Everything's Bigger In Texas
Woke up in Louisiana to more rain. After a quick breakfast at Waffle House, which later became quite evident was a bad choice, I was off. More rain although today I kind of got used to not being able to see more than five feet in front of me and made it to the Texas border.
I didn't have any stops planned for the day so it was just a question of how many miles I could cover before I wanted to shoot myself, fall asleep behind the wheel, or make the wise decision of pulling off the road and getting some rest somewhere.
I made it over 600 miles though Texas plus the miles in LA, and I did close to 700 miles for the day. I passed through Houston and San Antonio. In San Antonio I blew through the entire city doing around 90-100 through its winding freeways which was a lot of fun. Little did I know that after San Antonio civilization completely ends. The highways speed limit is raised to 80, which should have been an indicator for me, but by the time I realized that I was nowhere near anything, mainly by a Best Western billboard that was advertising a hotel just 100 some odd miles away, I saw that I was precariously low on gas. I was tempted to shift the car to nuetral whenever I was going downhill like I had to do as per Olga's suggestion one time when we were low on gas in the M3 in Pittsburgh, but I didn't want to bother with the SMG and figured it was probably better to leave it alone.
Eventually I did happen upon a gas station with about 30-50 miles left on my range. I filled up, got an apple, got some bread because I didn't feel like further upsetting my stomach with the crap they sell on the road, asked the gas station attendant lady about how far apart the next towns were and after she told me a hundred miles apart I decided that I was going to refuel at just about every gas station that I passed by.
Getting back on the road I decided to take advantage of the rather high speed limits, the lack of cars, and the straight roads as my photographs will testify to. I sped on through Texas for the next two hours where my average speed was probably somewhere between 103mph and 107mph. I think the M5 gets better gas mileage at those speeds given the speed and time of travel.
The second gas station that I filled up was a complete hole in the wall and it smelled like methane outside, or what I could guess was methane. Well basically it smelled like farts. I saw that there were some rigs, small ones, not too far in the distance so I figured it was attached to that. That's when a woman and her daughter came down from across the bridge because they were low on diesel, unfortunately the gas station they stopped at was closed and the next town, Fort Stockton, where I stayed overnight, was 30 miles away and they wouldnt make it. So they asked for a ride into town and I agreed, after we got their hamsters so they wouldnt die in the heat or get eaten by stray wild cats, we were off, but crossing the bridge to get back on the highway we passed by another guy who was stranded in his huge semi because something was broken. I offered to give him a lift as well but he was just going to hang out and wait for his company to send help, and he offered to pump out some gas for the ladies, so we got some spare tubing that was on the floor and I drove them back to the gas station, gave them one of my spare portable gas tanks and bid them good luck and farewell. Of course in the process I managed to somehow step on a twig that had a very sharp barb, that went completely through my flip flop and into my toe, at first I thought it was a splinter, but luckily after stepping on it a few times and trying to fix a rattle in my trunk on the road I found it and removed it.
Oh yeah, I also peed in the dessertish climate.
Thought it was worth a mention.
Oh and on the road I spotted some test mules. Unfortunately it's for a new mazda coupe so its not really worth much, but since it was kinda cool to see I figured I would include the images anyway.
Overall I have to say that Texas past San Antonio is rather beautiful and serene. A bit unexpected, I mean I'm not sure what I was expecting, but it is very nice at sunset as I'm sure the pictures will attest to. Now, Im off to Albuquerque, NM, I should be there in about 6-7 hours and see whats going on there tonight then head off to Vegas tomorrow and try to ride in at night so I can see it lit up at night in the desert as my dad recommended.
Anyway, now I gotta exercise and head off back on the road.
