Dear Mr. Rawles,
I was in Kingwood Texas, a suburb of Houston, and as keeping an eye on the Hurricane Rita projected tracks. When the “yellow cone of death” was centered squarely on Houston, I started to seriously access my situation. That Tuesday evening, everything still seemed sort of normal. The wife came home from work about 5 p.m. and we took the dog for a walk around 6 p.m. When we passed the local gas station that normally has 0-1 cars in it and there was a line 10 cars deep, I knew it was “time.” I told the wife we were now implementing our “vacation” plans for Tennessee, and would be leaving as soon as I had the trailer re-packed. I brought the essentials and things I couldn’t live without if there was no Houston to come back too. For example, I brought the computers but left the monitors. (Monitors are replaceable, the hard drives and info on them, were not.)
We were wheels rolling by 9 p.m. Tuesday night, straight up Highway 59, with hardly another vehicle in sight. Just us and about 200-400 deer through the night, all headed in the same direction, that was weird… By Wednesday morning we were eating a lovely and peaceful Cracker Barrel breakfast about 20 miles East of Nashville and the waitress told us that Houston was basically having a riot on the freeways. Timing is EVERYTHING! We were 12 hours ahead of four million people leaving on the same roads, headed in the same direction.
I learned that deciding to bug out is like deciding to take in a reef in your sails when sailing that is: if you’re seriously considering it, then you should actually be doing it.
All the best and God Bless, – Edward T.