Guess who is back in Houston?

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Several HOURS after dehydrating in my car on I-10, I made a U-turn while I had enough gas to make it back and am now IN MY APT waiting out the storm. I know people always say, “how can you take a chance, just drive?”, you cannot understand until you are in it:

1) We took 3 hours to travel 5- 10 miles in stop and go traffic, using over 1/4 of a tank of gas for JUST that, with the AC OFF.
2) People were starting to cuss and become hostile in the heat.
3) We KNEW, through the news, that no gas was available for about one hundred miles, and following trends, we would run out of gas in under 50 miles EASILY.
4) I was feeling initial signs of heat exposure, and we forgot to pack a cooler
5) Our cat looked like she was about to start shaking (remember animals pant, not sweat, to cool, so they burn alot of energy and lose h20 in exhalation much faster than us) This normally indoor kitty was going to last max 7-8 hours in 106 degree weather with no water.
6) In stand still traffic you have no breeze because it is blocked by all the other cars, and with the pavement and engines, the temp was way above normal ambient temps.
6) Brand new, well maintaned cars were stranded on the side of the road, either out of gas or broken down. In that traffic and environment, even “good” cars were overworked.

We thus decided that the risk of being stranded on I-10 with no gas was MUCH higher than the risk of being harmed in our relatively newly built and well designed 3rd story apartment. I turned around, and took about 20 minutes to traverse the roads back home. WE stocked up, and will ride out the storm here.

We are not alone, though. I already secured clearance to ride out the storm in the VA hospital here.(yes, our wonderful homeland defense dept required that I send in a formal request for pre-authorization to enter VA in the event of the storm. This is the same place that required I have my request for a parking sticker NOTARIZED. No joke). In addition, if I agree to volunteer to staff St. Lukes over the weekend, I can use it as shelter, also. So if it gets nasty, we leave the cars in the covered parking garage, and walk to the shelters before the storm hits.

We shall see. they don’t have WiFI.