1998 Vacation Part X: Friday We Left Galveston
9/21/1
written by Postwood, Monday, October 05, 1998
[Note from Postwood 2001: The Saturn in this story below is Aisai�s former 1995 Black Saturn SW2 with traction control and anti-lock brakes.]
We didn't exactly go to bed early that Thursday. We had to pack up everything. And it was good that everything was packed up, since we didn't know ahead of time what would happen that night.
The Weather Channel had been talking about Tropical Storm Francis hitting between us and Corpus Christi. So, we thought that it was just going to stay as bad as it was. What we didn't realize is that with the direction that Francis was spinning, it would be bringing even more rain and wind to us.
At midnight, Aisai woke quickly and sat up. She woke me up and we went to look at the Weather Channel. Outside the place was chaos. The rain was coming down faster than I had ever seen it. The windows were leaking.
According to the Weather Channel, Tropical Storm Francis was in the process of making landfall. We went back to our bedroom in the condo. The ceiling, which had been painted many times, had about 10 oz. of water stuck in a bubble on the other side of the paint. We weren't even on the top floor. Obviously the condo upstairs was getting flooded.
Since the water bubble was right above the bed, we needed to move. We got all our stuff and moved into the front bedroom. Once in there we closed all the doors in the place. That way we couldn't hear the wind smacking on the windows of the other bedroom or the great room. Then we went to sleep again.
The alarm went off at five a.m. I don't remember who got up first, but I assume it was Aisai since it takes her longer to get ready. I ended up getting the stuff together and taking it down before Aisai was fully ready, so I may have taken the shower first. We got in the car at 6:00 a.m., which is what we planned, and got onto Seawall Dr.
Since the 20+ foot waves had been shooting over the seawall for over a day at this point, the road was littered with seaweed, fish, wood, and general grit. Seawall Drive drains well so we didn't have any standing water. The drive was uneventful as we traveled toward 61st Street. Once on 61st, we traveled down to that intersection where the Whataburger is, the road was occasionally underwater, but only a little. We pulled into the Chevron and got gas. Aisai and I needed a little something that we could call breakfast. I wasn't originally going to get anything, but Aisai talked me into it. It was a good thing too, since I didn't know what we were in for.
The Chevron had automatically opening doors, but not double doors, so that every time the doors came open it blew water into the store. The clerk had put rolled up towels on the doorframe bottom. They were soaked and I tripped without falling over them.
The biggest challenge to getting off the island was at the intersection of 61st and Boardwalk. Or maybe it is still called I-45 at that point. In any case, we got to the intersection where we needed to turn left to get on I-45 and head toward Houston. The radio kept saying not to enter water on the road that you can't tell it's depth.
The light changed and we made our left hand turn. As soon as the car cleared the overpass, we could see the cars stuck in the water. From the look of the Celica in the middle lane, the water was just under a foot deep. We set off across the water on the far left lane. There was another car behind us that chose not to follow us. The big black truck chose to go on the other side of the Celica. The water was very deep, the car started bogging down.
I gave the car more gas, we were almost 1/3 of the way across the water, which stretched for around 130 feet, at this point. With the extra gas came extra speed, we were slogging through it, then the water went over the headlights. The car shuddered.
Oh, and all this time, Aisai had been calm, or not yelling at least. But that was going to change.
I was about to sink us in the water. I didn't know how much deeper the water ahead was. But I know the big black truck never made it through.
At this time, I was past the overpass, time was standing still. There was no way out. We were in the middle of a giant puddle and the only way out was ahead. Well, not exactly.
I turned a hard left, which wasn't that hard since we were only going about 2 mph. And drove the car up onto the raised median type thing. Aisai started freaking out. We pulled the engine out of the water though. It was still coughing. Aisai freaked and freaked. I think I kept repeating "Hold on. Hold on. Just hold on." We rode over the burm that was taking us along and eventually reached the other side of the water.
[Note from Postwood in 2001: �The air intake on a Saturn is on the left side of the car, I actually put the two left wheels up onto the burm, scraping the side of the car against some shrubs, but keeping the air intake from sucking water. Aisai�s side of the car was very deep in the water.�]
Those Saturns are watertight. We didn't get a drop inside. But this wasn't the end of the adventure. We were about to try going into Houston on I-45 after 10 inches of rain had fallen in the last day. All exits were flooded. If you got on I-45, you couldn't get off, and you couldn't turn around. But we didn't know this yet.
We couldn't see anything. We were traveling at 45 mph at most, and trying to follow headlights of the cars ahead of us. Then, about halfway to Houston, I reached an odd Farfegnugen with the driving experience. I was able to see and anticipate when the traction control was going to kick in. I started driving 70 mph when I could. The only thing that stopped me was water, which was easily recognizable by the cars braking near it and the sheen it had, and other cars. The drive which normally took us around 40 minutes took us 90 minutes that day.
About 10 minutes south of Houston, as we were listening to the radio, a guy called in saying he was just south of Houston on I-45. He said he had been trying to get off I-45 but all the feeder roads were flooded and had cars stuck in them. We were seeing this also. But he wanted to exit. The DJ said that he had gotten other calls like that and that there was no way off. Not the best thing to inspire your confidence. We proceeded toward Houston.
The changeover to the 610 loop was not any more eventful than the drive up to that point, the chaos was there, but I was getting used to it. We went with the tightly packed cars along the 610 over to I-10. Somewhere along there is a really tall overpass or possibly a bridge, we couldn't see what was over the rail, but it went really high up in the air. And the higher we went the stronger the wind was. It was very scary. The bread delivery truck that was ahead of us, and we ended up passing, was having a very bad time.
All this time, the rain was still coming down. The DJ joked about the waves in the streets downtown and kids kept calling about school closings. All schools were closed. So why did they keep calling in? Was their school not in the set of all schools covered by the term "all"?
I-10 was fine. Well, it was lame, but it didn't have hardly anyone on it. Around Orange, TX, more cars started showing up. But since they weren't used to driving on the wet interstate, they tended to only go 55 or so. The speed limit was 70, and with the traction control and anti-lock brakes, I saw no reason not to go 70. I think we were on the other side of Beaumont when we stopped at a Waffle House and ate. It was 9 or 10 a.m.
On the way in, I noticed that the hubcap on my side of the front of the car was broken. Saturn hubcaps have these fake lug nuts that thread onto the real lug nuts. The real lug nuts have threads on the outside, and the fake lug nuts have a plastic nut in them. As much of the hubcap that could be broken off was.
The front hubcap on the passenger side of the car was missing. Aisai had gotten a flat tire a week before we went on vacation and when Sam's replaced it (free, we had road hazard insurance) they didn't screw the little fake plastic lugnuts on.
The food was very good. And the coffee was excellent. We had been holding off for a decent restaurant for a while and had gotten rather hungry.
It rained all the way through Louisiana. Aisai and I listened to Rush Limbaugh. It was just the day before that Ken Starr released the report to congress. It was the beginning of the end of President Clinton's term.
It rained or sprinkled on us all through Mississippi. Unfortunately, in MS there are no radio stations. We were able to still pick up a station in Olive Branch for a long time. Then as we approached the Alabama border on I-59 we were able to pick up the X in Birmingham. At around 5:30 or so we stopped in Tuscaloosa and ate at Cracker Barrel. I got the four vegetable plate like I tend to. Afterward we found a pay phone and Aisai called her mom and let her know that we were fine and also let her know when we were getting home.
Teri had stopped by Jones Valley Animal Hospital earlier that day and picked up Zapato, Mouse, and Velvet. This worked great on them since if we had picked them up they would have though that we dropped them off and picked them up and all the time we were just sitting at home having fun without them. Now the cats were at home and we weren't. They had been gone, but now they were home, but Aisai and I were still "lost" in the cat's minds. The real reason we asked Tom or Teri to pick up the cats was because it's $8 per day per cat, and the latest pickup is 5 p.m. This let us see the cats earlier and saved us $24.
We finally got home at 8:11 p.m. The cats were so goofy. They jumped all over us in a very out of character manner.
In my journal I wrote "Home @ 8:11 Cats Cats Cats."