The day has come. After a year of waiting, I headed out of Houston, Texas, at 3:15 pm with 51211 miles showing on the Isuzu Rodeo odometer. My first destination is Austin, Texas to visit my longtime friend and college roommate, Tim Hyland. The traffic out of Houston is terrible for some reason...possibly due to Good Friday tomorrow.
The mastercard didn't come in; so I'll have to travel with one less credit card. The reason I like to have at least a VISA and Mastercard is in case the computer of the bank goes down, I could use the other card. (This has happned to me before, and I'm sure to other people who wonder why their card just stopped working for no reason. Plus, my VISA is about to expire in June. At least I got the trusty Discover card.
As I was going westbound on FM529, I saw four northbound cars at the intersection where I needed to make a right and head northbound towards highway 290. The north/southbound traffic has a blinking red light, while west/eastbound traffic has a blinking yellow light. The four cars were probably together since a guy was standing out in the street talking to the driver of the first car.
I approached the intersection and made a right turn. A few seconds later I looked over at my rearview, and the first two cars in the group were behind me. (The first vehicle in the group was a read truck, possibly a Ford Ranger.) Then a few seconds later I looked into the driver side mirror, and I saw the bottom of a car facing my way. At that moment my heart sunk into my stomach because a high speed collision just occured. The third car in the group collided with a red minivan going westbound. (The minivan had the right of way since it had a blinking yellow). The two cars which were behind me turned immediately around.
I thought about going back to see if I could help in any ways, but I'm not sure I could have assisted since there were other cars at the intersection (going southbound). Possibly, I would have made the intersection more congested, and other cars would be arriving at the intersection soon. I just hoped that everyone is okay. Hope is such an abstract thing....
Hopefully, this was not a harbinger of things to come. From another perspective, I should feel a little lucky because if I had arrived at the intersection 30 seconds later, that could have been me in that collision, and the roadtrip would have ended soon after it began.
When I arrived in Austin at Tim's place around 7:30 pm, we headed over the the Cici's pizza for a dinner buffet. The buffet didn't have much selection in terms of vegeterian pizzas, but it was worth the small price. After dinner I was pretty tired since I've been going to bed around 7:30 pm lately.
Tim told me how he's collecting unemployment from the Unemployment agency now that he voluntarily layed himself off to possibly go back to school. If I knew that, I may have applied for unemployment benefits. Nah...I couldn't do something like that even though I payed taxes out of the wazhoo last year.
Tim suggested we rent a movie, and we got Mortal Kombat: Annilation from the local Blockbuster (walking distance). Yeah, what a bunch of wild and crazy guys! The lady clerk told us it was a bad movie, but I liked it. Knew it was a special effects kinda movie with many holes in the story. Tim thought it was bad. I think the clerk was trying to make conversation with Tim (if you know what I mean), but he didn't say much back. I suggested the next time he returns to that Blockbuster, he should get her number.
By the time the video ended, it was 11:00 pm, and both of us were tired. I slept on the couch. The cost of living in Austin is expensive, and Tim's apartment complex is pretty decent.
Tomorrow, I'm heading north. The plan is to go to Oklahoma and stop at a camp site to rest the evening.
