Jack Bauer and Crossing into Texas!

Written: Sept 2nd 12:59am

So we are in a Motel 6 in the one and only "Texarkana." That's right, this city straddles both Texas and Arkansas. We didn't leave Kentucky until noon today, but we just kept on driving. We downloaded this ridiculous book onto Lyon's ipod called "The Gray Man." I just thought it would be funny because of the whole "Gray" thing. After listening to it for 12 minutes we almost shut it off because there was so much bloody shooting and gratuitous blowing up of American soldiers and then revenge snipering of Al-Queda. But it was all we had besides Radio Lab and music and we had hundreds of miles ahead of us, so we just made ourselves keep listening.

It got better. "The Gray Man," aka, Court Gentry, is this ex-CIA agent who was running SWAT teams when he was 16 and had been traveling the world, working for this private security company for the last few years. He's called The Gray Man because he is fleeting and ghost-like (much like myself). It turned out that during one of his missions he had killed the brother of the Nigerian president, and this meant people were after him! So, in the end, this story got us all the way to Texas! Sometimes we took breaks from the action-packed book-on-ipod, but after a while one of us would suggest, "should we see how Jack Bauer's doing?" Or, "Let's check in on MacGyver."

Honestly, our arrival in my home state was the most anti-climactic border-crossing I've ever experienced. Maybe just the most anti-climactic experience of my life. I didn't even know we'd gotten to Texas until we'd checked into our room here at this shady Motel 6 and I went to the bathroom. On the back of the bathroom door was a little sign that said, "Welcome to Texas" and then proceeded to explain to me that the motel was not responsible for my valuables. So it was that on the toilet in a Motel 6, I crossed into Texas.

We brought our bikes in. I don't trust any of the men lingering around outside smoking and chatting. At check in there was a "night door" that we had to yell through over the sound of the extremely loud humming of the ice-machine. Somehow, though, Lyon managed to have his first friendly Texas encounter. While a line formed behind him of 3 or 4 men twice his width and 4 or 5 heads taller than him, I stood just outside to get out of the cold air-conditioning and overheard the snippets of his conversation with the talkative (but not so talkative-looking) man behind the counter. Before I knew it he was talking about his country band and agreeing with the man that, "yeah, everyone around me is getting old, getting married and having kids. Yup, I'm moving to Austin, and oh I play guitar mostly and sing some..." What was going on in there? I was afraid one of the large men behind him might get fed up with waiting and decide to physically remove Lyon from the line while his credit card was being run. Motel 6 guy was safely behind the "night glass" but Lyon was out in the open. It turned out they had the same birthday, or so Lyon had gathered over the ice machine that sounded like a jet engine.

As we pulled into our parking spot we remarked with a sparkle to ourselves, "Oh how nice, the police are here." And we felt much safer for a second. Then we thought, "actually, maybe it's not so great that the police are here interviewing people. Yeah, that's not good."

But here we are, watching T.V for the first time in weeks, ready for a good night's rest so that we can make it to Austin at a decent hour tomorrow. I am loopy.