OK, so I'm really behind on these posts, mostly due to uneven internet access. We're actually in Albuquerque now, but I will go back and fill in how we got here.
Sunday morning in Houston we were awoken by people mowing their lawns. Evidently it's part of the agreement of living here - you have to keep up your yard work. We got a slow start, but eventually got to NTB for an oil change. While we were waiting for the car to be ready, Charlie and Linda took us to Denny's for breakfast. Charlie and Linda, and the guy at NTB, were all very confused about us not having air conditioning in the car. "So you need more freon?" No - we don't have AC. "So, it broke and you never fixed it?" Nope, just don't have AC. It was really unheard of for them. Of course in Houston, we saw why it was necessary!
After bidding Charlie and Linda au revoir, we headed to Austin. This was the day we needed AC, if there was any! By the time we arrived, I was completely soaked in sweat. Yuck.
Along the short (~3 hours) drive, we saw many billboards for planned communities such as the ones our friends live in (Sienna Plantation). We saw signs for The Colony, and The Settlement at Patriot Ranch. (In the Dallas/Ft. Worth area there are actual cities called White Settlement and The Colony.) For people coming from the Northeast, it's quite surprising to see such blatant use of racist terms for new subdivisions and cities. It is that people don't see the context, or that they are willfully indentifying with a Confederate past?
We passed through LaGrange, where my German host sister spent a year as an exchange student. Germans love Texas!
Having exhausted our supply of Texas bands, we listened to Franz Ferdinand, Hot Hot Heat, and Interpol.
Vultures continue to be ever-present.
We arrived at our friends David and Tory's place around 7pm. They just had a baby girl, Ellison Leticia (Elle for short) on the 16th. We had dinner with them, our old sleeping buddy Sarah (that's a story from another road trip), our hosts Tomas and Maureen, and Sarah's friends Gina and Ross. After much bitching about old jobs, and many a political discussion, we decided to turn in.
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