Ahhhhhhhhhhhh…
We are at the Hacker House for Houston Homeless. We have brought the animals in and had our first (and hopefully only) accident. We have showered and changed. You can not imagine how icky you feel after driving with the windows down in 80-90 degree heat for hour after hour. Ugh. And the first time we saw public bathrooms was at 6:30 this morning in Giddings – we left at 5:30 pm last night, so you can do the math. And bam we ended up in car accident, my legs were stuck uh it was hard. The accident was not our fault either so I am about to contact Brooksville Car Accident Attorney to ask some questions and see what kind of compensation I can get from this.
The photos recap most of the drive, but let’s see what I can add…
– It took us close to 5 hours to travel a distance that probably normally takes 30 minutes or less. If I wasn’t so damned and determined not to be sitting in my house while the wind whips around outside, that alone proably would have made us turn around. I knit while I sat with my car in neutral and with the parking brake on. I’m done with the sock now (yeah!) and just have to Kitchner the toe and weave in the ends.
– In all of the driving, I don’t think I would have ever described us as furious about it. But I understand how people on Wednesday that were still on the road last night might have felt that way.
– The sun set about 2 hours after we set out. There was a noticeable change in the temperature shortly afterwards. I’m glad we decided to set out late in the day so most of our driving was in the dark. (I’m sure it seemed strange that we were leaving at 5:30pm, but there was a reason for it.)
– The first gas station we came to was at FM 2920 and Cypress-Rosehill. It was CRAZY there. No gas, no food, no bathrooms – the store itself was closed, but the parking lot was filled with people. People were using the faucet on the side of the building to refill their water containers. They were using the electrical outlet and their cell phone chargers to make phone calls. (Get a car charger. It is a good thing to have, especially in an emergency.)
– It was at that gas station that I realized we really didn’t pack enough food. We were not prepared for no restaurants along the way. We had enough to eat though, although it was a strange mix. I brought some of our hurricane canned goods with us, and considered trying the Kramer experiment of heating up the Hormel chili right in the can by putting it under the hood. I didn’t, but that was only because I didn’t have a can opener. Lesson learned? Pack more driving food. Lots more driving food.
– Leia’s escape route kicked ass. Twice. Sure, it took us 5 hours to go like 10 miles, but the second half of her route had us as some of the few cars on the road. It was great. Meanwhile, someone needs to tell the city of Plantersville that they suck for not putting both streets on their street signs. They had one announcing the street you were crossing, but not verifying the street you were on. It was a bit frustrating.
– I talked to both my Mom and Kymberlie while driving, and they definitely helped to keep me company. The Houston radio stations were great about keeping us up to speed on what was happening on the news. Kudos to all of them!
– The cops in Magnolia tried to force us to go down FM 1486 instead of up FM 1774 as we had planned, heading right past the Texas Ren Fest. I had planned on going back to 1488, but then when we got back to 1774 it was open again, so we went on as planned. Big mistake. When you’re stopped for so long that people are turning off their cars, you know it is bad. It was very cool though that the people of Todd Mission were out beside the road with water for people. At midnight and one in the morning. We saw them twice because we finally said “screw that” and went back to 1488.
– Once we got on FM 1488, heading towards Hempstead from Magnolia, we were all alone on the road. For 24 miles. It was very weird.
– Hempstead to Brenham was crazy, but only because we were moving at a steady slow crawl. It is at moments like that that I really hate driving a stick. My left foot hurts from working the clutch. I considered trying out the cruise control, but I don’t think it will work for speeds below 5 mph
– On the far side of Brenham, where you normally turn to head towards Giddings and Austin, I noticed that they had made a contraflow of one of the other exits – so we got to use the detour and probably cut half an hour out of our drive. Whooo hoo!
– Most of Brenham to Giddings was 40-60 mph speeds. We made it there by 5:30 am, but couldn’t hold our heads up any longer. We took a nap in the parking lot of a restuarant. At 6:30 we went in, used their bathrooms, bought cokes, and headed back out.
– Giddings to Paige was again pretty nice and fast. At Paige, we took 21 to 71, and even though we both still had a good amount of gas left in our cars we went ahead and got more gas in Bastrop. We lucked out – he changed the price on the signs right after we filled up our cars! We picked up snacks and got back on the road.
– All along our trip we saw cars pulled off of the road. 290 was almost solid with cars pulled off on both sides, all the way from Hempstead to Brenham. Crazy. I don’t know if they were all out of gas or if some just decided to sleep. We wanted to do as much driving in the dark to avoid the heat, which worked out pretty well.
– I don’t think Austin has ever looked more beautiful than it has today. And Tara? She is FAB-U-LOUS. I’m so glad to be here, and I’m looking forward to a relaxing weekend away. It took us 15 and a half hours to get here, including our nap-stop. I’m so glad we did it, although I know neither Mike or I expected it to take that long. We were thinking 6-8 hours, tops. Another lesson to be learned from all of this.
Hopefully, everyone in Houston will make it through the storm safe & sound.
Now we are going to crash. I need a long nap. A very long nap.
