I just made a trip from Spring down to Westchase. This is about a 70 mile roundtrip. I took Spring Cypress and Steubner Airline down to the tollway then round to Westheimer. Traffic was extremely light with very few people out and about. Ironically, it’s a beautiful night in Houston. Warm and breezy. No sign yet of the impending storm.

I saw only one gas station that had gas, on the way down, and it ws closed a couple of hours later when I returned. I saw no other gas stations that still had gas prices up. Obviously if you have an empty tank, then you are SOL right now.

No power problem yet in Houston, but the lack of people lends it an eerie feel. Once I reached my apartment, I shutdown my computers and moved them to the kitchen, and bagged up some documents and stuffed them and some other items into my cupboards. To be honest, as long as I make it through the storm, I’ll survive everything else getting trashed. I wanted to be fast just in case there’s any impending lawlessness starting, and I felt kind of exposed leaving a car full of gas in an apartment parking lot in my part of town.

I picked up my old IBM Thinkpad on the way out and made an extremely uneventful drive back up the beltway, Bammel, Steubner Airline and Spring Cypress.

In case anyone is reading this, the beltway is near empty, and 249 and 290 look empty, at least as much as you can see from the beltway. I think I counted about 20 or so stalled cars between Bammel N Houston and Westheimer, so it’s maybe not quite as bad as the media are making out.

Definitely no gas around though. And not too much sign of the Guard yet, though I saw a couple of trucks heading South on the beltway.