious, and played drunken dominos. Wonderful night sleep, Tambi rocks. Still no power, but the view is better, no prostitutes, no chain smokers, no whack-jobs. In our morning forage for breakfast, we happened upon a Bagel shop that was clear of plywood with clever anti-hurricane idioms spray painted upon. Never really had a bagel that I fancied, but at this point I would've ingested a dearly loved family pet, and enjoyed it, so the bagel was like manna from the gods. Ody was on the first flight, on dropping him off at the Holiday Inn, the lobby behind the registration desk looked like a kind of dark carnival sideshow, mutants not fit for human observation, disheveled, unclean, almost distorted. We learned that the hotel generator had only 12 hours of diesel left...then no more generator. Just one more facet to the 29 dimensions of suck that is the life at the Holiday Inn, or Hell-a-day Inn....due to every day falling another degree in Dante's Hades. I feel a pang of dread turning my back on my brethren, my kindred spirits, these souls whom which I shared this miserable experience, I fee like a lizard with it's tail cut off, but I did my time, I've got the scars. Good thing I play alot of video games, the fight moves learned from oriental hand to hand combat moves came in handy in Publix in fending fiends off my 12 pack of 8 oz Coca Colas, and tin of Altoids Tangerine Sours. This was only possible to to sustience from City Pizza that thankfully opened and was serving great pizza till they ran out. Kudos kids!!

Day 7. Life kinda returning to normal. We hit Muvico @ cityplace, hit the Blue Martini for ritualistic liver abuse and sacrificial brain cell thinning. Yuppies are so cute when they're young! But so vapidly stupid, it's amazing they're not extinct, actually if mass suicidal creatures like lemmings can survive as a species I guess there's hope for yuppies after all....damnit. This particular vixen had a gorgeous mane of dark hair, huge beautiful eyes that reeked of irresponsibility, an ass you could bounce a quarter off of, and must have had a tattoo somewhere on her skull which read 'vacant'. She's standing hands on hips quick jerky head movements, like a cheerleader about to be launched into low orbit by some guido-looking over-compensating-for-a-small-penis-father-didn't-hug-him-enough-mother-drove-a-forklift pervert in hopes that he can catch her with a well placed finger, and she's saying 'What did I do with my pen??' Being a studious customer and still wondering exactly how high a quarter were to bounce if indeed you were to bounce one off that amazing posterior, and if different state quarters would result in different recoil heights, and how I could sit and conduct such experiments until she's old enough to start craving BOTOX injections, I ask her 'what color' was it? To which she replies 'Green'. I was hoping she would say that. So I tell her, 'It's between your breasts dear'. For which she was grateful enough to give me a jager-bomb on the house, ensuring that now I'm intoxicated enough that clever conversation and colorful colliliquies are officially out of my realm of reason, if I'm going to impress her now, I'm going to have to start lying about my days of being a test driver for alcohol injected street bikes. Not worth it, besides my wife would've just laughed and told me I better not get so drunk that I wet myself....when that happens you lose all your 'cool points'. So Tambi returns from work to find me and Sheldon 1/2 crocked and in need of food, so here we go, but yet again, to the Ale House where they're getting to know us. We eat and Charlie joins us and we plan on going over to his parents 'hood' to play music with some kids that live there. When we get there we take the 2 cases of beer we inherited from Ody's untimely return to the island, and drink a few whilst awaiting for showers and other such stall tactics. Around 9 we get to play about 3 songs and leave due to the dreaded Curfew, that those who are caught breaching are suffered through American Indian tortures, then killed and eaten. Trip home is uneventful, and my hatred of the states stews by the moment, due to the fact that the ONLY reason to tolerate the states is for the fast food, and except for the first 36 hours of the last week....I couldn't steal a taco, or an Arby's roast beef sandwich if I had to, and as one buzz is ebbing another is cresting, this is the time that anyone under the influence would cheat his grandmother at scrabble and chew that skin where her triceps used to be if one promised a Taco Bell Soft Taco were in it for him. We make it back to Tambi's and crash....hard. Wake, and board the plane, and fly home.