Group Manager hitchhikes ride to get home

By Will Chapman

John Mathew suggested I share my experience at getting home after being stranded at the Houston airport as a result of Hurricane Rita.

I had been in Half Moon Bay and was scheduled to fly home Thursday. The hurricane was making a beeline for Houston, to get there Friday night. Airline reps in San Francisco said the airport in Houston was open and would be until noon on Friday, and besides, the weather was clear in Houston. "No problem," I heard several times.

But as soon as I got to Houston, it was a mess. Dozens of flights were cancelled and more cancellations were posted every time I checked the flight status board.

There were hundreds of people in line waiting for a ticket agent, trying to get flights out. Airline reps told me they had no way of knowing for sure what flights would really leave as they were short on crews and maintenance personnel.

I decided to try to get a ride out and headed to the baggage claim area. Before I left the concourse, I overhead a man saying he had a truck and was going to drive to Mobile, Ala., so I walked up to him and asked for a ride.

I told him I was hoping to get to Lafayette, La. which was on his way, but would get out anywhere in Louisiana and make my way home if he'd get me that far. He hesitated a moment, but said yes.

On the bus to the parking lot to get his pickup, I told a couple on the bus about our plight and got them to give us a Texas and Louisiana highway map.

We knew the roads were already gridlocked. It had taken my driver five hours to get to the airport from downtown Houston, normally a 30-minute trip.

We left the airport around 3 p.m. on Thursday with a full tank of gas, the maps, two small bottles of water, and a strong desire to get home.

The traffic was horrendous. Even though we were trying to take back roads and avoid the major thoroughfares, there were thousands of others trying to do the same thing.

At one, we timed our progress and noted it took more than two hours to drive six miles. As slow as that was, we later wished for that fast a pace as we sometimes sat with no progress for lengthy periods of time.

In heading east, we were also driving right into the predicted path of the storm. We were 24 hours ahead of the storm's predicted landfall, but when you're not moving, we wondered if we would be stuck there.

Around 10 p.m. Thursday night, we were still in Texas, and still in the area of predicted landfall for the storm. We were thirsty, so stopped at a church to see if it had water faucets outside we could get some water to drink and to refill our small bottles.

A woman in a car, apparently resting there, saw us and gave us several bottles of water, a real angel in our time of desperation. She invited us to stay and have something to eat with her family, but we decided we couldn't afford to wait and got back on the road.

Along the way we continued to see more and more cars abandoned along the roadways, as people ran out of gas or had breakdowns. We also saw people stopped along the side of the road sleeping, exhausted from their effort and the slow pace of movement.

We got to Deridder, La. at 4 a.m. Friday morning. We didn't have enough gas to get to the next town. There were no businesses open and the town was deserted except for emergency vehicles flying to and from somewhere.

We found a gas station that didn't have bags on the hoses, so hoped that was a sign it still had gas. We sat there for more than two hours, waiting for it to open and hoping it would have gas.

When the manager arrived, he said he didn't think he had any gas left, but would let us try. Within minutes other vehicles saw the place open, and there must have been 50 cars waiting to get gas.

We hoped for at least five gallons, and said aloud that 10 would be great. Moments later you'd think we'd won the lottery as we celebrated the pump passing up 10 gallons, and letting us fill the tank.

We got back on the road and drove the back roads to Opelousas where Tommy Howard, perhaps Saint Tommy Howard, of Mobile and I parted. He dropped me off at the Opelousas Daily World and headed farther east towards Baton Rouge and hopefully made it home.

Daily Iberian Circulation Manager J.P. Poirier came to Opelousas to get me, and took me to the Lafayette airport so I could retrieve my car, and finally get home, around 10 a.m. Friday morning.

We had been on the road for 18 hours for a trip that normally takes about 4 1/2. I had been up for more than 24 hours straight, but the urge to get home really kept me going, though 30 minutes after I hugged wife, Gladys and son, Daniel, I could hardly move from my fatigue.

It was an adventure I'll never forget, and for sure, one I hope to never repeat.