September 28, 2005 4:09PM MDT Yep, back from the Hurricane Rita fiasco. I arrived in Houston on Friday, September 16th to visit family, and ended up evacuating along with them on Thursday morning the 22nd. The storm itself turned out to be a relative dud (at least for Texas - residents of Louisiana's Cameron Parish might argue otherwise), but the evacuation cure turned out to be worse than the hurricane itself. My self, sister and brother-in-law and their two small children, my dog, and my sister's two beagles spent 22 hours stuck in more-stop-than-go traffic before my vehicle finally ran out of gas SE of Livingston, Texas (desperately trying to avoid ditching our cars on 59, where gas was running short for everyone, we had taken a back road only to run into the mandatory evacuees from the Port Arthur and Beamont areas). The darkest moment was in a bank parking lot in Livingston, where we found out all of the local shelters were full. We were out of enough gas to get us to my mother's house in Nacogdoches, and the sky was already showing signs of the impending storm, whose eye was headed right for us. But we weren't out of friends. The family of an acquaintance of my sister's mother-in-law not only took us in for the day to feed us and let us sleep and shower (the high the day before had been 100 degrees farenheit, with the humidity percentage most likely pushing the same mark), but managed to siphon five gallons of gasoline from one of their tanks. That five gallons was enough to get us to Nacogdoches, where we weathered a storm that turned out not to be as intense as feared, and I was able to return to Livingston on Sunday to retrieve my vehicle. Thank God for Texans (I still miss that state many times - the heat was one reminder why I live in Colorado). September 13, 2005 6:35PM MDT Nice to see that things are falling into place before my trip to Houston (my first vacation away from Boulder [not that my life here in Boulder isn't a permanent vacation of sorts]). September 4, 2005 12:50PM MDT Well, the first 44 pages of First Star are now online. Now on to the last 22 or so... September 1, 2005 5:20PM MDT Made your contribution to the Red Cross today? I just chipped in a few bucks myself. |