I\'m generally not one to run from an adventure, for example a right proper storm. I\'ve been in eight or nine hurricanes and typhoons. I was in the eye of Agnes in 1972 - still one of my favorite memories. I\'ve driven next to a couple of tornados. Through most of these storms, I\'ll grant, I didn\'t exactly have a choice in the matter of coming or going in those situations. But the excitement and unpredictability, and the anticipation of both the potential destruction of the storm and the potential love and giving attitudes of the people in the aftermath offer an incredible adrenaline rush - almost like going to a haunted house when you\'re seven or eight years old... something bad is about to happen - but there will be hugs and chocolate afterwards.\r\n Wednesday afternoon/evening my young neighbor came up for a chat. I explained to her how we wouldn\'t get much of anything where we were, as far as we were from the gulf. I was very father-figure about it - quite cavalier and blase in demeanor. So got all of that shit out of the way early on.\r\n Around 7:00p Wednesday they were describing Rita as the fifth most powerful storm ever recorded. An hour later she was described as the third most powerful, with a pressure of 897 millibars. Only Gilbert in 1988 and and the Labor Day Storm of 1935 were lower. She had 175 mph hour winds. Put another way, she was a 400 mile wide F3 tornado, and was headed for my window. \r\n Putting all the dread behind - realizing how far inland I sat (some sixty miles) - I figured at least we\'d be electricity-less and water-less for some period of time, and that would be inconvenient for me. This is the way I talk myself into doing things in my middle ages, what\'s convenient and what\'s not. As an added incentive, my big sister had asked me if I wanted to come and visit our mother while sis enjoyed a week of high school reunioning up in Chicago. So the timing was perfect - I\'d split the inconvenience and visit Mom and all would be right with the world. \r\n So I went and found some gas, not an easy prospect at that point - at about 8:00p Wednesday night. I got up way early on Thursday and was on the road at 4:30a Thursday morning. My plan was to go north and east and eventually to Albany, Georgia. \r\n I zoomed along I-59 feeling really good about my plan for a good twenty minutes until I found the ass-end of a couple million of my neighbors who had the same idea. \r\n By about 9 or 10:00a - not sure exactly when - I was up to Beltway 8 (here\'s a map: http://aolsvc.maps.aol.com/travel/main.dci?function=addressMaps&scale=4&lat=299241&long=-952139&originalLat=297631&originalLong=-953631&originalLat=297631&originalLong=-953631&addr=beltway+8%2f+59&city=houston&state=TX&zip=&country=&action=map&scale=5&international=&digitalcity=&mapType= ) whereupon I decided to curl around 8, get on 90 and make my way to the other side of Liberty and start again north. The move down 8 was real fast - and again I felt good about myself, but got over it upon hitting 90 at a dead stop. I sat there for a spell, and remembered seeing a dirt road a couple miles back heading north. Wasn\'t on the map - wasn\'t even a county road, but it was headed north, so I took it. Slow going, as it was all gravel and rocks - but at least I was moving. I found FM 1960, found it at a stop, so turned about and found another couple dirt semi-roads. I continued with the dirt roads for a while, north and east, until about 1:30p I found myself 4 miles north of Dayton, on highway 321 headed, theoretically, to Cleveland, Texas, some twenty miles away.\r\n I considered turning around and going home, but wasn\'t convinced I\'d make it back.\r\n 321 is your typical state highway - two lanes, one each way, with a shoulder adjoining each lane. Over the next two hours we made about 8 miles. It wasn\'t far back in my mind that hurricanes travel 8-10 miles per hour in a forward direction - and the radio was mentioning a northerly turn. I didn\'t feel really good about that - and wished for a while that I didn\'t think so hard, and that I had a less vivid imagination. But still, it was a lovely blue-sky day - and adventure was afoot. \r\n Some adventurous people started using the shoulder on the right as an extra lane. Made sense to me, but that kindergarten-engrained everybody-line-up-no-cutsies voice was still relatively alive in me, and I, for the most part, stayed in my lane - although I did partake of the shoulder a time or six. Eventually there were some adventurous souls who took to the left-side shoulder - putting their hazards on to warn oncoming traffic - sparse as it was. These contra-rebels, if you will, became more and more common, and I joined a few small convoys of them, once returning to the main lane in front of a semi, who was none to pleased at my maneuver. Eventually I arrived at the junction of 105, headed to 146, where I alit at 4:45p.\r\n So far: just under 95 miles in just over 12 hours - 7.7mph average speed.\r\n I considered turning around and going home, but wasn\'t convinced I\'d make it back.\r\n 146 worked out fairly well. It took only an hour and 45 minutes to make it the 13 miles to Rye, Texas, then fairly flew to Livingston - making the 20 mile trip in just 30 minutes.\r\n Interstate freeways out of major cities have natural bottlenecks. In the Big City a freeway like 59 can have 12 lanes - by the time they get to the country-side they\'re down to four. That\'s why I figured hitting 59 in Livingston should be a decent move - by there the freeway was already four lanes. Plus there didn\'t seem to be any tenable choices. By now Rita had definitely turned north and was going to miss Galveston and hit the Texas-Louisianna border - east of me, and east of anywhere I was likely to be in the near future. My north-and-east mantra lost half of its direction. \r\n I considered turning around and going home, but wasn\'t convinced I\'d make it back.\r\n At 7:00p I made it to Livingston and to hwy 59. Over the next six and a half hours I made just under 28 miles (including a stretch of 4.8 miles in 3 hours 20 minutes). You can picture this highway - two lanes north, two lanes south, huge median in between. Earlier we talked about a smaller highway and the resistance of the populace to use the shoulder as a (perfecly good) lane. That earlier highway I now saw as a way to a destination - the Interstate at this point was THE destination, and nobody had a problem with the shoulder as a lane. Shortly thereafter the left-side half-shoulder was being used as a lane as well. As the evening deepened the Vox Populi decided that contra-lanes were indicated, and used the crossovers to head north in the south-bound lanes. Eventually there were the two north-bound lanes - the two adjoining shoulders, the grass on either side of the shoulders, the two (formerly) south-bound lanes - the shoulders on either side of them and the grass on the outside of them - plus the big F-250s-350s running down the middle of the huge median... over twelve lanes of north-bound traffic on a nominal four-lane freeway - AND THE WHOLE LOT WAS STOPPED DEAD FOR HOURS. There was nothing the cops could do.\r\n I considered turning around and going home, but wasn\'t convinced I\'d make it back.\r\n I flitted back and forth across all of the lanes - more out of boredom than hope. At one point, as we were inching along, a lady pulled up on my right and said \"Do you have any water?\" I held up my last inch or so of my pint. And she handed me a pint of Ozarka. Made me smile. Finally there was some real movement over on the contra-side and I crossed over to there and fairly flew into Lufkin. The stoppage turned out to be a sign on 59N that said that two whole lanes HAD to turn left on to 287 - which is a loop about Lufkin. So, making it into Lufkin - on the wrong side of the road - the cops were all out in the middle of the street yelling \"JUST GO!\" and waving us through to the rest of 59N. I was able to cut through tens of thousands of unenterprising lemmings at a good 40mph.\r\n Once through that last bottleneck I made it quickly to Nacogdoches, about 50 miles, averaging 30-35 mph. Reached Nacogdoches at 3:15a Friday. I was down to about a quarter tank of gas, and given all the horror stories about people running out of gas along the way - it was high time to try and get some. Five stations, two long waits and 70 minutes later I had a full tank of gas, a hope that the worst was behind me and a fear that dwelling on that hope would jinx it. \r\n At this point I had officially been on the road for 24 hours... on four hours of sleep. I stopped considering going home. I\'d never make it back.\r\n The road to Shreveport- 59 to 79 to 20 - went by real fast, averaging about 20mph. Would have been faster, but I stopped in every town at random motels to check for availability. Apparently the first available room was in northern Arkansas. Some miles past Shreveport was a town called Minden, where I stopped at the Exacta Inn. The lady in front of me, with her husband and kids, was bitching about having been in a car for 15 hours, like it was impressive. So my first words to the desk lady as I stumbled up were \"I\'ve been in my car for 27 hours...\" I told her I\'d managed hotels for 15 years - a justified exaggeration - and would be willing to clean a room, she could sell it twice that day, I only wanted to nap for three hours. Well, I talked her into it, and was back on the road at 11:15a Friday morning.\r\n Through Louisianna, through Mississippi, through half of Alabama - making time. Up until now the weather had been beautiful, blue sky in the day, making out constellations while sitting in traffic at night, starving because of a lack of foresight on the food-front. When I made the turn from 80 to 82 just south of Montgomery, Alabama, there was a mighty, dark, Lord-of-the-Rings-style storm brewing right in front of me. I checked my windshield wipers - that made things worse because of the dead love bugs all over the windshield. The left glass fell out of my eyeglasses...\r\n Here I was in the homestretch, one-eyed, shieldless, entering the night with an arm of The Storm above me, entering a wood I had never travelled, having slept about 7 hours in the past 60 and over three hours to go before any chance of rest.\r\n As it turned out the hard rain only lasted about 20 minutes - it cleaned off the love-bugs - my glasses clicked back together and the rest of the drive was relatively benign - I made it to Albany, asked only two locals for directions to where I was going and was in hugging distance of Mom by 10:30p Friday night. Absolutely exhausted.