Good afternoon Pops and friends, and you know who you are even if you won't admit it in public.
Went to Austin this am to see my son and his family and on the way back as I turned for home, about 15 minutes away, I see a column of smoke. This highway, 1431, is a windy sucker and hard to tell where it was but as I entered Marble Falls, my heart picked up several beats, the fire looked very close to where I live. As I got closer, I was starting to panic a little because it looked centered right in where the Horseshoe Bay Resort is and my two pups are there alone. As I hit the last turn I could see it was on the other side of the road.
As it entered the house, I started getting calls and texts from the authorities to evacuate all of Horseshoe Bay. I went to alert my neighbors as I didn't know if they were signed up for the E alerts and they weren't. I can see the smoke and where this is centered from my back patio and the sirens are coming from everywhere as the outlying trucks were coming in.
Then I get this "sorry for the inconvenience but only those around the airport need to evacuate because of the grass fire" call and text and I am thinking some rich people must have fired off some nasty calls and texts and they were already evacuating the large subdivision across the highway from the resort. And the planes have been taking off from the airport, and I am assuming to protect them, but about 15 minutes ago it looked like DFW with about 10 jets taking off, one right after the other, mixed in with some prop jobs.
For those unfamiliar with this area it is a retirement area and some really fat cats live down here and have 2nd and 3rd homes down here and it's pretty boring but today I felt 20 years younger with all the excitement and am going to suggest we do this every Saturday so we'll all know it's the weekend.
Seriously, you can't imagine how relieved I was to see this not located where my two pups were and today, they're going to be a little more precious to me. Today was just a day until I considered what it could have been and it is a little more special now.