We Didn't Make It Out...!

We left at about 5 AM Thursday and after 12 hours on the road we had only made it 44.5 miles away from our house. We never even made it as far north as Kingwood. Because of our slow progress we turned East along FM 1960 and planned to make our way up the back roads figuring traffic would be moving better and there would be more access to gasoline. Those turned out to be a wrong assumptions.

With only a half a tank of gas left and reports of no gas anywhere, coupled with the fact that we were only averaging about 1 mile or less an hour, and the fact that the storm had changed direction and was now headed straight toward our position, I made the decision to turn around and head back home. We drove much of the 12 hour trip without the air conditioner because when we ran the A/C the car started to over-heat, and we wanted to conserve our gasoline usage as well.

Given the circumstance and my choices I'd much rather face down the storm from my brick home in Northwest Houston than from the side of the road somewhere in the country in our Jeep Cherokee.

I must say that Elijah, Connor and Monica handled the situation quite well. In fact, through it all Elijah was particularly well behaved...! Everyone was a little scared not knowing what was going to happen. We did a lot of praying as a family.

We have been watching the news this morning and observed hundreds of stranded motorists. I just could not allow that to happen to my family. I know now that I made the correct decision to return home. So now we're preparing to hunker down here at home. Perhaps before all this is over we'll have an opportunity to reach out and help someone less fortunate than us. We'll see. Until then we'll be planning to weather the storm here on Arncliffe Drive.

I've had many email messages from my friends and family all over the country in the past 24 hours. All I can say is thank you all for the well-wishes and prayers...

I'll try to post again this afternoon...

More later... Bye for now.

Coach Sam