Marked “safe” in Texas blizzard! (Week 6.5)

Once every 100 years or so, the city of Austin gets hit with a winter storm. Lucky (??) for us, we are here to witness the historic event!

By Wisconsin standards, the weather isn’t a big deal at all—a covering of ice, some light snow and wind chills in the teens. But Texas is not equipped to handle even a teeny bit of ice on the roads—there’s no plows or salt trucks. Or ice scrapers in cars, apparently. This morning, a woman at our hotel was asking at the front desk how to get the ice off her windshield. Apparently, boiling water was almost an option… (Yikes.)

Churches, restaurants, even the 7-Elevens in Austin are closed. Tony and the girls wanted to hit a Dave & Busters before checking in to our condo, so I went along with that this afternoon. After a quick stop at Walmart (where almost all the shelves of perishable foods were empty, due to a failed supply truck delivery and power outage yesterday), we set out for our vacation rental at Lago Vista.

We got about halfway there, slipping and sliding on the slick roads, when we came to an intersection at the bottom of a hill that was blocked off by police. Our AirB&B owner had previously warned me that the area was “decently hilly” and that making it to our rental was not going to be smooth sailing. Not to mention that even though many Texans have four-wheel drive vehicles, they are just not used to driving on ice. So after a few white-knuckle attempts at detours (guess who was driving?!?) Tony got the scoop from the local police that the road was likely going to be closed all night—maybe even into tomorrow. The closest hotels weren’t far away, but again, there were some tricky hills to navigate on the way back to town. If you can’t make it up those, Tony was told, there’s 20 or so beds available at the local fire station.

Much to the disappointment of everyone else in my family, I was able to find us a spacious room at a nearby hotel. So we are settled in and safe. We were not, however, able to find an open pizza delivery place. While the girls are missing out on the adventure of sleeping in a fire station, they’ll likely remember the night we had bagels and fruit snacks for dinner. I will remember being grateful for wine.

This transition has not been an easy one. Even though Tony had a fabulous birthday and caught his limit of brown trout in Arizona, we ran into a bit of a snag Friday when I went to check in for our flights and found that our reservation had been canceled. It only took two angst-filled hours on the phone with American Airlines to rebook the tickets I’d purchased in November. (I’m still not convinced that we didn’t pay for them twice. Grrrrr…) That and my reluctance to leave Sedona put a damper on the rest of the day.

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We had an easy drive to Phoenix and a fantastic time at the OdySea Aquarium in Scottsdale (recommend!) and Riverview Park in Mesa (highly recommend!). But they say bad things happen in threes—Bella’s phone went missing, Tony’s phone screen cracked and my TSA precheck status once again failed to expedite my security screening. When my head finally hit the pillow at our hotel in Austin last night, I remember being grateful that we made it safely to Texas. And I will repeat that same message when I go to bed tonight.

The Texas newscasters are calling this weather “historic and deadly,” which I suppose it is for the large homeless population that resides in Austin. Not the same story for the relative few who are homeless in Green Bay, where winter shelters and emergency protocols exist for these types of scenarios. Regardless, I’m just super grateful that we are not sleeping in a fire station or in our rental car tonight. Will update everyone again when we do finally get to our Texas condo!

To everyone back home who is dealing with frigid weather: Please keep warm, and we will send Texas sunshine as soon as we can! Much love!