I returned to Nassau Bay on Wednesday morning. There is no damage at my building. However, here is no electricity here, though on the same block as us the hospital parking lot and the Lockheed Martin building are both teasing us with their electricity. So, it's urban campout time.

Yesterday morning, I went for a bike ride with my camera around Clear Lake, which is only about 100 meters from my apartment. The lake has receded to its pre-Ike level, but not before flooding, smashing, or otherwise causing havoc around its shores.

I have posted all of my photos to Flickr: Hurricane Ike, September 2008.

I felt like a jerk riding through other people's misery, so in most cases I shied away from taking personal photos. The folks in Kemah, on the coast of Galveston Bay at the mouth of Clear Lake, got hit hard. I know that people on the Gulf of Mexico coast were hit harder. The photos below, and the full set on Flickr, are just a small part of what I saw there. Tomorrow I'm going to see if the Red Cross can use a pair of hands -- much more useful than snapping photos, though I wanted to share with you that aren't here what it looks like in my neighborhood.

Now that the storm has passed, Clear Lake is serene again. It's eerie to consider how different -- how powerful -- it can be when it is sitting there so silently.

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