23:54 10/15/2003
The day started out kinda nice, with no foreshadowing of what was to come.
I slept until about 09:30, then I came downstairs and Mom and I thought about the day... we wound up running some errands, including getting a new toilet seat for the upstairs bathroom. Then we stopped on the way home at KFC and got a box of chicken and came on home and ate it. Well, not the whole box, of course.
I got on the road about 14:00, just as I'd planned.
Traffic was OK through OK City, didn't get nasty until north of Dallas. And still, not too bad, most of it was outbound, and I was inbound.
There's a place where I-45 takes off from I-35, and it's a long, high swooping bridge veering to the left, two lanes, of course. Well, what with my agoraphobia and all, I hung in the left lane and slowed down a bit. I glanced in my rear-view mirror and saw some jackass in an SUV coming up doing about 80 in the right lane. What I didn't see was the other car in the right lane...
Anyway, the jackass, in order to not hit the other guy in the right lane, pulls over right in front of me. I swear, he missed my front bumper by less than a foot.
This rather alarmed me... but not as much as his next move. Which was to slam on his brakes.
I immediately retaliated by slamming on my brakes too, of course. ABS systems are good, really good. No fishtailing or anything, but I thought for a second that he was gonna lose it. But he didn't, dammit.
He had braked because there was a line at the bottom of the ramp... jackass had to slow down a little bit, then he was off, weaving around cars.
Well, that left me shaky for quite a while, of course.
Uneventful from there on in to Houston, just a long, boring road. I called JD from just south of Huntsville, where I had unsuccessfully tried reaching Tyler. I let JD know where I was, about 45 minutes away from their apartment.
As I was making the turn to get on I-610 south, there was a flashing sign warning about a bad wreck ahead, but it didn't say what to do about it, as far as offering alternate routes, dammit. Not that would have done me much good, being pretty unfamiliar with Houston roads.
So, the traffic jam was about an hour wait... I called Karen and talked to her for a while, then I called JD to let him know that I was going to be late.
I finally got up to the accident scene, an SUV had hit the back of a semi, penetrating to the rear axle. The only part of the SUV that wasn't under the semi was where the far-rear passengers would have been sitting.
And I thought of the guy in Dallas, and of the several women who had passed me doing 80-90 MPH on I-45, talking on their cell phones.
There was a cab several cars in front of me when 
we got redirected onto I-10 going downtown, so I followed him around and he went to the next exit and got back on I-10 and then took the southbound I-610 again. I was at the apartment in ten minutes after that... and I had still gotten passed by several drivers doing 80-90 MPH in that five miles.
Jackasses never learn, do they?
It sure was good to see JD and Annette after all of this... JD met me at the gate, and we unloaded the car. After we'd been upstairs for a while, I remembered leaving my C-PAP unit in Mom's front hall, but I hadn't, JD had hauled it up. I had a moment of panic there... I don't remember how to sleep without it.
Man, I'm glad to be here!
Today's pic is Annette and JD.