This weekend we needed to go to the Houston area to visit friends and family. What is normally a 250 mile freeway ride, we stretched into a 308 mile first day. We headed down I-45, then exiting near Corsicanna to head west to Waco. I wanted to stop by Baylor to see the Homecoming parade. We got there during some light rain... no big deal. Since it looked like more rain was coming, we skipped out of further homecoming events and headed south along highway 6 to College Station. Harvey Washbanger's has the best burgers anywhere, so we made that a late lunch and rest stop. (It's a great college establishment-- a laundromat and burger bar. Inside the bar is a panel of lights that flash when your washer is done.)
We got into Houston without a fuss, and found out later that Waco got some pretty heavy rains that delayed the football game... a 5 hour game I found out later from friends.
The more interesting story was the ride back home. We had left the Houston area around 3pm and were retracing our route back up the highway 6 way, and made a stop in a tiny town Calvert after we turned on Hwy 14 toward Mexia. We were in a DQ taking a break... an unusually long break because there was a large amount of customers for a Sunday afternoon in a small town... it turns out later I was glad the break was long... as we left a friendly stranger approached us and gave us an FYI on the weather. It turned out that some severe weather was developing in the area. As I turned to leave, I noticed he wore an unusual ball cap with a scripture reference. Somehow this kind man stood out in my mind.
As we rode up Hwy 14 toward Mexia, we reached Groesbeck (only 30 miles from the Calvert DQ). As we were riding throught the town, the civil defense sirens went off. We pulled off into a Valero run by two Sikhs, who had a big assortment of hookahs for sale. (Hey, at least if we get stuck here, it seems like an interesting place I thought.) We found out from the weather service (thank you iPhone) that tornadoes had been spotted about 10 miles south of where we had just riden. Jim voted to hop back on the motorcycle and continue north thinking we could outride the tornadoes that were coming. So we sped off north still heading toward Mexia.
The most powerful image on the ride for me was riding north on Hwy 14, under the huge Texas sky, seeing enormous powerful beautiful clouds, watching wicked thunderbolts on my left side, and seeing a beautiful rainbow on my right. It was a neat experience that couldn't be captured by a picture even if I tried.
We finally go to the I-45 junction just south of Corsicanna. By then it was around 6pm, but the sky was very dark and there was some rainfall. I needed to take a break to at least put the liner in my jacket, so we exited and stopped at a Chili's restarant. We noticed lots of law enforcement around. Also lots of the Chili's customers were out on the front walk all looking south. I asked them what was up and they said tornadoes were in the area. When we got inside the restaurant, the manager quickly went around and got the customers and servers to go to the kitchen. He wanted us to get inside the walkin refridgerator, but it was too cold for most folks, especially the familys with small kids. The "all clear" came pretty quickly, so we sat in the bar briefly trying to determine our next steps. Oddly, the TVs in the bar were not tuned to the news or weather. So we had no idea where the tornadoes were or the fact that a major tornado had just hit Rice Texas (a few miles north) a short while before.
The rain had stopped and the roads were relatively dry, so we hopped back on the bikes and continued north on I-45. When we got to Rice, the interstate was backed up for a few miles. Law enforcement from several areas were all over the place, and the interstate entrances were closed for several miles. At that point I still didn't know that a tornado had been through, much less that it had crossed the interstate and caused several accidents. (I just thought it was a garden variety traffic accident.)
When we finally got home (6 hours, which should have been 4), we flipped on TV and saw the bigger story.
Oh yeah, total mileage for the two days was around 625.
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