I’ve told this story so many times to friends, family, and strangers in bars that it’s almost like singing along with an old childhood song. It always starts the same way, almost identically, even down to the words, “Did you stay for the storm?” My answer is always the same spiel, only slightly changed for audiences and time limitations.\r\n\r\n No. My roommate, Travis, and I left the day before the storm. He woke me up at 7:30 am to start weatherproofing the house. Little did he know that I had stayed out at the Pub until 5 am, and upon my return home had weatherproofed the downstairs until about 7 am. Thus, I was quite tired and still hadn’t showered, but I awoke groggily and we moved furniture from the patio, closed battens, wired shutters shut, tied boards in place over the security bars, bagged up debris, moved small furniture upstairs to the second floor, and downstairs from the third floor, and finally prepared for a stay or a flight that could last a month. \r\n\r\n We finished weatherproofing about 1 pm the day before Katrina made landfall. I went to shower and told Travis, “It is up to you whether we stay or go, it doesn’t really matter to me.” When I got out of the shower and changed into some comfortable clothes, Travis made the decision for us, saying:\r\n\r\n“I think we should leave. We can go to your parents up in Shreveport, and if it’s not bad we can come back in three days. But if it does hit as a category five like they are predicting the city will flood and we will be stuck here for two weeks or more. If it is bad then we can just drive on up to New York and visit my brother in the Hamptons, since you have never been up there and its nice this time of year.”\r\n\r\nIt didn’t take me long to pack after he made this decision. I had just arrived back from 10 weeks in Europe a week and a half before and I had just finished washing them the night before. I took back out my huge duffel bag and packed it back up with everything I took to Europe with me, figuring it could be two months before we can get back home.\r\n\r\n By 2 pm we were on the road headed up Elysian Fields Ave. towards the 610. Our friend Dimitri had evacuated the night before after our urging him not to stay and he suggested the route he took. Also, the radio and TV news exclaimed that taking I10 west was almost impossible due to the traffic. The people I know that went that direction took longer to make it to Houston than it took for us to get to Shreveport, both usually about the same driving time.\r\n\r\n We knew when we hit the 610 that it was going to be a tedious trip. Before we got off the on-ramp we nearly turned back. The 610 was a parking lot. We inched forward slowly toward the High-rise with Freya, Travis’ Doberman, and his two cats, Geisha and Spartan, all restless and the two cats “meowing” at the top of their lungs insistently. Our conversation consisted of us debating whether to get off at the next exit and go back home or to stay on the Interstate. We took option three noticing that the highway 90 bridge was sparsely traveled. Thus, we got off on Almonaster Blvd. and went to 90 taking it all the way to highway 11. \r\n\r\n I must note at this point that there was no counter-flow in effect through New Orleans East or over the High-rise, a major cause of this huge parking lot of a traffic jam. When we got near highway 11 there was already water inching across the road in “Irish Bayou” and we went through about a foot of it before getting to highway 11. I imagine after about an hour or two more 90 was going to be impassable, as it evidentially was further down from the cars coming toward us getting on the highway 11. We planned to take the highway 11 bridge but Travis missed the turn and got us onto the Twin-span, where we moved forward at about 4-5 miles an hour. Again, there was no contra-flow across the Twin-span just like in New Orleans East. This irked both Travis and myself since there was supposed to be contra-flow and there was not a single car on the other bridge for the 25 min we were on it. \r\n\r\n We finally got to Slidell and the I 10/12/59 interchange, but we could not go east on 10 like we were hoping at this time. We discussed the traffic scenario and decided, “if we can get on 10 and get past Biloxi then we wont have any trouble with traffic.” However, 10 was blocked and we had to get on 59. There we finally got into the contra-flow and sped up to about 50 mph for a good bit into Mississippi.\r\n\r\n Once in Mississippi we found yet another glitch in the flawed evacuation plan. Somewhere around Poplarville, Mississippi the contra-flow just ended. There was bottlenecking for a good 5 miles slowing traffic to a stop and go standstill once again. The contra-flow just ended for no reason. They routed everyone back onto one lane not at Hattiesburg where there were three major highways intersecting but in a remote junctionless stretch of interstate. We were livid. This 45 min wait to get back into a normal flow of traffic that for us only lasted about ten minutes because we heard on Mississippi Public Radio that they were not letting anyone go west on highway 49 or on I 20. This was good and bad. It was good because we knew about it and took the next exit onto back roads paralleling highway 49 all the way up to the other side of Jackson where we got on I 20, and bad because those people who didn’t hear or didn’t have maps were stuck to be routed up past Meridian, Mississippi. This evacuation plan had more than a few flaws, but we didn’t have too much trouble after we got on the back roads.\r\n\r\n The back roads were easily traveled and no traffic, no lines at gas stations, and we were going about 50 mph all the way to 20. Once we got on 20 we stopped and had lunch/dinner at Subway, our trip long savior. Subway was the only place we could eat that was quasi healthy and quick enough, since we had the pets in the back seat of the Audi with us. The trip across Louisiana to Shreveport was not very long and I have driven it many times making it go by quickly even though the cats continued to yell the entire time. \r\n\r\n After 13 hours, we finally made it to my mom’s house in north Shreveport. We went right to sleep and the cats finally shut up except for Spartan’s hissing at Geisha because she had kept him up yelling the entire trip. Every time we stopped for a day or so he would hiss at her every time she got near him because she kept him from sleeping too. \r\n\r\n Two days in Shreveport and we knew that we weren’t going back anytime soon. We saw what was left of our city via CNN, CBS, and Fox News. The devastation was exactly what Travis and I had predicted if it were to hit. The levees broke like everyone knew they would, the city’s lower echelons were rioting and looting in the streets and there was total chaos and panic in the streets. I felt assured that I had my shotgun and pistol in the car with us for when we went back. I just wished I had taken or hidden all of my other weapons so as not to aid the infidels. \r\n\r\n Anyway, we left Shreveport on Tuesday and drove toward Atlanta. Half way through Mississippi we got a great deal of amusement from the Mississippi Commissioner of Insurance who in his 30 or so min interview on MPR said in response to the question, “What about the looters?” that, “They are (hesitated pause) the lowest (pause again) the absolute worst of anything, (break in thought and hesitation) If anyone sees anyone, (pause) going in or out of a store or house looting, just do us all a favor. (Pause) Take out your gun and just shoot them.” Travis and I both broke out in laughter and congratulatory agreeance with his statement wishing someone would get the gall and assert themselves enough in Louisiana to say the same in New Orleans. If only the inept Governess Blanco would have stepped up and done something instead of calling for a lame ass “day of prayer” while people were destroying what was left of New Orleans and furthermore dieing in the streets and in their homes. What did she think, that the god that sent the hurricane there was going to rebuke his actions? Idiocy. But I digress.\r\n\r\n We were nearing Meridian, Mississippi when we were getting low on gasoline. We hadn’t seen lights for miles and miles much less an open gas station. We get to Meridian, where they have power, and pull into a line of about 20 cars at about 6:50 pm on Tuesday and wait to get gas. Travis gets out and goes in where he finds out they are closing the store at 7 because of curfew, but the pumps would stay on if we had a credit card to pay at the pump. However, the Mississippi State Trooper controlling the lines said that at 7, which it now was, that no one could get any more gas. Travis exclaimed to him, “So you aren’t going to let us get gas, so that means you are going to be picking people up on the side of the road shortly. That’s ridiculous, what kind of idiocy is that, we are evacuating from New Orleans and you aren’t even going to let us get gas. Can you tell us where we are supposed to get gas then?” The officer just said, “maybe in Alabama a few miles up the road” that he didn’t know of any place before the state line. \r\n\r\n Luckily a couple of miles into Alabama we saw a gas station open and pulled in. The animals were still in the car so we couldn’t find any real places to eat, but alas there was a Subway in this Livingston, Alabama gas station. We got some food, gas and then had our only quiet meal on the road, since the cats were quiet, us having let them out of their carriers before we left Shreveport and they were appeased with their laxed confinement. And toward Atlanta we went arriving about 1 am, 14 hours after we departed Shreveport.\r\n\r\n Atlanta was nice. We stayed with friends who had a pool and a big back yard that the dog enjoyed, but this pleasantness would end as soon as we got back in the car. Geisha started yelling the minute she got in the car and did not stop until we stopped at Travis’ brothers house in West Hampton, Long Island, New York, 15 hours later at 3 am Friday morning. The only rest from the cats yelling during this last leg of the trip was during our short gas/Subway stops across the East/Northeast, until we got to his brothers, where we could lock the cats up in a room where they could be happy, even though Spartan hissed at Geisha for two days every time she got near him.\r\n\r\n And that is my evacuation in a nutshell. The odyssey that continued for another 24 days, and one more storm after we were safely settled into his brother’s place. The return trip was just as eventful and aggravating lasting even longer thanks to Mrs. Rita and her sweep past New Orleans to the boarder of TX.\r\n\r\nJohn Paul Detty