Batten down the hatches. Or don't. On Wednesday morning, things were not looking very good for Bastrop...so far as Hurricane Rita was concerned. The infamous "they" were predicting that the eye would pass right over Bastrop. And, that meant those of us here in Austin would be getting sustained winds of up to 70 mph. I made plans with Jennie to drive out to Bastrop and get the pick-up out from under all those pine trees that would be itching to fall in such a wind. But, by yesterday, the story had changed. "They" were now saying that things would pass far to the east of us. Our chances of rain dropped all the way down to 20% for tomorrow. With an occasional gust of wind falling in the 20-25 mph range. Traffic coming into the city was pretty bad. My friend Mojdeh's uncle and family left Houston at about 9 pm on Wednesday and didn't get to Austin 'til after 9am Thursday. That's normally a 3-hour drive for them. Yikes! Jennie did not relish the idea of getting out in that traffic so we abandoned the "pick-up rescue" plan.
I really enjoyed the first paragraph in an article in the Houston Chronicle about the evacuation:
Hurricane Rita lumbered toward Texas on Thursday at a sluggish 9 mph. Thousands of Houston-area residents fleeing its approach envied its speed.
Ha!
. . . .
And, in somewhat spooky news, Katie knows one of the girls mentioned in this article. Yikes. I find it hard to believe that the names of 12- and 13-year-old defendants were released so casually. Aren't there laws against that? I went looking around the web and found their names in articles (virtually all of them some version of an AP story based on the article linked here) in newspapers published all around the country.
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