Sanctuary

Finally....I am home.

I got off to a much earlier start this morning, thanks in part to Rita's potential nastiness. Nominally, JSC is at an Emergency Level 5, which just means that they're always on the lookout for something to happen. Well, yesterday, they moved down to EL 4, which means that something is gonna happen, so start making preparations. We didn't expect to move to EL 3 until sometime tonight; boy were we wrong. First thing I hear when I walk in this morning(at 6:45, no less): "We're at Level 4; unplug your comp, unplug your surge protector, cover your comp, and get out of here." Whoah...

So work today was short :) Of course, that meant my miserable drive would only begin that much earlier. Jason left even before I could, so he got the 1 hour start...I would see him again later. Walker and I decided to drive tandem; that way one of us could always play some defense in the heavy(at least, we THOUGHT it would be heavy) traffic going out of town. We headed out around 1100am. Hwy 146, like I said, was slow-moving; it took 30 minutes to go about 6 miles. That didn't make me feel any better about the drive. Thankfully, once we got onto Interstate-10, things smoothed out with hardly any traffic at all. That is, until we got to Beaumont. The road workers decided to shut down one lane for a 4 mile stretch; what is more annoying is that the road they closed was having NO WORK being done on it! WTF. That aggravated me more than anything...until the Horne Curse struck. Right as traffic begins to move at a snail's place, guess who's air conditioner stopped working? Yeh, that's right. Of all the times, it happened when I'm not moving and the sun is directly overhead at high noon. That made things even worse.

With every person and their mother tying up the networks around Houston, our cell phones didn't work well the entire day, so Walker and I had to perfect our sign language from car to car. You know, "you take that car" or "you pass first, then me" or "I'll slide in, then I'll let you go in front of me". We got pretty good at trasnmitting those signals near the end of the trip...

We eventually made it out of Beaumont(I'm still without a/c) and towards Lake Charles. That part of the trip I was familiar with. Then we had to turn onto Hwy 165, a road I have never taken. Even though we found out this road was a designated "Evacuation Route," there were hardly ANY cars on the road. Granted, it was 55 mph for 75% of the road, but still. It was much better than running into the god-awful mess near I-12 and I-10 in southeast Louisiana. The drive was decent, despite the fact that my a/c began acting menstrual: it's on, then it's off, it's on, then it's off. VERY annoying...

We stopped in Alexandria to eat and refuel; after that, we went on to Monroe and Interstate-20. While on Interstate-20, guess who we see? Jason in his CRV carrying his massive 12 ft. kayak on top. He said he got awesome mileage(31 mpg!!) when he only went 55 mph, so he had been doing that ever since Alexandria. Needless to say, we didn't slow down to 55 mph to keep him company; we continued on...

The view of Jason from my car after I passed him. Note the gigantic kayak on top of his car.

I got home around 8:30, and Walker drove away on I-55 towards Memphis, his home.

So I'm here now in the friendly confines of the Gray Center. It's quiet, it's relaxing, and most importantly, no hurricanes are in the forecast :)

Now, had we actually stayed in Houston and weathered(haha) the storm, we were prepared for the Day After. Jason bought his kayak several days ago, before we heard anything about this girl Rita. We were able to go over some basic skills before leaving...

Here I am, using my 6th sense to "detect" the storm...

Now I'm praticing my normal rowing maneuvers...

And finally, here I am using all my might to fight the gigantic waves from the storm surge.

What makes this mini-vacation even better is that I get to pick up the dogs tomorrow! My parents put them up in the canine extended stay boarding, or as we call it, "The Spa." Since my rents would be gone until Saturday, the girls were gonna stay there until then, costing money and making them even more homesick. Since I'm here, I'm going to pick them up tomorrow, which should be awesome. They aren't expecting me, of all the Hornes, to pick them up, especially this early! For two days, it will just be me, my dogs, and my cats at the Center. How awesome is that!?

It was a sad day today in Major League Baseball...the Yanks won, and the Sox lost. What does thta mean? No more first-place!!! Yanks lead by a 1/2 game. Like I have been suspecting for the last month, it looks as if it will definitely come down to the final 3 games at Fenway. Jeez...

-H