Last weekend was my annual trip to Kerrville to visit my son and family and friends from the classes of ‘68 and ‘69.
It’s a four-hour trip, so I try to leave early to get there by noon.
As usual, I’m running behind and I hurry on Nichols north.
I’m almost exactly a mile north of my place – the BNSF crossing.
I know getting a quiet zone from the railroads is important to some.
Mine is forcing trains to hurry up along the crossings.
That wasn’t to be Saturday morning.
I got there just as the locomotive was beginning its 1 mph snail pace at the crossing, as it pulled its construct of 1,000 cars – by my unofficial count.
I’m seeing a noon arrival in the Hill Country now as a remote, almost impossible goal, but the worst was yet to come.
The route to Kerrville goes through San Antonio.
There’s where the fun really began.
My son failed to tell me that I-10 and the loop was closed on Saturday.
I could have taken I-10 straight through SA, but unaware that a highway hades awaited me, I chose Loop 1604.
Ah, those long-ago carefree days of zooming along the loop to its juncture with the interstate on the northwest side of the city.
Instead of the maybe 30-minute drive on I-10, I was trapped on a single-lane feeder road that took close to one hour and 30 minutes to transit.
You could have walked faster.
My patience gave out and I saw Camp Bullis Road.
Not ever have I been on that road, but in my mind (major logic failure ahead) it seemed the right direction to Kerrville.
Not so, a guard at the Camp Bullis entrance politely helped me do a U-turn and back to the loop.
Maybe I should have heeded the fates at the BNSF crossing.
Kerrville was a fine time, seeing my son, my grandson (11) and daughter-in-law.
Later, with my friends, I found they all have grown older.
All of our memories have filtered out the unpleasant stuff and magnified our bold feats as teenagers.
They all remarked how I’m practically the only one of them still working, as if that was a noble thing.
I conveniently leave out the part that I plan retirement on a Colorado mountaintop.
Just as well.
The return trip Sunday went smoothly, especially as I speed up past the loop exit off 10.
