Texas In My Rearview Mirror

Alarm clocks are for people who don't have dogs.

We enjoyed our day off in San Antonio. We looked at the Riverwalk, took a short sight-seeing drive, ate a ton of barbeque, and went to bed at a reasonable hour.*

At about five in the morning, Bander let us know that it was time to get up. Since there's no point in arguing, we got up, packed the cars, and took off. Part of our strategy was to miss any sort of rush hour traveling through Houston.

That turned out to be a good thing, because whoever handles road maintenance in Texas is on a wild tear-ass spending spree. More of the I-10 was chewed up and in the process of revamping in Texas than I could believe. I wanted to explain to the chowderhead in charge that instead of ripping everything out and then starting repairs, you do one freaking section at a time.

The crown jewel in the asphalt crown of freeway fuckery is the center of downtown Houston, where the I-10 - a major cross country artery that carries scads of long-haul trucks and a big chunk of travelers - is squeezed into a single ultra-narrow strip that clearly used to be the bike lane. It took quite some time to get through, and I can't imagine how long it would have taken during normal traffic hours.

We did indeed like San Antonio, but the traffic alone put Houston on the list next to El Paso of places that we don't need to visit again.

What seems endless hours later, and we've finally finished crossing Texas. We're in Lafayette, LA, and we found a restaurant that will deliver deep-fried alligator nuggets for dinner. Louisiana is pretty country, and they have fried gator.

I'm happier already.