Exodus: On this stagnant highway - the main northerly evacuation route away from Hurricane Rita in Texas - traffic inched along on Thursday at less than two-thirds of a mile per hour.
At that rate, the thousands of cars choking every lane - and often the freeway's bumpy shoulder - will find it hard to make it to safety in, say, Dallas before the furious storm hits land today. There are 234 miles to cover and less than 48 hours in which to do it.
The first thrust of drivers fleeing Rita had left Galveston at about 6pm on Wednesday, when officials ordered that city emptied in advance of a hurricane they expect to destroy much of the barrier island they call home. Two hours later I joined the sombre parade.
Prodded by images of Hurricane Katrina, which devastated Louisiana nearly a month ago, so many people left the low-lying cities along the Gulf Coast of Texas on Wednesday that my 70-mile journey north took more than 14 hours.
That's a certified category 5 commute, brutal enough to turn what is expected to be one of the worst storms to hit the United States into a traffic story for at least a day or so.
It's the kind of commute that leaves a lot of time with not much to do but memorise the licence plate one car ahead, gawk at the stalled livestock trailer, count boats and squirming children and stalled cars and fender-
benders, and marvel at how a single state could be home to so many extended-cab pickup trucks.
Being trapped inside a car for more than half a day is uncomfortable enough - it's cramped and dull and reeks of exhaust fumes. But many travellers spent hours on the gritty roadside; caravans stopped to let the weary sleep atop their boot lids; worried drivers pulled over, waiting in vain for the traffic to abate in an effort to conserve petrol.
We crawled past fast-food joints and motels whose beds we longed for, past massive cowboy-boot emporiums and big box stores, closed tight. All along the interstate, the lights were on but nobody was home.
By 1am I'd reached downtown Houston - 50 miles in five hours. The final 20 miles would take another nine.
Families split up in separate vehicles used the slow drive to perform quick highway ballets. One woman climbed out of her car in the middle lane and delivered bottled water and a bag of crisps to the driver behind her. Another handed over a thermos flask and a pack of cigarettes.
After seven or eight hours of mostly stop and little go - fuelled by energy bars, with talk radio humming in the background - I realised that it really didn't matter what lane any of us were in as we crawled along the interstate.
At one point, it looked like I had found the fastest-moving lane on Interstate 45 and manoeuvred my way into it in my rented Chrysler minivan; the only car the company had available in this city filled with evacuees from Hurricane Katrina. So I patted myself on the back for a nice bit of strategic driving.
Then I realised that over there - ahead of me - was that same black truck with the woman's foot stuck out of the passenger window, toenails painted sky blue.
And there were those two motor-
cycles in the trailer that I thought I'd passed 40 minutes ago. And weren't those hay bales over there once upon a time in my rear-view mirror?
Beyond looking for some way to make the creeping time pass faster, driving for 14 hours at a stretch forces the weary wretches at the wheel to make some very critical choices.
First, there's air-conditioning. Do you turn it on full-blast to stay alert and keep from getting heat stroke while driving on road surfaces blasted by thousands of idling engines - and risk running out of petrol? Or do you roll down the windows, battle the bugs and drive just a little bit longer, as the windshield fogs up in the thick humidity? My welts have yet to stop itching.
Then there's water. It seemed that during every news broadcast in advance of Rita someone was admonishing: "Stay hydrated." But the official routes out of the area largely confined evacuees to crowded freeways, funnelling them past off-ramps with gas stations, mini-marts and bathrooms.
Flashing signs warned HURRICANE EVAC. NO FREEWAY RE-ENTRY NEXT 100 MILES. Then 90 miles, then 50 miles, and so it went.
Even though I was getting thirsty, that last bottle of water I had downed made itself known. For seven hours. And then I saw a woman with a bright idea.
It was 3.33am. Traffic had stalled beside a 24-hour Texaco station just beyond a grassy verge and a busy frontage road. She parked her car on the freeway shoulder, switched on the hazard lights and sprinted to the brightly lit building. There every gas pump was in use, the check-out line was 20-strong and matched by the queue for the women's loo. The men's was empty - the decision was easy.
An evacuee, face etched with fatigue and disbelief, wandered by the Texaco entrance and asked: "Where's Conroe?" On a night when moving at 10mph is an unimaginable luxury and the five minutes at 30 were pure bliss, rumour had it that I-45 would ease up at Conroe, a city north of Houston.
Not that there was any reason it should have. It didn't ease when we passed a stalled vehicle or got beyond a messy freeway merger. Why should Conroe be any different? But it didn't really matter to me. Conroe was 25 miles away. At this point, that was a lifetime.
- (LA Times-Washington Post Service)