for a few days. Family stuff, and well done.
Little while ago(not this weekend) I made a trip to visit someone in Texas I hadn't seen in far too long. Afterward I wrote up a short "Here's how it went", so to make up for not bitching and screaming about things the last couple of days, I'll throw it in.
600 miles total. Almost exactly, in fact, 599.6 by my odometer. Almost all highway. Overall mileage 47 mpg. Be it noted that I spent most of those highway miles between 70-80, NOT including
the tieup in Moore(both ways),
the two tieups in Fort Worth(southbound),
and the rain.
About those tieups:
If there’d been a way to go around Moore, I’d have done it; however, trying to take streets would’ve gone through/right by areas hammered by the tornado where it would’ve been worse. So I-35 it was. Which led to remembering something my daughter occasionally says: “Sometimes I hate people.”
Understand that the highway department cleared 35 fast as they could; it IS an interstate highway, plus it was needed for transport into and out of the disaster area. So all lanes were open, and there were big “No slowing in this area” signs, but. All the slowdown in the stretch where the storm had crossed, where the damage was visible, was from idiots slowing down to look. And once one idiot does that and slows the flow, it’s a chain-reaction that screws things up for-bloody-ever. So it was.
Once south of there(literally ‘just south’; soon as cars passed the damage area they sped up) things went back to normal speed. So I was able to stay up at normal cruising till just north of Fort Worth- with a stop for gas and water in Ardmore- where two things coincided: it started raining, and a construction area. The rain, no big deal; stopped under an overpass long enough to put on the rainsuit(as Og notes, Frog Toggs are great). The construction...
Is there something about people in Fort Worth that makes them react to ‘construction’ signs by slowing down no matter what? Was it the rain? Because the construction was that the shoulders were closed.
That’s it.
No lanes closed, no accidents, traffic reduced to stop & go for more than a mile by closed shoulders.
Bleep.
Got through that and things sped up, until the approach to downtown Fort Worth... if I worked in that area I’d either find different hours to work or some way other than highways to get around, because it was as bad as the construction area without the excuse of construction. Except this went on for a longer distance.
Second good note: the Michelin Pilot Road 3 tires I put on a few months ago work quite well on wet pavement. Which was a damn good thing for multiple reasons, including reducing some of the stress of being caught in the middle of that mess in rain.
Just before the southern edge of Fort Worth the rain had ended, or passed just north of, or whatever. And at that point I really needed to get off and stretch a bit, so found a gas station and refueled, took off the suit and sucked down a bottle of water before continuing south.
If you’re not familiar with roads in this region, there’s not a lot of curves to enjoy, it’s plains and low rolling hills, but you can cover a lot of territory on them. Counting the slowdowns, it only took about 4.5 hours, including stops, to cover 300 miles. Yeah, that’s speeding a good piece of the way, though it’s less speeding than ‘keeping up with traffic flow’; almost NOBODY was doing the speed limit(and who the hell decided 65 was the max safe speed on long stretches of mostly straight road in good condition, anyway?) Then, a ways south of FW it changed to 75, which meant 80 did a nice job of keeping up with traffic. Long as you stay in the outside lane so as to not trouble the people in a hurry.
Third good note: that gelpad I picked up last year is nice, as I don’t have enough of my padding located in the suitable parts of my ass for long distances.
Notables of Waco on this trip: Good visit with someone I hadn’t seen in quite a while. There’s a Mexican restaurant called Ninfa’s with damn good food. The Waco zoo is small, but nicely done, and I’m told they have land to expand onto and are fairly constantly improving things. Reminds me a lot of the OKC zoo about twenty years ago, and that’s a good thing. And stopped by to check out a place called the Gun Laundry; a small selection of rifles and pistols for sale, but the primary business is cleaning, using a ultrasonic tank for the bulk of it: prices for types of firearms listed inside.
Then back up to Oklahoma.
Return trip, take out the rain(except for the sprinkle in Waco just as I stopped for gas, causing a certain amount of “Dammit, not again!”) and the bloody-awful mess in Fort Worth and it’s about the same. Fort Worth was so much better because of it being a Sunday; so a couple of slow spots(slow in this case meaning ‘down to 55’) but otherwise clear; MUCH less stressful than heavy/nasty/awful Friday traffic in rain, too.
Stopped at Cabela’s just north of Fort Worth to look around a bit. Lots of ammo, long as you’re not looking for .308/7.62, .223/5.56, .45, 9mm, etc. Just before I left they brought out two just-arrived cases of Remington .22 bulk-pack and one of some new Winchester varmint stuff. Which were disappearing very quickly, as they were the ONLY .22 ammo in the place. And I finally saw a couple of boxes of the new Speer .30 Carbine with Gold Dot softpoints: 20-round box for $35. No, I did not get a box to try. They had an empty space marked as Hornady .30 Carbine with FTX bullet; I’d like to try that stuff, too, though spending $70 for forty rounds of 'try it out' is a bit much for me(hint hint, anybody want me to test the stuff?) Looking over the reloading gear, anything in the usual calibers was gone, brass and bullets both. Primers were all marked ‘out of stock’, and powder was ‘Ask one of our associates if in stock’.
Yes, still screwed-up traffic in Moore. Did notice that, on the northbound side, someone had taken a piece of plywood and put up a ‘house for sale’ sign. Then home, with the Security Staff announcing “You’re back! We haven’t been able to check p-mail for DAYS!! And feed us!”
An that is your short & simple travelogue.
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