<p>Turns out the diaper story wasn’t true after all???</p>
<p>"ORLANDO - Former astronaut Lisa Marie Nowak’s attorney railed against the news media Friday, saying that contrary to reports Nowak did not wear or use diapers on her February cross-country trek to confront a romantic rival in Orlando.</p>
<p>"Lykkebak said the used diapers were still in Nowak’s car from 2005 when the Nowak family, including twin toddlers, evacuated Houston to escape a hurricane.</p>
<p>The family wound up at a hotel that was full, and had to stay in the car in the crowded hotel parking lot, he said. Unable to use the hotel’s facilities, the Nowak children and adults used the diapers to relieve themselves, rather than use the bushes in front of others, Lykkebak said.</p>
<p>Lykkebak told the judge Friday that Nowak is the butt of jokes by late-night comedians Jay Leno and David Letterman, jeopardizing her chances of a fair trial."</p>
<p>Okay…I can’t stand it. Used diapers in the car since 2005…in TEXAS?
How could she even go near the car let alone drive it. It’s a flipping biohazard :)</p>
<p>Sorry, that is the lamest excuse I have ever heard! Now they can also charge her with lying to investigators. USED diapers (it says they were used by adults and children) were sitting in her car since 2005? I was born at night, but it wasn’t last night.</p>
<p>I guess they can always carbon date the material in the diapers.</p>
<p>How could she even drive around with the smell?</p>
<p>And why would they even think to keep them anyway? </p>
<p>Yeah, there likely are tests to see how old the soiled diapers are.</p>
<p>Also, I can’t imagine adults donning diapers in such a situation. If we couldn’t find bathroom facilities anywhere (though with some driving they should have been able to), we’d drive to where we could go in the woods, but never dream of putting on a diaper. Very far fetched sounding to me.</p>
<p>If you read the article, it goes beyond this…it sounds like her lawyer wants to suppress statements Nowak made to the police officer without an attorney. In other words, while the policeman entered into his notes her statement that she wore diapers, the lawyer wants that stricken…so he is kinda contradicting himself saying she didn’t wear diapers but also saying that any statements she said that she did wear diapers should not be admissable. The policeman says she made statements AFTER being told her Miranda rights, and that she also gave permission to search her car. So, the lawyer is contesting what is admissable, but at the same time denying she wore a diaper.</p>
<p>As I understand it, she wasn’t actually wearing diapers on the trip to Florida. The police found toddler (size 3) diapers in her car and asked what they were for…to which she responded they were used to collect urine. Supposedly she was trying to explain the Rita story, and the police made cursory notes regarding her explanation. The fact that they did not take the diapers into evidence does somewhat corroborate what she and her lawyer claim is true. I think the press just read extra info into what were very sparse notes in the police report about the diapers. </p>
<p>I also know that a baby diaper full of urine would not necessarily smell bad given the gel and deodorant built into the diaper. Eventually it would have dried out and smell like nothing. </p>
<p>Since my family was one of those who attempted to evacuate before Rita, I don’t find it all unusual that diapers may have been used in desperation to collect urine. We spent 4 hours on I-10 and only traveled the distance between two city exits. People were jumping out of their cars and flooding local businesses to use their restroom facilities. Eventually those business owners locked up and people resorted to urinating on the side of the road in public (grosss…I know). It was a terrible situation. [As I mentioned at the time, we gave up and went home with a huge knot in our stomach about potentially facing a direct hit by this lethal storm. It literally took us less than 30 minutes to get home after spending 2 hours getting to I-10 and 4hours on I-10. ] </p>
<p>Everything Nowak’s lawyer is saying seems plausible to me. The quality of journalism and degradation of responsible reporting is really disturbing to me. As my husband said, if not for the lawyer’s recent comments, we would have continued to believe she had actually worn astronaut diapers on the Florida trip as implied by the press.</p>
<p>Ldmom, it is true that it is hard to know what to believe or also not to believe everything you read in the paper. I tried to open the article you posted but it caused a major problem on my computer and I had to shut it down entirely. I tried a second time, same thing. So, I’m not going there, LOL. But I have read about it on other news sources. I guess it will have to wait until a court of law reviews it. I understand what her lawyer is claiming but it is fuzzy when mixed in with that he doesn’t want statements she made to police to be allowed, nor the search of her car. So, who knows? What the lawyer is saying is plausible and one would wonder about a grown woman wearing a diaper because she didn’t want to stop to use a rest room, but either way you put it, none of it is entirely rational and I’ve seen crazier things. Both stories are plausible but both are a little nutty at the same time.</p>
<p>^^^^because posters were responding to the news article in the FIRST post which referred to these as USED diapers. Whether that is true or not, who knows. But that is the article to which posters are responding.</p>
<p>I think when all is said and done, it might turn out to be “an open pack of diapers, the missing ones having been used for…”</p>
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<p>I saw carsful of families stranded in parking lots after Katrina, sometimes for days. It’s true that business owners had to lock their restrooms because they were overwhelmed. </p>
<p>I can’t imagine anyone in that desperate a situation who would waste gas driving around looking for a restroom or a convenient place in the woods. Most folks stopped where they were precisely because they DIDN’T have gas to go much further and they had to wait for some to go on sale.</p>
<p>Without electric power, even stations that have gasoline can’t pump it. The area where I was (50 miles NW of New Orleans), was without power for about a week. Even when gas stations got power back, gas sold out immediately. People waited 4-6 hours in line for it in many cases, only to find it sold out when their turn came in line.</p>
<p>So, what did families do? Drive to a store and buy diapers for everyone? Was this a common thing that folks were doing?</p>
<p>I also don’t know what the roadways are like where you live, but here, if someone stopped on the highway or another road, they could walk into the woods. It is not all a concrete parking lot. It is not all that different than going camping. We don’t buy diapers for that. You walk a little ways off the roadway if there is no other option.</p>
<p>I doubt the diaper thing was common. I don’t think it would have occured to anyone to use diapers who didn’t already have them along for someone who used them normally.</p>
<p>I agree that in many places you can walk into the woods. But I don’t know about where Nowak was, who as far as I know is the only person claiming to have used them for this purpose. If she was evacuating for Rita, odds are she was in East Texas, and parts of that are city for miles, especially the Houston and Dallas areas.</p>
<p>The article is at Chron.com which is the Houston Chronicle. You might just try going to that site and you will see the link on the front page to the article in question.</p>
<p>I’m assuming the Nowaks packed their car to evacuate, including packs of diapers for their twin toddlers…which would be a normal thing. When they were stuck with no facilities, they opted to use the diapers. I certainly wouldn’t venture off into the woods at night during that evacuation. When we were leaving Houston, we became very concerned for our safety which is why we turned around and went home. I was in one vehicle with one kid and pets…and my husband was in another with the other kid. The traffic had not moved for hours, it was miserably hot, cars were overheating and shady people were leaving their cars and walking around on the highway. People were angry and upset. And we were also sitting ducks for mugging. After the third scary-looking man put his face up next to my windshield to look at me and my daughter, we called it quits. We became acutely aware that if we were assaulted or robbed, there would be no way for police to come and help us…and we figured the ‘criminal sort’ out on that highway or in that area were already thinking along those lines. </p>
<p>Given that Nowak was an astronaut, it likely seemed a very normal idea to use the diapers to collect waste. Also, as to why people are inferring the diapers in the car were used…I do not know. After re-reading the few articles that I’ve seen…all I see is reference to a police officer report asking her why she had diapers in the car.</p>
<p>Btw…the route the Nowaks would have taken would be from Clear Lake, through Houston, either to I-10 toward San Antonio, 290 toward Austin or I-45 toward Dallas. The City of Houston spreads across several counties and you would not get to wooded areas until you were well on the other side of Houston…which would have likely taken them the better part of 24 hours in stop and go traffic. That is why people were running out of gas and abandoning their cars…you just could not move. It took my in-laws over 13 hours to drive from Katy to San Antonio, normally a 2.5 hour drive.</p>