Friday, January 6th 2006
I'm redoing our online gallery (again)
Photos will all be here eventually:
http://elgiefamily.smugmug.com
Saturday, September 24th 2005
And a big thanks to Brian and Brooke (and Lobo and Puck) for helping out us four Rita Evacuees!
Saturday, September 24th 2005
Alrighty!!! We're home and it only took 3+ hours! (We stopped and had lunch and windows shopped in Fayetteville, TX, a cute old town with a square and antique shops.)
We left Brian and Brooke's at 11:30 and planned on taking 71 to 290. We caught a glimpse of the bumper-to-bumper on 71 and decided "back roads" only.
Andy (Brian) had given me a state map (one of the old school foldup ones from a gas station) and it had a lot more routes than the Rand McNally. On our trip home, every road we crossed that was backed up was on the RM... the more obscure state highways were clear. Case in point, where Bellville is, traffic was completely backed up from 290 down to I-10 the police there told us. That was the only slow down of our trip, as we had to merge with the folks that were taking the main highways. Oh yeah, it was there we heard from the "authorities" that we were not supposed to come back until Sunday... heh, well, you should announce those things before 3:30 p.m. lol
Here's the route we took. Thank and praise to God to for our trip there and back. He providentially guided us both there and back.
Thank you all for your prayers, calls, and e-mails.
Here's the route we took:
Saturday, September 24th 2005
Had a great time here in Austin last night. We're staying with a friend of mine from way back to my Broken Arrow days... Brian "Andy" Anderson and Brooke have put us up for the last two nights. Last night Hardy (Mike) and Carissa came over and we all hung out.
Yesterday once we got up we found an IHOP and chowed down. The restaurant was full of Rita evacuees.
From the looks of the radar/news it appears we've been spared the worst, but the power is off at our house: our answering machine is not picking up (and I don't remember unplugging it).
I just went and filled up with gas as we're going to leave for home this morning.
Friday, September 23rd 2005
We've made it to Austin around 2 this morning. It took us 3.5 hours to go 30 miles, but once we were on the other side of Columbus, TX traffic flowed well (50mph+)
Interestingly, this traffic flowing was on BOTH SIDES of the interstate. At one exit things started slowing down on the "right" side of the road, so we, along with dozens of others, barrelled across the median and continued speeding down the "wrong" side of the road.
One thing you notice when driving on the wrong side of the road is the bridges aren't marked (TxDOT put cones out where there are) and exits are entrances. When we got off I-10 at Luling we had to look on the other side of the road to guestimate where the eastbound entrance was since that would be our exit. TxDOT helped out and had one of those blinking signs. Oh, and the Shell station there, it was your normal interstate gas station... but every scrap of land/pavement was covered by a car. I think they still had gas there too...
We saw probably more than a thousand people on the side of the road/at empty gas stations over the whole road... pretty trippy.
The kids did great. Helen was excited to "go on an adventure" with the family and was pressing to go all afternoon. But after about 10 mins on I-10 gridlock she "wanted to go home." LOL
We're glad that Rita seems to be heading away from Houston, and also glad to be out of harm's way.
We're gonna do some sightseeing in Austin today.
More later...
Thursday, September 22nd 2005
Cool!
Now our house is on the "Branches Breaking"/"Trees down; some power loss" border...
damage7pm9222005.jpg
Thursday, September 22nd 2005
we've decided to wait until dusk to head out. Also, I-10 is now westbound both directions until almost San Antonio.
When you look at the images of stalled traffic, your impulse is to "ride it out."
Well, even going 10 miles per hour will get us to Austin, vs. staying in our house with TS force winds starting around dinner time, hurricane force winds around bedtime and beyond, and then at any time the power going out (no AC, no Internet (GASP!)...all that with two toddlers... Nah... we'll take the 10-15 hour road trip to Austin where we can watch the hurricane on TV with the rest of you...
Thursday, September 22nd 2005
oh yeah, with Rita moving more east, our place is looking at 50-90mph winds instead of 100+... it would be the yellow/purple on the map I posted lower...
and the list of random things posted on the 19th are the high points of what's been going on in the Elgie family the last two months... I intend to come back and elaborate more later...
Thursday, September 22nd 2005
alrighty, here we go...
We've packed up Kim's dad's Dakota (better a/c, more room, and most importantly, a full tank of gas) and we're gonna try our hand at I-10 in a few minutes...
We'll probably take a back road up to Austin at some point along the way.
We've got our windows taped and other stuff packed up...
I'll be posting next from here (if we bail out) or Austin...
Thursday, September 22nd 2005
I went to work to day for a few hours, rand some backups, and covered our server racks with plastic. It took twice as long to get there. FM529 is a road which heads west out of Houston and traffic on it was bumper to bumper.
I passed around 10 gas stations and all were out. One gas station was adjacent to 290/Northwest Freeway and around 20 cars were sitting there, waiting for a fuel truck I suppose.
We're wanting to leave and go to Austin, but my worry is running out of gas on the way. Our neighbors tried to leave at 4 am this morning and came back, saying they got nowhere.
We'll see what happens...
Thursday, September 22nd 2005
here's some houston transtar pics... at 4:30 this morning
325.jpg and 416.jpg
The I-10 is six miles from us... I pass the 290 spot every day on my commute...
Wednesday, September 21st 2005
Alrighty, here's why we'll heading to Austin... the white X marks where our house is:
damage927pm9212005.jpg
Wednesday, September 21st 2005
That pic is of the bottled water aisle in Kroger...
Monday, September 19th 2005
Lego Star wars
John Fogerty - John (Cougar) Mellencamp
Phonics
Katrina
HTPC
Saturday, July 30th 2005
Alrighty... the Elgie Family summer rundown...
Went to Arkansas the week of 4th of July. While there went to the Oklahoma Aquarium (see Gallery) with the kids. Had a very relaxing time and the weather there was very nice, i.e. not hot and humid.
We ripped out our "builder's special" front landscaping and are in the process of rebuilding the two beds on either side of our side walk. We have three Knock-out Roses planted near the utility thingys, and those are doing so well they're going to be joined by two more. We also put a little pavestone walk/sitting area on the front too and plan to put a concrete garden bench there. Right now though, due to excessive rain and/or excessive heat, the beds are just mud, weeds, and bark mulch.
Inside we're still painting trim, and we added curtains in the living room/dining room at long last.
I brought my bike back from Arkansas and got Kim's old one from her parent's and we're gonna get one of those kid trailers and do some riding...
Got two new albums in the Gallery...
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 Next
House Watch 2k2view the albums in order...
- first pics
- working pics Fri & Sat
- more working pics Sun
- moving... part I Thur
- moving... part II Sat