Refugee Blogging

Okay, here's the story. On Monday evening, Tulane cancelled all classes for the rest of the week. Tuesday morning we heard that some parishes have mandatory evacuation orders in effect, New Orleans is in a state of emergency, and Aaron Broussard, Jefferson Parish president, strongly urged Jefferson Parish to evacuate. So we thought that would be a swell idea. We were planning on visiting friends in Texas anyway, and we figured the 7 hour drive would be more worthwhile if we could stay longer than a week-end, so we wrapped some things up in plastic, packed up, cleared the yard of potentially destructive things, and took off.

It took us two hours to drive to the airport exit off the I-10 (ordinarily a 20 minute drive). It took us three hours and 45 minutes to get to Gonzales, LA (twenty miles from baton Rouge), which ordinarily takes a little more than an hour. And it took us four hours to drive from Gonzales to the west side of Baton Rouge. All this in a car with my nauseous, pregnant wife and a kid who was decidedly unhappy about being stuck in a car seat but not actually going anywhere. Once we got past Baton Rouge, however, traffic thinned out and we made decent time.

It took us 15 hours to make a trip that, absent hurricane weather, takes seven and a half. We arrived at 3:30 am. Then I slept until 2:00 pm. I'm really looking forward to driving back to N'awlins through what I assume will be comparable traffic.