Deep in the Heart of Texas

I don't want to give away my age, but this movie had come out on video when I last lived in Texas.  I never forgot that scene.

I gave us well over a month to get from Yuma Arizona to New Orleans, but we are already more than halfway there and it isn't even February yet.  Part of the reason is that Texas is just so hard to boondock in.  There's no free BLM camp sites.  We went from a truck stop to an abandoned Chevron, and now an RV park.

Truck stops and illegal campsites outside abandoned buildings are not place you want to stay more than one night.  Truck stops are noisy and full of exhaust.  Illegal camp sites, no matter how well established as good sites by others, always have the risk of a cop banging on your door at 6am.

We saw a cop go by while we were camping last night, and he saw us.  He didn't bug us.  Probably if we stayed two nights he would have told us to move on.  That's fine because we wanted to get out of there anyway.  Like an idiot I parked right by the railroad tracks.  I think my cat Precious lost two lives just from the fright of the booming train whistle.

To get back to my point, we're blowing through Texas at a breakneck speed because instead of mosying along, staying four days at each stop, we're doing 130 miles every day.

Today we are in an RV park 130 miles away from San Antonio.  I just paid for two nights because I can't deal with this non-stop travel.  It's $15/night, which for me is a splurge.

We're in Iraan Texas, a place of little note.  It reminds me a lot of Riesle Texas outside of Waco where I lived two years as a child.  Texas has improved greatly in terms of opportunity and population, but the vibe never changes.  It's still a land of sweet tea, cowboy hats/boots, and everyone saying yes ma'am or no ma'am.  I remember when I went to school in Texas that if we said 'yeah' it would be a detention.  They hammer in the 'yes/no ma'ams' hard.

It's also a place that seems like it's one cop for every ten people.  You see speed traps every 30 miles, and cops are in every store and restaurant.  The state motto used to be 'Don't Mess With Texas' I don't know if it's still that way, but the state is big on discipline.  When I was a child school principles doled out corporal punishment with tailbone-breaking wooden paddles.  It would have been child abuse in any state above the Mason Dixon line.

The women here seem to all be dolled up in that Texas beauty pageant way.  I know that when I grew up the men were the only ones who could land good-paying jobs.  Women were always trying to find a man who could support them.  Women didn't seem to get out of the rut of poverty and a lack of education so they could support themselves.  I wondered if it was the same, and then I saw a woman with highlights and full make-up going grocery shopping with her three children.  Maybe?

Anywho, I don't mean to be down on Texas, but we didn't like the state when I was young, and I'm not sure if that will change.  The good thing is that we are no longer poor.  I can pass on through without getting stuck here.  When I was younger it was hard to get out.  Well...it was a nightmare, actually, but it's not a story I want to relive by telling you.

In other news I let myself get discouraged with my diet and sabotaged both my mom and myself.  I feel terrible about it, because my mom would have continued happily if I hadn't stopped.  She said she felt guilty about failing at the diet.  The guilt is all mine.  I had several days of *gaining* weight after I had fasted and got fed up.  Today we had pizza.  I suck.

The fasting diet is still a good diet, but I can't do it when I have a book I need to finish.  I just couldn't muster the brain power to write on fast days and didn't feel like it on feast days.  The plan now is to finish my book and then try to get back on some kind of diet.  :le sigh: