"All this water and nothing to drink."

"All this water and nothing to drink." - Written on the wall of a flooded New Orleans home.

Day Four of this trip and day seven of coverage in south Louisiana. It's funny how you adapt to things. For instance, I was almost killed today when I ran a stop light in the middle of Baton Rouge. Its the stop light in front of Gov.Kathleen Blanco's house as a matter of fact.

I have run it three out of the last four days.

No one in New Orleans pays any attention to traffic lights, or any other traffic laws for that matter. No speed limits, no correct use of one way streets... .hell no correct use of expressway on and off ramps.

It is a total free for all.

I have never covered the ground between New Orleans and Baton Rouge as quickly as I have this week. Anything less than 85mph on Interstate 10 at the end of the day and you are a grease spot. Or at the very least a hazard to those around you.

But back to the stop light. You see its the first (and only) functioning stop light that you come to between New Orleans and the Gannett Capitol Bureau office in the state capitol building. So every day after spending 12 hours in New Orleans, Plaquemines, East Orleans or some other hell hole, I simply breeze right through that light without a first glance. Today I had a near miss with a very upset woman.

Adaptation. Its an odd thing.

Today I took my first boat ride through the city. It was not very fruitful in the way of photos. But the things I saw were pretty amazing. At many houses people had tried to make boats out of whatever they could find. Most didn't look like they would float and all where still tied to front porches. I hope that means that the builders were plucked from their houses by air or boat.

Those covering the hurricane have adapted too. From learning that pieces of gear we once carried are no longer needed to the adaptation that we go through as humans to try and cope with a disaster of this type.

The things we see never go away. They will always be with us in some way. Months, even years down the road events, people and places will trigger memories of the things I have seen and the stories I have heard this week. But yet we adapt to them in the short term. Today I watched as a sheriff searched a building for the body of a 14 year old boy. He had found the body days before and each day came back to the same flooded building to check to see if a recovery patrol had picked him up. "I wish they would pick him up," he said. "Someone really needs to pick him up. Its not right to leave him here." The words have echoed through my head all day. But I have adapted the way I think about things. Right now I can't really think about what they mean. Nor about the incidents that led up to that situation. But some day I know I will have to..... I fear that day and long for it at the same time.