I left to drive to Houston yesterday at 8:45am...and less than 24 hours later I drove back to Little Rock. Needless to say, I am very tired right now. The drive is getting easier and easier every time...I never would have imagined after driving that stretch of road the first (when I drove down with my parents + uncle when I first started at Rice) that I would be driving it so many times. It was interesting driving into hurricane territory...getting further south there were more and more uprooted trees and random roofs blown off of buildings...but right along the interstate, there was little damage to be seen.
Starting about two hours from Houston, the gas stations stopped having gas (save the random one every once in a while...where there was a huge 2+ hour line of cars waiting...no joke). All of the fast food chains had power, so I was good to get some greasy fried food to sustain me.
It was really shocking seeing Houston in this state...I lived there for two years, in which time a hurricane never hit us. Ike was not good to Houston...I hadn't heard much about it on the news, so it was a lot worse than I expected. There is barely any power in the entire city...and tons of trees and branches down everywhere you look. I saw one traffic light that was on the entire time I was there. Its really just kind of scary to be there in general. There is city-wide curfew at 9pm...which is kind of self enforced, because there is just nothing to do...its sooo dark at night, and there is just nowhere to go.
I had planned well enough to have sufficient gas to get me into and out of Houston (far enough North to buy gas) but I though it would a good idea to get some if I saw a station with not too ridiculous of a line. I picked a Shell station near 59...waiting about a half hour or so...not too bad compared to the stations I had seen elsewhere...finally got to the front...the pump said to see the cashier...I went in, waited in the line...and then was told it was cash only...and that the ATM wasn't working...so I just went to my car and drove away...I felt soooo dumb! (turns out I had enough gas anyways)
My trip was a quick one...packed up my apartment, cleaned out my storage unit...went to sleep...and left very early in the morning. When I left there were already super long lines at all of the gas stations (which had probably just opened). I'm so glad right now that I'm no longer living in Houston (selfish I know). They are saying it may be a minimum of three weeks before power comes back, which would mean that I wouldn't have any sort of work for at least three weeks (the public schools are canceled for at least a week...could be more). I'm guessing that if I was stilling living in Houston now, I probably would have just moved back home by this time.
Pictured above is the yard right outside of my garage apartment in Houston...just a tiny idea of what everything looks like (everything is like that...everywhere)...
