On the Road 8 x 30; 24 x 7

12-08-2005 Ice Storm in Central Texas

Thursday, December 8, the furnace and heaters did a good job of keeping the trailer warm last night. In fact, I was warmer than usual since we had all of the drafty holes plugged up. The low was 24.7 breaking a 1976 record for Austin. We snuggled under afghans all day and were pleased as punch that we didn't have to get up and fight the Austin traffic to go to work. The news programs showed accidents everywhere. People were spinning their cars off the road into ditches. About one-tenth to a quarter inch of ice is covering everything in the Metro area. We didn't budge. I called Glenda to get the scoop on the fire in Elgin after we saw it on the news today. She said it was an old lumber company building. The fire shot flames up 100 feet and blew the windows out of the bank. Austin firefighters responded to help out but it all seems to be under control. We just got past there before they closed the road. We wouldn't even have been able to get home if we had been a few minutes later.

Fortunately none of our pipes froze after Bob unhooked the water and we're just living off of the tank. Around noon Bob made a huge pot of chili. It sure tasted good on a cold day. It's funny to think that all year we've been following perfect weather around the country (like all good RVers try to do) and we finally went south for the winter and ran into our worst weather. Our new friends Ken and Vivian who are spending their first winter in south Texas will feel right at home. Of course things are much worse in their hometown of Silver Bay, MN, right now.

Bob is cleaning reels on his workbench (a.k.a.-the bedroom vanity!) I've been sorting through paperwork to leave off 2005's accumulation at our storage unit while we're here. I'm catching up on journal pages and printing out some stuff. The sun is barely peeking out around 3:00 but the temperature is still 34 degrees.

It's 4:02 p.m. and 34.0 degrees.