New Orleans Escapee thanks to Katrina!

Title says most of it all. I am currently house shopping with the family, mostly around Willis area. Do not want to live in Houston and the farther away I can stay from it - the better. The wife is an RN and already has a job at NW Houston Medical Center but may eventually move to Conroe Medical Center on 336 Loop. I am an Engineering Designer and will be looking for a job as soon as I finish selling the houses in New Orleans. We were in the process of moving from one to the other when Katrina hit. Not much damage to the houses but a lot of damage to our confidence in the future of life in New Orleans. Nice place to visit but I wouldn't want to live there!

If anybody has any lines on good jobs in the area, I would appreciate the info! I spent the last three years at Avondale Shipyard in Outfitting department doing 3D modeling in AutoCAD. Before that I spent eight years doing structural design work for Lockheed Martin on the Space Shuttle Eternal Tank.

I currently ride a 1996 BMW R1100RT-P which is a former factory demo police bike. Black and white paint job, strobes, sirens/PA, no passenger seat. You will be seeing me on the roads here in the future sometime.

John Petty - jepetty@yahoo.com

Welcome to Texas although I'm sorry about the circumstamces. I know it has been a tough time for a lot of people on the Gulf Coast and I hope everything works out for you guys. Unfortunately, Houston wasn't a good market for engineers (see Enron collapse and HP merger with Compaq) before Katrina hit and the flood of Louisiana professionals hasn't helped (pun not intended but now that I've recognized it, I'm leaving it in there). There has been some improvement in the job market as energy prices keep soaring and I haven't personally circulated my resume in a while so hopefully things are getting better. Wish I could help you with the job hunt. In lieu of that, I'll keep an eye out for you on your bike. With a bike like that you should be hard to miss.

Welcome to the general Houston area John,

I work as an Engineering Design Contractor in the NW Houston area. Things have been heating up and jobs are available. Actually for me Engineering work has gone crazy, mostly over the last 6 months; I have had to turn down contracts due to being too busy. That is hard to do! Two firms I work with have received good *** for Engineering Projects just since the 1st.

You shouldn’t have much trouble getting to work. If it were me - I would secure a Temp job and keep looking for a while; things will get better, it is an upward thing! Don’t jump too quickly.

Good luck,

Steve

06 Buell Ulysses
03 KLR650
96 H-D Heritage

welcome, I hope things go good for you here.

About the job market, too bad you're set against Houston because your majority of Engineering Design jobs are going to be innerloop or West end of town....unless you really enjoy commuting.
But overall, the market is pretty good right now (,for us oil/gas).
I was a Mechanical designer down at Johnson space center for quite a while, so you might have some options in the Clear Lake area. Other than that, your oil/gas work is going to be Houston only. I work with several people who came from Avondale (Struct.) over the last 5 years and all of them currently work in the Katy area.
If you want specifics of Agents, ect. you can PM me off line.

Good Luck!

If you have any upstream O&G experience, PM me.

Welcome to Texas and to TWT! Sorry to hear about the homes in NO. I hope things go well for you here!

I am in Huntsville, just a hop, skip and throttle blip up the road from you! Be sure to check the Upcoming Rides/Trips/Events forum as we post about a regular weekly bike night in Montgomery (about 20 mins from Willis). If you can, bring your wife (and kids?) on over to meet everyone!

Thank you all for the good advice! I need to qualify my earlier statements by saying that I do not hate Houston but I do hate traffic! Also, I just got away from one low-laying target for hurricanes and their storm surges, I do not want to jump right into another. I originally thought of finding a contract job with one of the companies at NASA but then I discovered how much time I would spend commuting - can't do that! So I would be happy with just about any design work north of downtown as long as it does not involve refineries. It looks like the wife and kids have fallen in love with the Willis area so it looks like Willis will be our future hometown. Anybody have opinions about Willis High School?

I like the hilly area north of Houston - it has trees and Lake Conroe. I am very familiar with King's Cafe and the wonderful bisquits and gravy for breakfasts. I was just there this past Sunday morning to pick up some to go and saw many riders coming, going, and eating. I have gone around Lake Conroe and other nearby areas - 147, 1097, 830, Honea-Egypt, and more. I expect my weekends will be filled with unpacking and other settling-in chores for a while but I look forward to more riding in the Spring. I'm not afraid of winter rides, BTW - as long as there is no danger of ice on the roads. A Gerbings jacket liner does wonders for the cold wind chill factors!

First off, my condolences on the loss of your homes. I grew up on the North Shore (Covington/Mandeville) and spent more than enough time in Naw'lins. I moved to Dallas around 10 years ago and I can tell you that you will eventually get home sick. I miss the fun, light atmosphere of southern Louisiana.

Living in Houston should get you a job real quick. There are plenty of big oil companies there and let's not even get started on the ones that support them.

Good luck from one Coon-***** to another.

Later,
Larry Johnson

Oh no - we did not lose our homes! We were VERY lucky this time but we want to be out of there before another storm like Katrina or Rita come through. In fact, the house market is temporarily inflated in the New Orleans area due to the lack of cleaned-up homes that did not flood or suffer major damage. We only lost some shingles at both houses and we lost two trees but they did not hit the house. Roofers are coming soon to replace both roofs as my insurance check finally arrived from Allstate. Just painted the interior of the house we had been in for the past 20 years. I am hoping that we will be able to buy a new house with a bridge loan covering what should be the down payment until we get at least one of the New Orleans houses sold. If not then we will need to move our stuff into temp storage in order to clear out the houses. They will sell quicker for a better price if empty but mostly because people need a place they can move into right away - someplace with a weathertight envelope and functioning utilities. Everything else just helps the price.

Yes, we will miss New Orleans and all of its quirks -- well, maybe not some of them! My in-laws will still be living in the area and my father now lives on the north side of Lake Ponchartrain in Folsom which is very similar to the Lake Conroe area. We will be coming back for the usual Mardi Gras parades that pass through our old neighborhood 1.5 weeks before Fat Tuesday. But the kids will be in better schools and the people have a much better attitude for raising teenage daughters than what New Orleans has.

Also, the only good riding in the New Orleans area is about an hour away in whatever direction. Streets in New Orleans are total crap and the broken pavement can all too easily grab your front wheel and twist it suddenly if you don't keep a sharp eye on the road. That is difficult to do now because a lot of the streetlights are out and will be for a long time. The city had trouble keeping up with repairs before but now they will be getting a fraction of the taxes they did before Katrina. The streets will only get worse except in the tourist-heavy areas.

I am looking forward to living in the Lake Conroe area!

John Petty

Well Hiddy Ho,

Glad to see you didn't lose your houses. Your father is living in my backyard. I didn't mention Folsom because most people have never heard of it. There were 325 people in that town when I lived there. I went to Folsom Elementry and made it part way through the Jr. High before I got booted over to St. Paul's Catholic school. Apparently, I was becoming a problem child, hence the switch in schools.

My family and I used to ride Enon when I was growing up. Hundreds of acres of logging land that had miles and miles of trails. I did lots of Hare Scrambles and Enduros back then. Boy, I miss those days. The land has long since been closed to bikes thanks to the hunters who cried and moaned that we were scaring all their corn fed deer away. Oh well, what are you going to do...it was private land.

As for New Orleans, I can only hope that it rebounds. It is a wonderful city despite its corrupt political and violent history. It's wonderful if you know where to go and where not to. I'm taking a big guess that it will be much nicer since the "riff-raff" have left. Hopefully, a new, more affluent crowd will move in. It's interesting to note that the cities that accepted the refugees with open arms have all reported a rise in violent crimes after they arrived. Gotta love it.

Glad to have you on board and I wish you the best of luck.

Larry Johnson
Grapevine, TX

Welcome to Texas and good luck in the job and house search.

They were running a flat track in Willis this fall. Good area for flat track with Baytown and Beaumont right there. Don't blame you for moving away from NO, but you move to Ritaville? Well, at least it ain't under water with limited road access and Rita didn't wipe it out. Live right by Lavaca Bay, myself, and am living on borrowed time I guess. We're 22 feet above sea level and about 25 miles from the gulf, but it's still scary when a big one's out there. But, it's a small town, nothing like the mess that is New Orleans. Just the politics and corruption there would keep me from moving there. We have visited, good 'nuf.

I have a friend in Baton Rouge that just sold their home and decided to live in a travel trailer on the road for a while. They weren't wiped out or anything, just wanna get out cause of all the people that have moved in from New Orleans. They say the traffic and crime rate has sky rocketed there, don't wanna deal with it anymore. I tell ya, that storm sure messed up a LOT of lives for more than one reason! Jack and Donna had already sold their business, though, and were retired. He's only about my age, early 50s, and she's about 40 so they're very young to be financially secure like that. I am very envious. I think their lives have changed for the better and hope yours has, too. Good luck on the job hunt and maybe you can come out and say hi if I get over to Willis to flat track this season.