Running from Rita

Running on Empty would be the theme song for that treck.

We packed the car Wednesday night and stayed up most of the night getting the house ready for us to bug out. By about 2:30 in the morning Thursday, we figured we were ready to head out, and that at that time of the night we'd be able to beat much of the traffic -- WRONG.

Traffic was looking terrible all around the freeways even at that time, so Katie mapped out a route that took us 59 south to Westpark tollway, Beltway 8 north to 249, through Tomball and then up 149 to 105 -- finally into Walden and Mom's house. On paper it looked like a good route, and it looked like the least congested route at that time, too.

Well, we hit traffic -- bumper to bumper -- once we got to the beltway. From there until we got to 105 in Conroe, it was a parking lot. Katie and I got separated right away and I didn't catch back up with her until Tomball. We average 6 MPH the whole way and ended up taking 11 hours to drive what should have been a 1.5 hr trip.

The only bright spot was while we were on 149, just outside of Montgomery. For some reason the traffic, even on that little back road, was at a standstill. Every 10 minutes, we'd move 10 car lengths -- absolutely terrible. Well, out of nowhere, a guy tapped on my window and asked if we were trying to get to 105 -- yep... "Well, this is ridiculous, follow me," he said. We signaled to as many cars behind us as we could to follow, and we whipped along some tiny back roads -- sometimes little over one lane -- and ended up popping out on the back side of Montgomery High School, and onto the first clear road we'd been on in more than 10 hours.

We made it to Mom's by 1:30, grabbed some sandwiches and unpacked. After a little rest and stretching the legs, Mom and I made the rounds to gas stations to fill up Katie's car and mine. We finally found that the Spin In in Walden had plenty, but there were 24 cars in front of us. An hour later we were filled up and done. Long day, but we're relatively safe and sound and ready to ride out the storm.

Row, Katie, Mom and I cleared all the outside items into the garage this morning and now we're just waiting. Seems the storm will drift east of us leaving us with the better / safer part of the strom. Right now, the wind is picking up out of the north east. Should be an interesting night.