This is my last full day in Texas and I wish I had better news for you. I don’t know what I expected to find here. Or maybe I’m too stunned to remember right now.
The future of America is in jeopardy. If it is to be a choice between Standard of Living and Quality of Life, I find myself firmly on the side of Quality of Life. The things we share, like a healthy environment, parks, public transportation, and other infrastructure usually trump a lot of flashy possessions in my mind. It would be great if everybody could have their big suburban house and three SUVs in the garage, but think of the consequences.
I’ve really been shirking my larger responsibilities: the world needs some imaginative solutions. Unless we’re happy with the ultra-rich, their private walled estates and their personal security armies.
It all sounds a little over my head. People who think I am smart have been upset with me for not pursuing an agenda of success and acquisition. They can’t get over the fact that I don’t get excited about those things. All that I’m left with is a vague sense that I need new ideas. Better ideas.
I’m here in Texas to explore. Did the great explorers know what they would find? No, but they knew what they expected to find. I expected to find an old place, steeped in history. But the new people living in old places don’t care about all that. It’s usually just outsiders like me. Hoping to be transported to some romantic replica of the past. Hoping for time travel.
Land policy here must be pretty messed up. I had a notion to start turning over stones with a hypothetical project: Start a business in Harlingen, Texas. I had a whole scenario in my head: Explore the town and scout out locations. Downtown is all but a ghost town. This is a Wal-Mart world where all the action takes place out by the bypass. I consider Harlingen the center of a network of overgrown hamlets. The city limits enclose a lot of farmland, and you can see that layers of development were carved out of that. When the weather is hot, you have no choice but to drive everywhere you go. My friends here have a collection of places they visit often - not unlike me in DC. But where I would walk, ride a bike, or take a bus, they have to drive. Nobody is walking anywhere.
So maybe I got what I wanted from this trip: Usually I would rather be right than happy. I feel like saying “I told you so”, but I’m even more worried about the future.
It’s my last day in Texas, so what do I do?
I go eat barbecue, then drive over to the river to peer at Mexico.
Barbecue was a reward, actually. I got roped into assembling a computer desk for Marina’s parents. The actual computer is supposed to arrive today. Marina did the bulk of the work: Keeping Greg busy while I put the desk together. My part was easy by comparison. It was a pre-fab thing, aluminum and laminated pressboard, all parts and fasteners labeled. G and H were nearly identical, but not exactly. I had them all screwed in when I realized some holes wound up on the wrong side. But that was the best part of all! The directions were a little hard to follow, but suddenly I was doing something much more engaging than following directions. I had to internalize the plans and reformulate. It was like my glory days of origami, when I could glance at the instructions, toss them aside and say “I just invented a better way to do it”. There were a whole lot of L-brackets and machine screws, but I looked down and knew all at once how to swap G and H with the minimum possible steps, and in the exact order.
On my first whole day here, I ate barbecue. Longhorn’s, next to the expressway in San Benito. I like pork ribs, but they’re messy, so I usually shy away from them. Sausages are my favorite when you factor in convenience. Today we tried Smoky Joe’s. I’m used to the format: A chow line, cafeteria style. A plate full of meat, and two sides. I chose pork ribs, beef brisket, and deer sausage(!) I chose well, because I wasn’t too stuffed to concentrate on driving. Right after we sat down to eat, a little video crew came in to shoot a TV commercial. I probably appear briefly as part of the dining ambiance. I guess I’ll never get to see the commercial.
After lunch, we drove out to Rangerville, then east along the border. Wonder of wonders, I left the camera at home. I didn’t know how I was going to face my friends back home and say I went all this way and didn’t even see Mexico.
Well, I didn’t think it would be exciting, and it wasn’t! There is a relatively new bridge across the river near Rangerville. I expect it coincided with the NAFTA treaty. It’s not on my gradually more obsolete valley map. We drove up to a turnaround, but I never actually saw the river. I had to take Marina’s word for it: “Yep, that’s Mexico over there”.
With a little time to kill before Marina had to be at work, we made it practically all the way to Brownsville. But the clock was ticking, so we had to settle for the outskirts. And my southernmost excursion to the United States ends there. Tomorrow I drive back to Houston to catch my flight. I may have stayed too long. Marina and I were getting on each other’s nerves for a while there. She begged me to visit for so long, touting the wonders of the place, prescribing it as the cure for all my ills.
I didn’t find it to be that, exactly.
I promise to tell some more stories soon…
Posted in Texas | no comments | no trackbacksPosted by Evan Bittner
Wed, 11 Jul 2007 22:26:00 GMT
Three dollars got me into the Port Isabel Lighthouse on Sunday. I saw it on the way out to South Padre Island, and resolved to visit on the way back. Marina didn’t want to pay the money to climb a bunch of narrow stairs. Greg was oblivious.
But I have to say: Yes, it got claustrophobic near the top, but it’s not a particularly tall lighthouse. It was not much more than the climb I make up the fire escape to my apartment every day.
Greg was pretty jazzed up from spending his morning at the beach. Clearly oblivious to the lighthouse. I think he was striking karate poses. Or imitating scary monsters. I rarely understand a word that comes out of his mouth.
Posted in photos, Texas | no comments | no trackbacksPosted by Evan Bittner
Tue, 10 Jul 2007 20:16:00 GMT
This car has been my best friend here in Texas. It is costing me a fabulous sum, but we are meant for each other. The first picture I took in Texas was of the car. I wanted to make sure that I would be able to find it again after lunch. And I got my lunch minutes later: I ate pork tacos across the street at “New Rodeo” in Victoria.
I have obscured the license plate to protect the innocent. Or because I enjoy using Photoshop so much. Either way works.
Although small, Toyota Corolla has provided ample space for my outsized frame. It fits me like a glove. I was comfortable driving it for hours on end, so hours on end it would be. I was worried that the compact option would be a sardine can, so I asked for a mid-size. With Air Conditioning. I couldn’t be happier. Anything bigger was a lot more money and probably a gas guzzler anyway.
Here we are at a Dairy Queen in Refugio. I got a cherry milkshake and loaded some new discs in the CD changer to prepare myself for the loneliest stretch of the journey. It turned out to be a lot less lunar that I expected, and despite repeated warnings that there was nothing between Kingsville and Harlingen, I saw several small towns with gas stations along the expressway. The deserted portion was about half the distance I was led to believe.
You might get the idea that 4-yr-old Greg was my smallest passenger, but you’d be wrong. One day, this stick bug rode around with us. It even spent most of its time on the windshield, where the breeze bent its tail, but it held firm. Several times I returned to the parking lot to find it still there.
Some South Texas Driving Highlights
Expressway Barbecue
Marina’s friend Kate is a librarian at the elementary school where she works. Kate had a trip planned to her ancestral homeland Minnesota, so the three of us only had a couple days to get together. Saturday we ate barbecue at a place in neighboring San Benito. We bought groceries for the house, and then rented some videos at Blockbuster.
Rio Hondo, Arroyo City
Monday morning we drove by the airport - Harlingen actually warrants a fairly large field with a modern terminal. Right next door is the local college and some Marine barracks. They have the original for the Marine Corps memorial in Arlington, Virginia. You can see it from the road. We felt like driving, so off we went in the general direction of the shore.
Of course, shore is a fuzzy concept around here. You have the barrier islands, a lagoon, and some other bodies of water I wasn’t familiar with. I’d heard of Arroyos, but never Resacas. Everywhere you go around here you see canals for irrigation. A resaca is something between a river and an inlet. I might call it a creek. Some of them are navigable. East of town we followed the railroad tracks and encountered the Port of Harlingen. It was a few anonymous multimodal transfer facilities. A bit further up the road we crossed a drawbridge into Rio Hondo. There wasn’t a lot going on in that town. In a minute we were past it, barreling due east into the unknown.
When we finally saw signs for a Wildlife Refuge, the road quickly deteriorated in quality. I didn’t want to subject the car to so much punishment, so I stopped to take pictures and decide my next move. As deserted as it was, there were wildflowers, birds, stubby trees, and an old concrete water tower. Oh, and how can I forget the Mosquitoes? I waded into the grass of the shoulder to get the right camera angles, and I didn’t notice all those bugs. Oddly, they didn’t bite me, but Marina was paranoid, and we had to spend the next few miles flushing them out of the car.
We backtracked, then went north to a town called Arroyo City. It was just a strip of houses with water access. Aside from a few eccentric domiciles, there wasn’t much to see. A general store and two or three restaurants. Everybody owned a boat, otherwise, why bother to live there. The park at the end of the road had an admission fee, and didn’t look inviting, so we turned around and left. On our way out, we spotted a parking lot with a view of the water. It said “No Trespassing”, but it was also deserted with clear lines of sight. I hopped out and snapped some pictures of a pelican on a wooden pile.
Eggs for Breakfast, but Not Very Filling
Tuesday morning we went out to the car hoping to drive around town seeing the local sights. Somebody egged the passenger side of the car. I wasn’t too happy about that. We dropped Greg at daycare, then had the car washed. I took a stand on this issue: “I want to support the local economy. Let’s find some honest workers who deserve the money.” Marina knew just the place. I was making nervous jokes about the situation. “I come to your town as a cultural ambassador, and this is the thanks I get!”
After we got that settled, we went to the old downtown of Harlingen. A series of streets are named after presidents of the United States. Actually it starts with some heroes of Texas history - I’ve driven some distance on Austin Street. The library is next to Jefferson, and the main drag consists of Tyler and Harrison, one way streets running east and west. They meet the expressway at the big intersection with those tall Texan flyovers.
While not quite a ghost town, the center of Harlingen is largely forgotten. In all this time, I’ve seen about three buildings taller than two stories. One building stands above them all. I counted nine stories. It is stands empty. Nothing in particular to commemorate what once was there.
The main attraction was antique stores. The two we went into were not much more than junk dealers. The first one had a lot of LP records and books in poor condition. The second one had a much nicer collection of furniture. I say ‘Junk’ and now I remember why I say it: A lot of the so-called antiques were not particularly old. In a throwaway society, not only are people less interested in things that managed to survive a long time, but the things are less likely to. Real antiques keep getting older and more precious because there is a great wave of products that weren’t intended to ever last that long. Cheaper materials, cheaper construction.
4th of July
Not a memorable Wednesday. We were out and about for a little while, then hunkered down at home for most of the day.
Laundry Thursday
Marina got roped into doing a bunch of laundry for her parents - you know, since we were going anyway. I just had my measly two little loads. I reached in to the trunk to stuff a bag of laundry in there and cut my finger on something. Running back into the house to tend to it, I must have scraped my knuckle on the screen door. Washing my finger in the kitchen sink, I looked over to see my other hand mysteriously bleeding. Later I figured out I cut my finger on a car stereo speaker. Now all I need to do is smear a little engine grease on my cheek, and Toyota Corolla and I will be blood brothers forever. We can drive all over the valley playing loud music and having more bonding experiences.
The Laundromat looks a lot like the one I go to back in DC, except it’s over by the railroad tracks (actually, the library I’m sitting in is also next to the railroad tracks - how come there’s not train station). Some locomotives were parked there next to us idling the whole time. Not only did the place look familiar, some of the washers and dryers were exact replicas of the ones I use at home.
Catholic Mass in McAllen
Saturday we woke up early to drive up the valley to McAllen. We thought we convinced Marina’s parents to come to the beach with us on Sunday, when it would be less crowded. That meant getting them to mass on Saturday (also less crowded) and an opportunity to see the Basilica of our Lady of San Juan del Valle National Shrine. They’re in San Juan, which is right next to McAllen proper.
Marina thought her parents would ride with us. But as you habitual drivers out there know, as every lonesome vaquiero out on the range knows, and as Toyota Corolla has taught me, no man is comfortable out of his saddle. The women and children were happy to get a ride. But Marina must have hoped that her mom would help manage Greg and allow for some car-ride napping all around. It was not to be. We took separate cars.
The church is modern. I was confused - I thought it would be one of the oldest buildings around. Well, it was, until some guy from a smaller church went crazy with jealousy and crashed his plane into it(!) There was a display case by the bathrooms with newspaper clippings about the fire and the eventual rebuilding and rededication in 1980. I ran around on the fringes taking pictures, then when the mass started, I took a break on a bench inside.
After church, we were still early for lunch, so we all drove to Barnes & Noble to kill some time drinking coffee and shopping. I tried to write in my notebook, but after a few minutes, I started browsing the art/design magazines.
When the time was right, we drove up to Edinburgh for some authentic Mexican food. Am I remembering correctly that the place was called “Casa de Tacos”? The food there was just like the food at the taco shop below my apartment in DC. I guess they are right to claim hey have authentic Mexican food.
After lunch we drove the back roads home. I saw fields of sugar cane and citrus trees. There might also have been corn.
The Beach
Sunday we drove to the beach. South Padre Island. We avoided the populated center of town and headed to the deserted dunes area. Three bucks per vehicle for beach access. We parked very close to the water, which alarmed me a little. The tide must have been high, or maybe the tidal variations are not as large as I imagined. Marina and Greg played in the surf the whole time, but I prefer to stay relatively dry, so I wandered the dunes taking pictures. Eventually I waded in to join them… And take more pictures.
It doesn’t look so far on a map, but it took longer than I had hoped. There is a shortcut from Harlingen. Back roads, but more direct. Not so far from the earlier trip to Rio Hondo and Arroyo City. So much of the land look the same. Big farm tracts and little towns that announce their presence with signs that say “Reduced Speed Ahead” and “Speed Limit Strictly Enforced by Radar”
Posted in photos, Texas | 2 comments | no trackbacksPosted by Evan Bittner
Mon, 09 Jul 2007 16:21:00 GMT
I only got a couple hours in the library today. Being Friday, it closes at 5pm. I already need a vacation from this vacation. It’s like a parenting fantasy camp. I’m going out of my mind. I’m having experiences, but I’m not able to get around to talking about them.
Once again, the things people think I will enjoy doing are horrible ordeals. Sometimes, I even think I’m going to enjoy it. At least I can hope that this disruption will prove fertile for future creativity, but in the meantime I’m practically incarcerated. And I’m only half way through.
Tomorrow and Sunday we plan to drive around a lot more. There’s a big church near McAllen we want to see, and they serve a short mass on Saturday morning. This frees us up to go to the beach on Sunday morning.
Strangely, my hosts keep complaining about how hot it is here. They say they do nothing but take naps in the afternoon because it’s too hot - but this is the exact same weather we get in DC this time of year. And my apartment hovers around 100 degrees most days. It was hotter most days I was in India, and there were fewer places with A/C. I’ve been much more comfortable here.
Posted in Texas | no comments | no trackbacksPosted by Evan Bittner
Fri, 06 Jul 2007 22:42:00 GMT
The weather was against us.
We got up late. Marina didn’t have to work, so there was not as much pressure. We were out and about for a little while in the morning. Marina’s mom promised to cook dinner, but it was our responsibility to go food shopping. The big grocery store here is called “H.E.B.”. Try to say that with a Spanish accent.
What we though would be lunch turned into dinner. We sat around watching videos. The other day we rented “Codename: The Cleaner” (Cedric the Entertainer is one of my guilty pleasures), “Employee of the Month” (I’m sure glad I didn’t have to pay to see that one), and “The Land Before Time” (4-year-old + dinosaur movie = loads of fun!) Marina’s mom contributed “A Knight’s Tale”. I also brought “Wonderfalls” along because I though Marina might like it - and she did. She’s about half way through.
Speaking of the 4-year-old: Greg is a handful. He can open the refrigerator, so every few minutes, he does! There are two televisions in the apartment, so why shouldn’t they both be on? The best place to watch TV is apparently one foot away from the screen. I know this because watching from the couch is not enjoyable with a 4-year-old standing in front of the screen. Tell him to move… and he does! But, he has drifted back in front of the screen within ten seconds. I didn’t pay much attention to “A Knight’s Tale” because Greg was dressed up as a cowboy with a large sombrero, riding a stick-horse and jousting with a cardboard tube from a roll of paper towels.
I don’t think I’m going to have any children. How can I say I don’t like chaos? My life is chaotic. But my chaos is my own, and I know it well. If I had somebody moving my things at all hours, I would revert to drooling in the corner. The distraction provided by children is not something you can turn off. I would become deeply depressed by the loss of control.
There must be people who find the joy in raising children. I know a couple of those people. I wish them well. That is not the life for me. It’s probably a bad idea to wait too long to have children. Anybody would become set in their ways. But I’m fundamentally different. I was never ready, and it just gets worse every day. Children can’t be turned on and off. They’re little angels one minute, and little devils the next. It’s all well and good. Every one of us needed the opportunity to grow into the people we have become. I think children should be able to raise hell - develop a sense of right and wrong. I think they should have the freedom to be destructive, but that unfortunately means destroying things. I’m happy to play a supportive role, but I’m not happy having my attention stolen from me. They zero in on what is most important and stand in the way at that precise moment.
Dinner was carne guisada (it’s a kind of beef stew), mashed potatoes and french-cut green beans. Marina’s mom cooked, her dad joined us to eat, and greg raised hell.
I wanted to see some fireworks, but a big storm was brewing. It wound up raining all night. The power stayed on, and Marina and I sat at the table, reading, drawing, and eating peppermint ice cream. After Greg went to sleep, we sat up talking for a while. The valley is a most provincial place: people stay and stagnate, or they flee and never return. Human relationships almost seem stuck at a medieval level. I like the city best. I live in a land of freedom, where people think and do what they want. Some days I get discouraged about my home town, but then I visit a place like Harlingen. They have all the trappings of American life, but it’s all cosmetic. It would take a lot longer than two weeks to scratch the surface of this place.
Speaking of the 4th of July
I wish I could have been here
If I were not in Texas, I would most certainly have been. I’m saddened by the tragedy of the commons. The least they can do is let us document the tragedy…
Posted in Texas, film-and-TV | 1 comment | no trackbacksPosted by Evan Bittner
Thu, 05 Jul 2007 23:17:00 GMT
As you drive south on a highway through Texas, there is a place where you see your first palm tree. And, a place where you see your first cactus.
In substance, Texas looked a lot like Ohio to me. Houston wasn’t so different from Columbus, and I saw lush farmland for hours. It was a while before I got to parts of Texas that weren’t familiar - that didn’t look generically American. Palm trees and cactus, cropping up in the highway median - I could have been in Mexico for all I knew.
Posted in Texas | no comments | no trackbacksPosted by Evan Bittner
Thu, 05 Jul 2007 23:13:00 GMT
As a child, my family would sometimes drive to Baltimore. Back then, I-95 did not go through the center of town, but they were working on it. In the ’60s, there were all kinds of schemes for putting expressways all over the city. A lot of it never happened, so there are still some disconnected bits scattered around the city.
But some of the plans eventually went ahead, albeit in modified forms. Finding a way to speed trucks along their way, and the realization that most traffic is passing through, not stopping, they did build the Ft. McHenry tunnel and push the interstate through the center of town. Eventually they fixed up some downtown industrial wastelands with a couple stadiums, and it made it nice to get in and out of downtown.
Driving into Houston was like the feeling I got as a child driving into Baltimore. It was the feeling of flying. Back then I didn’t ask why, but now I want to know. Why are we up so high? Can anybody tell me the reason to lift the lanes of the freeway so far off the ground? So far above the others? Every freeway interchange looked like a bridge over a harbor. There was room enough for three tractor-trailers stacked one atop another to fit under any of those underpasses. Am I missing something here? Doesn’t it take more steel and concrete to build it that high? Doesn’t every vehicle that drives over the top waste more fuel climbing all that way? Don’t we cut into mountains to avoid taking similar climbs?
The view was spectacular, though.
That can’t possibly be the reason, can it?
Posted in Texas | no comments | no trackbacksPosted by Evan Bittner
Thu, 05 Jul 2007 22:00:00 GMT
I’m back at the Harlingen Public Library again.
Today’s Internet Research topic: “Standard Model Release Forms” for a professional photographer.
Um… Mr. Flores? The copy of Shutterbug magazine your wife handed me says “One of the most important benefits of membership in professional photo associations is access to standard model releases.”
I like Marina’s father. Apparently he also likes me. Which, is weird, especially when you consider that a) he doesn’t like many of his daughter’s friends, and b) I didn’t think many people liked me. Of course, he has a strange way of showing it.
This is America! I say, let a man do his own research. I trust people to know what they want better than I know what they want. It seems absurd to me that anyone could delegate that search. The Internet is big, I will admit, but that’s what makes it so useful. When people act helpless in the face of so much information, I laugh sadistically. And then I usually try to help them anyway.
I could never be a librarian. I’d have too much contempt to indulge the helpless. On the other hand, there’s the old adage about teaching a man to fish. I can get behind that.
See Terry Pratchet’s twist on that adage…
People who get help just keep asking for more. They’re probably better off being told to piss off. That way they might get motivated to figure it out for themselves. How come there are more college graduates than ever before, but people seem to get more stupid all the time? I think it’s because we don’t teach craft anymore. I’m happy to see that it’s making a comeback in some circles. Perhaps normal people will realize that the rich, and by extension the government that they can afford to buy, have turned their backs on the world, and we need to start fixing the place ourselves. I’m sure a few people are already living this way, but most people continue to dream of striking it rich and turning their backs too. Devil take the hindmost. Gee, thanks.
Now I’m thinking about my job back home. There are plenty of people in charge there who don’t want to be bothered with the how-to. (One is too many, but I count a few…) Some people work really hard, but not necessarily in the right direction. Some people flail their arms and create too much of a distraction for the people who are actually getting something done. I may be technical support, but I can’t do the technical part of people’s jobs for them. Unless they want to quit and let me be them.
I was stunned to discover that there really aren’t any photography stores south of about San Antonio. This just isn’t a convenient place to be a professional photographer. But, wait a minute… He is a professional photographer. He has been one for many years. So as with a lot of people, I wonder: how did you manage to pull it off all those years? What’s really different now?
One thing I admire about Mr. Flores is that he like to go it alone. But doesn’t all that going it alone teach you some self-reliance? I keep thinking “Hey buddy, what are you asking me for? If I had to ask anybody, it would be you.” I expect the guy who’s been doing it all these years to have a network of resources, connections,.. best practices. And no, I don’t expect it to be conventional. I expect the guy to have it all his way. I love a renegade. I want to be a renegade.
Posted in Texas | 3 comments | no trackbacksPosted by Evan Bittner
Thu, 05 Jul 2007 20:51:00 GMT
This is my first time in Texas.
I’m not even seeing a representative sample of the state. Maybe next time I’ll drive from Houston to Austin. My last girlfriend was making noise about moving to Austin, and I was seriously contemplating it. The girlfriend might be gone, but I didn’t forget about the idea. We were going to scout it out. There was a lot of animosity between her and my only friend in Texas. If I lived in Texas I would have to visit, but then there would be that irrational jealousy. Any idea why I find people annoying?
So I’m standing in an odd relation to Texas - the idea Texas. It’s almost like saying ‘Africa’ or ‘France’. There’s so much there, so spread apart. I may be in Texas now, but I’m hardly “visiting Texas”. How is it even possible?
So I offer this meditation:
El Campo, Texas - I was bored and hungry. Tired of sitting. So I got off the freeway. I drove and drove the business route. There were fields. And then, there were anonymous industrial barns. Empty storefronts, overgrown sidewalks, and a wide street. Everything an empty husk, or maybe repurposed - the original idea still legible, like the trapezoid windows and unmistakeable roof of an old Pizza Hut restaurant, with a new inscrutable life and ambiguous signage. I marveled at the place too long. I must have driven too fast. There was the on ramp. Time to go.
Victoria, Texas - I was even more bored and hungry. Even more tired of sitting. The five-disc CD changer was starting to bore me. So I got off the freeway again. I thought it might be El Campo all over again. I drove and drove the business route. There were fields. And then, there were anonymous industrial barns. But, Victoria really was different - three major routes converge. The car dealerships were more impressive. There were buildings four stories high. A hospital. I saw an art-deco style diner painted in bright colors. A Taquiera. “The New Rodeo”. I couldn’t believe what time it was. Sure - I’d been driving that long. Time to eat.
Posted in Texas | 1 comment | no trackbacksPosted by Evan Bittner
Tue, 03 Jul 2007 22:56:00 GMT
I made my choice to drive in Texas. I couldn’t think of how else I was going to get around otherwise. Renting a car would, of course, be the largest single cost of the entire trip. Plane tickets are cheap by comparison. Flying to Houston meant a non-stop flight, but renting a car in Houston meant a lot of driving. And it’s about as far from Houston to Harlingen as it is to go from DC to Boston (I’ve done it!). The final piece of the puzzle was time of day. I could get a flight to Houston that arrived around lunchtime, and take it easy driving all that way across Texas.
I don’t fly often, so I still consider every little detail of the experience odd. I went to parts of my local airport that I had never seen before. I was in a hurry, and then suddenly, the flight was delayed an hour because the pilot was still on his way from Newark. I tried to read in the terminal, but they were blaring CNN - fresh news of thwarted terror attacks in London. Continental had a carpet that said “Elite”, and some people got to walk over that carpet, but I noticed that we all got to ride in the same plane. Once the first-class passengers got on, it looked like everybody else passed over the “Elite” carpet, until it was my turn. I misjudged the size of the plane - maybe I’ve been on too many sardine can flights lately - and, I was surprised at how long it took to board. I sat in my window seat, got a lot of reading done, but I was constantly looking out at the cloud tops. We climbed up through a layer of dull grey, but later as we got near Houston, little storms were popping like popcorn.
Most of my time so far in Texas has been on the verge of raining. It started the minute I landed. Dry on the runway, then raining on me when I rode to the Rental Car lot. Dry as I drove out, then suddenly rainy again as I was getting on the expressway. I couln’t quite grasp the wiper controls at first, but after a few miles, it made sense.
Houston did not appeal to me that much. It was huge and sprawling. I drove on the Lloyd Bentsen Expressway. Such recent history! There was a lot of new construction on my route - not something I researched in advance. Most states do their own road construction, so every state you visit is a little different. Texas seems to love their roads: They were beefing up the highway pretty much everywhere I went. New overpasses, mainly. It looks like they are expecting a lot more traffic in years to come, but I don’t see how that is possible. On the other hand, it also seemed safer for travelers. But, it also reflects much more long distance traffic, not local trips.
On this trip I didn’t take a train, but the road followed railroad tracks for hundreds of miles. I saw freight trains headed north and south all the way from Victoria to Harlingen. It might have been nice to take a train all that way, but I don’t think anybody would sell me a ticket. My big complaint about driving is that it prevents me from sitting at a desk and working. Whether I’m driving the car or just along for the ride, it is very difficult to get anything done. If people think they need to entertain me, or that I need to be kept busy, they’re wrong. I’m here to take some advantage of being in this place, but there is only so much I can really do. I wanted to sit still for most of the time, working at a desk.
Posted in Texas | 2 comments | no trackbacksPosted by Evan Bittner
Tue, 03 Jul 2007 22:30:00 GMT
