The Adventure Begins

Left Reagan/National early. Smooth flight through Memphis and on to Baton Rouge. Arrived at the Corps of Engineers Disaster Relief Center to find ....

I was lucky. Spent the night on the COE levee matting barge. The barge is longer than a football field, has 350 rooms and all the necessities necessary to support it's crew of 350. The matting unit spends 9 months each year placing levee matting on the levees between Memphis and New Orleans. It should have already left. But deployment was delayed and the crew dismissed to make their rooms available to the many Katrina/Rita workers. Slept 4 to a room. First bunkbed since I can't remember. Could have been worse - option 2 was a night at the Baton Rouge base camp in a tent with 300 exhausted responders.