I left Topeka about 13:00 Friday, after not being able to sleep after an hour of trying... hit some pretty heavy snow south of Topeka for a stretch, then it was just partly cloudy the rest of the way. Nice tailwind, I made good time and got good mileage.
Along the way, I noticed that all of the water was frozen, even the rivers, in Kansas. After I hit OK, the larger creeks (cricks) were flowing, but the ponds were still all ice.
I got to Enid before 17:00 and stayed up until almost 21:00 chatting with Mom and watching some TV and installing the optical mouse. I did not toss and turn a bit but went directly to sleep and slept dreamlessly until 07:00.
I had a cuppa tea with Mom, then spurned her offer of breakfast... I was anxious to be on the road, I stopped and got my first cuppa coffee on the way out of town. And some Hostess snow-balls.
Again, I made good time to OK city... they are still building the roads there, but it wasn't as bad as it has been, or maybe the traffic was just lighter on a Saturday morning.
South of OK city and clear to Dallas I noticed that all of the abandoned cars (the ones that people leave sitting there because of car problems) had their windshields bashed out and the tires slashed. What some people think of as fun... if they were just thieves, all they had to do was bash out one window. No, they were malicious bastards, had to trash the whole car.
There are way too many people like that in this world.
On further south, in the Arbuckles, there was a 60-mile swath of broken-down trees and power lines with the ice still on them... and tracks along the road where drivers had hit the ditches. Lotsa and lots of broken trees... it was really hard to judge from the road how thick the ice was, but it takes lots of ice to break a tree down.
I don't know if they got the strong north winds that we had in Topeka for the last several days, but if so, I'm sure that didn't help the situation any...
O'yeah, I'm typing this on a standard keyboard, and without a spell-checker, so please be more forgiving than usual...
Anyway, on to Dallas and beyond. Lots of traffic in Dallas, of course, but I took I-635 around and it wasn't really too bad, but it was way out of the way... I don't think that I'll do that again, and I remember saying that last time too... I need to learn to learn from myself.
South on I-45, the average speed was way over 80 - the posted limit is 70. I said the hell with it and went 85 with the rest of them. I got to Huntsville about 15:45 or so and when I pulled up JD was outside smoking... we spent a few minutes outside, then came in and I got to meet Annette.
And I am properly impressed with Annette. She is, however, very short, and I have a large collection of short jokes in my head, and I fear that she will quickly tire of them.
We went to The Kettle and ate supper and so far tonight we've just mostly hung around... I didn't really feel like doing much more after a day of driving anyway.
Plans for tomorrow are pretty much up in the air... I know that whatever we do, I'll miss Karen, though...