People in Houston take Halloween seriously. I watched the preparations during my evening walks – one man spent two weeks converting his garage into a house of horrors. He put up a big sign “ Entrance denied to pregnant women, wimpy children and people with weak heart.”

In stead of focusing too much on Halloween we decided to head south to see another horror show – Galveston island few weeks after the hurricane. The big surprise was that the town was still there.
(Click on the picture to see it full size, use a back button to return to this spot.) Looking at the pictures published in the papers I was expecting the western side of the island, particularly where million dollar houses were built right on the beach, to be completely destroyed. The houses survived better than we expected. The eastern part of Galveston, which is protected by a massive sea wall constructed after the last big one in 1900, looked almost normal. Restaurants and shops were opened for business, all the debris has been removed and it was only by walking around that one saw that this was an impressive event: bent rails, large blocks of granite moved from their locations, offshore restaurants swept away. Because the cleanup clearly started in the town and then progressed westward, driving west was a little bit like traveling back in time. We could see how the island looked like one, two and three weeks ago. The further west we drove, the higher were the mountains of trash on both sides of the road.

From the outside, most of the houses, including the ones built right on the beach, survived very well. It was the piles of debris around them that told the real story – most of them had severe water damage inside. There were some spectacular examples of destruction, however, a house that totally collapsed. Or several houses that had the landward walls ripped off, including a hotel, which appeared to have had a solid concrete construction. Seems like luck had a lot to do with it.

Even though our visit was on the last week in October, the water was still very warm (warmer in fact that in Costa Rica, three weeks ago!). That is the attraction of the Gulf Coast.

On a totally different note – October is the month of the International Houston Quilt Festival – the largest such event (in terms of number of visitors) in the U.S.A. and until a quilt show was started in Japan, the largest one in the world. Kumiko again won a prize (3rd place) for her quilt, and this is the fourth time her quilt was given a price at this show. This is even more impressive, considering that it is typically considered a success to have a quilt accepted at this event.