Running from Rita: part 2 the epic journey
Author's note: this series of posts is a first person account of a few days dealing with Hurricane Rita. The posts are all written after the fact but I will try not to let that ruin the story. Part 1 is here Thursday, September 22
We're up at 6am without having gotten much sleep. The last forecast we have from NHC is last night at 10pm. The track is still west of a direct hit on our area but much closer. The wild card is a high pressure system that is drifting eastward. Rita will be steered along the edge of this system. So everything depends on how fast the high moves.
At 7 we get a call from our daughter. They were planning to come down from Houston to here and caravan out. Now they think that we should all congretate at the son-in-law's grandmother's house just off highway 288. They want to go as soon as possible. The news is full of how bad traffic is.
We quickly finish up, disconnecting and bagging the three week old plasma high def TV and assorted audio/video gear. The little DV camcorder and the digital cameras in their bag go with us so we'll be able to photograph the damage when we return. At 8:15 we take a last look around and load up the pets and ourselves for the short drive to the in-law's house. They're still loading and arranging. He has a generator that I help him load in the back of his Escalade.
Finally at a little after 10:00 we're on the road. It's nearly 11:00 by the time we get to grandmother's house. A short time to get organized there, check maps and we head out. We're in three vehicles. Daughter and son-in-law are in their 4Runner with grandmother and her husband. Back end full to the top with food and luggage. My wife and I have our 55-pound dog, our cat and our daughter's cat (grandmother is allergic) with our food and luggage in our Accord. Son-in-law's parents are in their Escalade with their two cats and a dog plus the generator, more food and luggage. We've all got our cell phones and full gas tanks so while we anticipate a long drive and have some worries about gas we're pretty confident we'll get where we're going without major problems.
We take some back roads across the south side of Houston. The first 20 miles or so are easy then we hit traffic on highway 6. After creeping along for a bit son-in-law takes us off on what looks like a plant entrance road. Some turns and twists later we're back on highway 6 but several miles further on and traffic is gone. Not to belabor this but we do more or less the same thing several more times.
After a couple of hours we've made good progress and are on the northwest side of Houston, probably 30 to 40 miles towards our goal. There traffic is at a stand-still. The radio says that they're opening the inbound (east) lanes of I-10 to outbound (west) traffic. After some arguing via cell phone we turn back south, back tracking probably 10 or more miles. No sign of the alleged opening. I-10 has a high-occupancy vehicle lane down the center flanked on both sides by concrete barriers. We get on, then get off, then see people dodging between barriers to use an HOV exit as a way across. We get back on but are too far along to be able to do the same thing.
This is where we spend about the next four hours. Creeping along between concrete barriers. The dog seems to sense our tension and is bouncing around in the back seat. Every time she gets close to the daughter's cat (who hates all other animals) the cat hisses, the dog panics and tries to leap between the seats into the front. I alternate elbowing the dog back with a couple of nose slaps. She finally turns herself around and faces the back corner, for all the world like a little kid sulking. About an hour further on the air conditioning gives up. No sign of the car overheating and no idiot lights, just an unhappy noise. Rather than risk breaking the serpentine belt I switch it off. It's about 100 degrees outside and moving at less than 10 miles per hour doesn't generate any appreciable breeze so it's pretty miserable. The cats quickly start looking overheated, panting, eyes down to pinpoints. We splash them with water every little while which they don't much appreciate.
The Escalade has ended up a little ahead of us and he follows an exit to highway 90A which he says is wide open. We're now in Katy. Katy was once more of a true town but now is more of a suburb of Houston even though it's quite a ways out to the west. We find a roadside burger joint and stop for a restroom break and some cold drinks. The place is out of ice and runs out of food as we're there. We're not really heading the direction we want so son-in-law leads us up some more back roads. We're in a line of cars but are moving quickly now, 60mph or more.
We eventually hook up with a road I recognize, FM 362. That takes us up past Waller, Camp Allen, and Navasota. At some little junction in the country where there's a bar a number of the locals are standing by the side of the road offering directions to the fleeing multitude. Very cool! At that junction we have to head back across to highway 6. At first 6 is moving well but about 30 miles out from College station it comes down to a creep again. It takes us almost an hour to go six miles. Then son-in-law strikes out on more back roads looping us around to the west and coming in to College Station from the southwest instead of the southeast. That makes the last 20 miles into more like 30 but we do it in about an hour.
About 15 minutes of winding thru College Station past Kyle Field where the Texas A&M is preparing to play a football game a day early brings us to the house where we can collect the key to where we're staying. Ten more minutes and we're there.
It's about 9pm, we've been on the road for almost 10 hours and covered approximately 120 miles. Most of the way up we've been listening to a radio station that simulcasts one of the TV stations audio so have had continuous news on the storm forecast. Each successive forecast has moved the projected eye track to the east. Most of the day the forecast for the eye track has been up the eastern edge of Galveston bay. It's a category 5 storm with sustained winds around 165mph. On this track our house will be in sustained hurricane force winds for about 10 to 12 hours. It looks bad but we hope for more eastward movement.
The house that's been given over to us for the weekend is a large 4 bedroom on a golf course. Very beautiful place. One bedroom has been made into an office, the other three give us beds for six. There's a big couch in the living room and another one out on a patio that has been glassed in (it would be a sun room if it wasn't surrounded by trees). So with couches nobody will be on the sleeping on the floor.
The rest of the crew wants to go eat. I announce that "I've been in a car without A/C for the last 6 hours and I'm going to be very unpleasant to sit next to if I don't get a shower". We sort out bedrooms and unload, then a quick shower and off to "the best Tex-Mex food in College Station".
Back at the house, the 10pm forecast is out and the eye track has moved eastward again, out between Galveston and Beaumont. Very bad for Beaumont but some relief for us. Sustained winds are down, which was projected but is only now happening.
Very little sleep again tonight. In a strange bed in a room with the cat and the dog. The dog remains restless. I take her outside to pee twice during the night before finally just closing her in the bathroom. The dog usually recognizes me as the alpha pack member and does anything I tell her but so far I've crammed her into a hot car several times and now into a tiny bathroom so she's very unhappy with me.
