Rolling out Part II: Two women.

With My gear already packed, I left at 0720 on wednsday morning for Dallas from Houston. About 2 million of my fellow Houstonians were also trying the same thing. For the first 30 miles or so, I was making pretty good time. I was going through residential streets. I didn't stop for stop sogns, and I pretty much ignored school zones. Once I had started driving, I had the rabbit in me. My mouth was a little dry. I was nervous. I was nervous about how bad the exodus was going to be. I was nervous about how D6 was going to be. So, I drove like it was going out of style. I had hear reports on the radio about the main highways would be converted to contraflow at 0800 hrs. I hoped that it would induce more people to go that way, and get away from my carefully planned route. Still, I was doing pretty well. At one point though, I missed a turn, and ended up just driving by compass. Whatever turn would take me further west, I went doen that road. It worked out pretty well since I ended up back on my originally planned route.

The general plan for my escape was to use tertiary roads for the first 20 or 30 miles, to get away from the population. I figured that after about 20-30 miles, the secondary roads would free up since there would be more of them as they branched out, and flow would be quicker. I was planning on taking secondar roads most of the way to Dallas. I would not get onto an interstate highway until I was in Waco.  Things did not go as planned, though.

On FM 1093 (I think that was the one) I ran into my first slowdown. It was 36 miles from my start. Traffic was moving, but slowly. Jim had told me not to expect for things to get better. I was pretty hard-headed, and figured that I could be back in Houston within an hour if I decided to turn back, so I thought I would just try it for a bit longer. Indeed, after a little while, things began to speed up a little bit. It was still slow, but instead of being a 5 mph pace, it was a 10 mph pace. During stops, people were asking each other what their plan was. It would seem that nobody had a real plan. They all were just going.

I did pass one car. I guess that the husband and wife were having a spat. All I know is that the wife got out and started walking. Traffic started to pull away in front of them. I could see the husband inching the car along, pleading for his wife to get back in. She was having none of it, and was gesticulating, yelling and in a general huff. Anyway, while her husband was willing to put up with her shit, I was not, and so I just went around the two. So did the car behind me. In the rearview mirror,  I cought a glimpse of the wife watching us go by, and decide to get back into the car. It would seem that the thought that the world at large (myself included) did not care a whit about her made her rethink the wisdom of trying to hold people up until she got an apology for whatever it was she was pissed about.

While I was driving along, I saw a woman walking along the road away from Houston. I slowly caught up with her over the course of a few miles. As my truck pulled alongside of her, I was talking to D6 on one of the rare instances of contact, and asked the woman if she needed a ride. She said that she really did and I let her hop in the truck. I put the bugout bag in the rear seat. She did not seem to mind sharing leg space with a remington 870. She was a very pleasant middle-aged german-hispanic woman who had gotten out of the car in her convoy to use a porta-potty at a construction site next to the road. She had thought that she would be able to catch up with her vehicle, but she could not, and so she was walking a few more miles to the corner gas station, where they were all meeting up. It's probably a good thing that I picked her up, since traffic started to go faster. It turns out that someone in the lead of her convoy had gotten out and started directing traffic through the intersection, which helped speed things up. She didn't mind chatting, and I didn't mind listening to her nearly as much as I abhorred listening to the idiots on the radio. They were radio DJ's who had put away their shitty play lists, and tried to act like some sort of saviors by spewing the same recylced and largely useless information. Anyway, at the gas station, I let her out, and continued along my way.

I was still south of I-10, which goes through Houston. I continued along, and things seemed to be getting better. After that intersection, in Fulshear the road split, and I took the western branch, and others took the northern route. I got onto 36 north after getting to Wallis, Texas in pretty short order from there. Once on 36, though, things slowed down a lot. They were still going okay, though, and I decided to wait n' see if things kept going at a reasonable clip. By this time, all thoughts of getting to Dallas in 6-7 hours were out the window, but D6 had told me that if I could get out, to get out. So, I would keep going. Getting back would be easy as long as I did not wait too long. So, I continued North.

at almost 1100 hrs on the dot, I crossed under I-10 in Sealy. Things started to flow better, and I hoped that things would imporve until I got to route 290, where it would proabbly gum up a bit until I crossed over it, and kept heading north. 290 ran from Houston to  Austin, and I figured that it would be an awful drive, so I never planned on getting onto it. Also, I-45 north had still not been converted to contraflow, and I was starting to get this feeling that everyone who had counted on that to help them out would end up being let down.

On route 36 north from Sealy, things really slowed down just a couple of miles north of I-10. I saw a little road to the side, and knew that it would arc around in a loop, through burleigh, and then putting me into Bellsville. I saw very few cars taking the road, and I figured that since3 there was no roads on the map feeding into the loop, and that it met up again with 36 in Bellville, I could take it almost to Bellville, and then things would slow down a bit, but that I could still save an hour or so. So, I took the road. Miles flew by. I thought I was going to be okay. Then, my heart sank. I saw bumper to bumper traffic from another road feeding onto the route, which was backed up as far as I could see. I hoped that while it would not be fast, it would still get me to Bellville in decent time.

So, I pulled into line. Unbeknownst to me, the worst part of my journey had just started.

To be continued.....

Respectfully Submitted,
-doc Russia