Thank you for all of the phone calls, emails, thoughts, and prayers. I wanted to shoot out a quick update to let you know what I know at this point. After not hearing from my parents for about 36 hours, they finally got through to me last night.

To give you a little background, my parents were in Dallas visiting my Grandmother when the storm was brewing. When they learned of the mandatory evacuation, they caught one of the last planes on Sunday morning to get back to New Orleans so they could board up the house, move the cars to higher ground, and move some of the valuables on the first floor to the second floor. By Sunday afternoon it was too late for them to evacuate or they would have been caught in gridlock traffic. They decided to go to my Dad's office, which is connected to a hospital. The building is solid concrete and steel and was a good place to hunker down, so they grabbed their camping gear, about 10 gallons of water, and some peanut butter and crackers and set up camp.

I spoke to my parents at about 8am their time on Monday just before the worst of the storm passed through New Orleans. They seemed to be fine, high spirited, and ready to ride out the storm. After listening to the news Monday night, it seemed like New Orleans had dodged a bullet with the worst of the storm passing over the Mississippi Gulf Coast. I breathed a slight sigh of relief, but still had not heard from my parents or from my Aunt and Uncle and their kids who retreated to their farm in central Mississippi.

On Tuesday morning I went to go teach and scout out some routes in the mountains for a course, so I did not have access to mass media. Around 4pm as I was coming down I was flooded with voice mails on my cell phone and turned on NPR to see how things were going. This was the first I learned that the levy system had been breeched, that 80% of New Orleans was flooded, and all of the crazy stories about rescues, looting, violence, etc. At this point, I had still not heard from my family and was beginning to worry.

At 9pm on Tuesday evening, I finally received word that my mom and dad were ok. They had escaped by car by heading over the Crescent City Connection, going west, and eventually picking up 310 and then 55 north towards Jackson. With the access points into and out of the city severely compromised, they were lucky to get out of the city. Before they left, they checked on our neighborhood and the Church/Reese/Mumford/Bjork compound seemed to be spared from major flood and wind damage. They high tailed out of New Orleans and headed north to try to meet up with my Aunt and Uncle who sought refuge at their farmhouse in Mississippi. After almost running out of gas, they made it to the farm in Mississippi, but Marianne, Alan, and the kids were not there. They continued North and tried to find a place to stay for the night, which happened to be Blytheville, Arkansas. They are safe and are heading to St. Louis to stay with my cousin Heidi and her husband Mark.

My brother John Mark and his wife Dottie (pregnant with twins) and Dottie's parents are at their house in Mobile, AL and are doing fine. It is hotter than Hades down there and they are still without power (and probably will be for a while). I still don't have any word about how Marianne, Alan, and the kids are, but we suspect that they headed towards Dallas to be with Alan's parents and are doing fine.

Think good thoughts about all of the people along the Gulf Coast who have been affected by this storm and keep in touch.

Nothin' but love,