Odds and ends

First day of full-time at Houston. It went well; I got a lot done. Oddly enough, last night, in the nicest room of the trip so far, I got the poorest sleep, waking at 4:30 and never really getting back to sleep. So I'm slightly tuckered at this point; no ambitious plans for tonight.

I thought that today's blog might be a good opportunity to talk about some of the small things I've noticed on this trip.

Roadkill

There's a lot of roadkill in Texas. As an amateur natural historian I am curious each time I pass a blob of organic matter on the highway. Once in a while it's clear what the animal originally was, but usually not. Traffic moves pretty fast down those highways. Mammals, birds, reptiles, and amphibians are all well represented. There are a lot of Turkey Vultures in Texas, too, and they have learned to check out the roads. This leads to an odd puzzle. From time to time a Turkey Vulture is a little too slow taking off, and becomes roadkill itself. In that case, what eats it?

What Kind of a Motel is This?

I knew that I would be gone a long time, and I would rack up many nights in motels. So in the interest of my budget I stuck to the lower end of the lodging spectrum. I encountered some really lame rooms, but occasionally I was surprised by a perfectly good room at a good price. And sometimes there's a good reason to take a lame room. In Terlingua, for example, I paid $80 for a room that would have made a garden shed look good. But the plumbing worked, wifi was acceptable, and I was in Terlingua, home of the amazing night skies. No bedbugs in any of these places - yay! I think that the dividing line, for me, is the lobby that has a full bulletproof glass window, with a little slot for passing documents back and forth. You know, like a bank in a bad neighborhood. I walked out of one of those in Seguin. It takes a lot to give me a bad feeling, but that one did.

Frontage Roads

One of the challenges of this trip has been the strict rule to stay off freeways. Sometimes only a freeway goes where you want to go. That's one of the reasons why I'm here in Houston, 1500 freeway miles away from L.A., with almost 3000 miles on the bike since I started.

In Texas, it's surprising how often a frontage road parallels a freeway for a good long time. I've stayed on them for 10 or 15 miles at a time. Inevitably they peter out at a river crossing or something, but they can get you a long way toward where you need to go.

Tomorrow

Tomorrow is another workday, but I'll cover some more oddball Texas topics tomorrow night.