{"id":60,"date":"2008-08-31T16:01:01","date_gmt":"2008-08-31T22:01:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/coleman360.com\/blog\/?p=60"},"modified":"2010-01-22T23:03:19","modified_gmt":"2010-01-23T04:03:19","slug":"bugging-out","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/coleman360.com\/blog\/bugging-out\/","title":{"rendered":"Bugging out"},"content":{"rendered":"

OK, this time <\/a>it’s even more personal. I am currently at a\u00a0Mississippi Welcome Center traveling along I-20 East with a few thousand of my fellow Louisianans chased away by Hurricane Gustav. Normally, it’s a four-and-a-half hour drive from Lafayette, La. to Meridian, Miss., but I’m now in hour eight of the Cajun Exodus on my way to Birmingham, Ala. for refuge graciously offered by Brandi and Bryan.<\/p>\n

For the record, I had every intention of staying in Lafayette with my brother-in-law, but I’ve sort of got used to electricity and dry carpet. After a recent hurricane alert I received a text message from Brandi offering her spare bedroom. “There’s your sign,” my brain said tapping my machismo on the shoulder.<\/p>\n

I originally planned to leave at noon today. “Bad plan,” said the brain again. So I left before 7:00 a.m. I anticipated not only heavy traffic, but strictly regulated traffic flow. I exited onto I-10 East to Baton Rouge and felt like the Lone Ranger. Surely the Atchafalaya Basin would be made off limits. Not yet. Remember, the sky is still sunny as I right this, and our heavily-gusted Bavarian-named friend is still over 300 miles South of us.<\/p>\n

So my stroll to the capitol city was leisurely and somewhat lonely. Maybe beyond Baton Rouge? Eerily barren of vehicles as well.\u00a0 I strolled I-12 toward Slidell at my own pace barely glancing another vehicle either ahead or behind me. Closer to Hammond I spy an electronic sign giving instructions. I’m alerted that further travel on I-12 East is sluggish all the way to I-59 North, my intended exit.<\/p>\n

And before I knew it the I-55 North exit was upon me, and brain told me once more that this would be a good option. Well, two out of three ain’t bad, Brain. Here’s where all the traffic went! I should have known something was up when I had to go around the barricade to get onto the interstate.<\/p>\n

I wasn’t on 55 a mile before both lanes swerved and the next thing I knew I was going North on the Southbound lanes. I was part of the famed “contraflow<\/a>” system. All four lanes were heading in the same direction. I looked at the “real” traffic to my right, and it looked to be flowing quite smoothly, while our side was sluggish and slowed to 10 m.p.h. quite often. I wondered if there was a psychological effect by subjecting Americans to British driving habits.<\/p>\n

One of the things about this contraflow is that once you’re on you can’t get off. It was about 20 miles or so before an exit was made available as all the others were dutifully guarded by state police. I didn’t need to exit, but apparently many did because there were what looked like family reunions on the side of the road where pets were being walked and people were walking out of the woods after attending to business.<\/p>\n

Somewhere just South of Brookhaven, Miss. the lanes converged and regular flow was re-established. That sentence sounds so innocuous. Ten miles before the convergence both lanes were stop and go. Tempers were heated, and mere molecules separated bumpers lest interlopers be tempted to merge.<\/p>\n

I have a mini Mississippi map giving me a suggestion of where highways might be heading, but no matter. I have Google Maps on my phone. Well, I have Google Maps on my phone when I have service. South Mississippi doesn’t appear to be on Sprint’s priority list for Power Vision service. So I had to rely on my Reader’s Digest version of Rand McNally.<\/p>\n

Look, there’s a line from Brookhaven to Laurel. That sounds like an acceptable\u00a0alternate route. Well, that acceptable alternate route consisted of 87 miles of four, sometimes two, lanes of four-way stops. I was never so happy to see Laurel, Miss. in my life. After two-and-a-half hours of becoming one with country lanes again I was ready for some interstate. One-hour and twenty miles back with my bosom buddies from the bayou state I had enough interstate, and off the beaten path again, this time to Pachuta, Miss. I had less than a quarter tank of gas remaning, and luckily there is a BP station in Pachuta. Unfortunately, it was swarmed with what looked like three family reunions. The parking lot was so full that people were literally stopping on the highway. So I took the shoulder and moved on down the road. Quitman was my next stop, wherever that is. There are exactly 11,237 pine trees on the left side of Hwy 18 between Pachuta and Hwy. 145. I’m lying, I didn’t count them. But there are a lot of ’em. And that’s all that’s there.<\/p>\n

The “ding” from the dashboard called my attention to the little red gas pump light. Luckily there was a gas station right there. Unluckily the only thing they had for sale was air. Seems they sold out earlier. So on to Quitman some miles away. There’s no legend on this map so I can’t tell. Wait a minute, there’s no Hwy 145 on this map either? I don’t know where the hell I am.<\/p>\n

There is a compass in my Pathfinder, so I head North. I fueled up in Quitman and headed to Meridian where I fueled up myself. Sourdough pretzels can only carry you so far.<\/p>\n

So now I’m looking forward to the Starbucks in Tuscaloosa about an hour from now. I’ll catch you back after that.<\/p>\n

(To be continued).<\/p>\n

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OK, this time it’s even more personal. I am currently at a\u00a0Mississippi Welcome Center traveling along I-20 East with a few thousand of my fellow Louisianans chased away by Hurricane Gustav. Normally, it’s a four-and-a-half hour drive from Lafayette, La. to Meridian, Miss., but I’m now in hour eight of the Cajun Exodus on my way to Birmingham, Ala. for refuge graciously offered by Brandi and Bryan.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-60","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/coleman360.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/coleman360.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/coleman360.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coleman360.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coleman360.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=60"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/coleman360.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":213,"href":"https:\/\/coleman360.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60\/revisions\/213"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/coleman360.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coleman360.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=60"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coleman360.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=60"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}