And now we watch.
We finally made it to our hotel in the Dallas area this afternoon. That was after a 15-hour trip from Houston - a trip that should normally be 4 hours. We left Spring around 8:30pm last night, and got on the contra-flow lanes on I-45 by making a U-turn on the feeder ramp. A couple of miles south of Woodlands Parkway was where the traffic jam began, and it continued pretty much all the way past Huntsville. I don’t know at what point it broke free, because by then I was fast asleep … had to make my sister take the wheel after nearly 7 hours of continuous driving. I slept for about 3 hours and eventually woke up just south of Corsicana.
We were then greeted shortly afterwards with the news that a bus had exploded just south of Dallas on 45, and we ran into a massive traffic jam as state troopers forced everyone off onto the Highway 287 exit. One of my friends texted me an alternate route, so we climbed onto the feeder and drove on down. In a moment of sheer stupidity, I decided to attempt to continue on I-45 in the hope that the accident would be cleared by the time I got there. I think we had driven at least 15 miles before I heard an update on the radio saying that the accident was still there and that the freeway was still shut down. We immediately exited, and that couldn’t have been any more timely … if we had waited till the next exit we would have been stuck in what was basically a 10-mile long parking lot. So we made the U-turn and drove back down to highway 34, which we took north to 175 and eventually after about another 90 minutes we arrived in Dallas. We would still have to fight through another traffic jam on I-635 before eventually making it to the hotel.
Once we got here, I just got into bed and passed out…between phone calls and text messages from lots and lots of concerned people, sometimes a little irritating as I tried to get my sleep on, I eventually just went out cold.
This stupid hotel, as fancy as it is, has no Wi-fi, and they charge $10/day for internet access. Pffft. Perhaps they might be humane enough to waive the charge for us, but I’m not pinning any hopes on that. So right now we’re here, watching CNN, praying and hoping about the property we’ve left behind in Houston. A massive nuisance it is, indeed.
