Walking Like Dallas

The rain pounded down on the car as the windshield wipers flapped back and forth furiously trying to keep up with the deluge.

I asked the Navigator, “What does Weather 1 say?”

Navigator was on the cell phone to our personal weathermeister back in Houston who was monitoring the storm, high and dry, I should add, on the Internet.

“Weather 1 says that the line of storms runs north-south along I-35.”

“How far north-south?”

“All the way.”

“How far all the way?”

“All the way to the equator.”

We pushed on south down I-35 through light rain, heavy rain, brief snatches of sunshine, fog and wind. What a day to be on the road, but here we were.

As we approached Dallas I checked the map. Let’s see, we take 35-East through this squiggly bit, then somehow get past this complicated bunch of stuff and merge with this road (I can’t read the number) and finally pop out on 45-South.

Piece of cake.

Actually, that’s not entirely accurate. I’ve made this run through Dallas before at flank speed, in traffic, and you have to be very alert and nimble to make all the exits which come fast, close together and suddenly. Be in the wrong lane for even a second and you will be cast off the freeway into the warren of twisty little streets below.

If that happens you might as well call a realtor and buy a house because you’ll never find your way back. You’ll be in Dallas forever.

Today, though, we would not be racing through Dallas. We would not be cruising through Dallas. We would not even be puttering through Dallas. We would be lurching through Dallas 100-yards at a time. Then stopping to take in the sights before lurching on another 100 yards.

If the US had gone metric we could have been lurching along at 100 meters at a time. Dang!

The one advantage of this mode of transportation is that we approached all our exits in slow motion. That’s not to say we had an easy time crossing 5 and 6 lanes of traffic to reach the correct ramp, but it was less hair raising.

Finally, after 3 hours we merged onto I-45 and headed south to Houston.

As we increased speed to 75 mph, lightspeed to us, Navigator remarked cheerfully, “Well, the worst is behind us, now! Only 5 more hours to go!”

As I examined the black thunderclouds ahead of us I thought, “Let’s hope so.”