Wow, that was a non-event. Still, I think we made the right call; authorities predicted a cat 5 hurricane near Houston. They were wrong, it was a cat 3 which made landfall in Beaumont, north-east of Houston. Thats important, because the western side of a hurricane doesn't receive much wind/rain/flooding. It wasn't until very late until forecasters figured out that Houston would be on the western side and not receive much/any damage. Still, 'you never know' and 'better safe than sorry' to use two tired old phrases. We had a enforced 5 day paid vacation over the weekend; it wasn't terrible but I'm glad to be back home.

Damage? Practically none around here. There were a few blown down branches. A neighbor who rode it out said they had minimal power loss, no flooding or anything. My car was still there, i somewhat illegally parked it in a near-by parking garage. I got a nasty note but that was it. I figured they would be too busy to tow my car, especially considering the real disaster; 3 million people evacuating via a handful of two lane highways (each direction). Did i mention that it took 17 hours to get to Austin? I rode my bike to Austin twice in the MS150; I calculated it took 14 hours over two days; and that was with lots of stops for food, etc.

The main disaster here was this: hundreds of thousands of people stuck on the highways, no fuel for hundreds of miles, 5 mph traffic for 100-150 miles around Houston. That was the disaster, and something that was not forecasted. It was tense, frustrating, worrysome. Everyone was worried about running out of fuel. We didn't find an open gas station until 100 miles out. We didn't find gas until Austin, about 150 miles away.

Of course Austin was also hosting the Austin City Limits, a huge music festival, over the weekend. So the city was pretty packed. I wanted to go to the festival, but they were sold out way in advance. Maybe next time.