Hi, I’ve taken a year break from writing on this, and there are big travels ahead, so what better time than today to resume the travel blog and cover some places I’ve been in the last 2 years and skipped.
A reason often that I skip a place is that I pass through for a short time and don’t get a good feel for the vibe of the place, the culture, the history, which are important aspects of this travel blog. In some cases, I wouldn’t want to stay…but the story of passing through is such a sensory experience once looked back on, it’s a story worth retelling.
One of these happened in
JUNE 2016,
and it started with a wierd rideshare off Craigslist, out of New Orleans. There were two truckers heading west to Tucson, and floodbearing storms to the west, flooding east Texas. One of them just disappeared, and the other one had some sketchy sounding side trip going on and the phone call kept dropping. Luckily I had a Greyhound ticket already to Houston, and so I heard from the second trucker the next morning, and we were both traveling on I-10 west and agreed to meet by the Houston bus station.
I was prepared for anything, including walking on and finding another way ASAP. The guy was honest and friendly, though, and offered a free ride to Tucson in exchange for time and some help. He was driving for uShip, “like eBay but for hauling”, and his stops were to be in Sugar Land and Laredo on the way to California.
SUGAR LAND
Our first stop, Sugar Land, is just southwest of Houston, in the plain of the flooded Brazos river. It’s a sprawling suburb of mostly new homes populated by many South Asians who work in the tech industry. The waters had apparently just receded so roads were not impassable as I expected. It was as hot and humid as Iquitos! I helped my driver with the delivery here (dropping off some appliance), which he much appreciated.
However, I learned this suburb was once part of a giant sugar plantation – Imperial Sugar, hence the name of the city – and it led to political discussions on the ride onward. He hated President Obama and questioned his US citizenship, and was pretty anti-immigration, mocking Mexicans and Muslims, and ignorant of colonialism. “This town was built on the blood of the enslaved for corporate industry!” I had said, and he replied with “So you like Obama?” or something, and so began our first argument, across the South Texas plains.
He knew the quickest route to Laredo, and as the plains turned to oak savanna then to scrubby hills, hot humid afternoon turned to cool night. As we got close to the Rio Grande, he decried political correctness and wailed “You can’t even call Mexicans wetbacks anymore!”
“Why would you want to?” I replied.
“Oh, I guess they’re ok…at least they’re good people” he said…
LAREDO
He had to get a hotel room in Laredo. This was the first time on the south Texas border for each of us. Laredo to me is a typical border town, calmer than I expected on the US side, about like Nogales, Arizona and Sonora. We stayed at a Red Roof Inn or something, and it was early to rise the next morning so he could make his delivery and be on the way west.
Morning came hot and bright, and after breakfast at a local taco joint, we were on our way.
He wanted to follow the border all the way to El Paso, strange for someone who until last night didn’t like Mexicans, but I hadn’t been that way so it was a new area.
As we turned off the interstate onto US-83, the land opened up to flat scrubland and this was the only road in sight and he was blasting “Shotgun Boogie” by Tennessee Ernie Ford….oh, the sensory experience and slight danger…
“Shotgun Boogie” by Tennessee Ernie Ford
Soon we arrived at the border patrol checkpoint, our first of three for the day. He was new to this and wasn’t really sure how to explain the cars and boxes in the back of his truck. Ultimately he told the curious agent “We got all the time in the world” to get to California and somehow it worked, no search.
We turned onto US-277 and went through Eagle Pass and Del Rio, border crossing towns with less activity. I fell asleep waiting for change in elevation and the first hills come around Lake Amistad, breaking up the dry plain. The Rio Grande follows a canyon to our left, so deep it’s hidden from view. We crossed the Rio Pecos canyon just above the Rio Grande. We ascended a mesa as the gas tank got low and hoped we could make it to the next station.
SANDERSON
The next town with gas is Sanderson, near Big Bend, and luckily we made it. The lady inside Uncle’s had a lot to say about Midland and how they forget to bring gas to her station, it’s so far out of the way. Between the arid mesa landscape, preserved antique gas tanks, and her animated dialogue, it felt like we stopped in a movie set. When phone services picked up later, I found out this town was a setting of “No Country for Old Men.”
After Sanderson, I fell into another long nap and woke up in direct bright sunlight as we were getting on I-10. It was late afternoon I think he was done with the long border drive, and went north instead of going through Marfa.
Tall, desert mountains appeared ahead of us, and long lines of dark storm clouds rose to the north. He asked me to put on some music and I put on 13th Floor Elevators as we passed Van Horn and into Mountain Time. The storm moved across the horizon, and I went into stream of consciousness, my psychedelic mind showing too much…oh, the sensory experience, the slight danger….
The storm would meet us at El Paso just after dark, and the rain and wind would make it hard for him to see. He was getting tired in New Mexico and we had to pull into a truck stop to sleep for a few hours.
Before sunrise, I woke him and we drove off…
…about 2 hours later, he dropped me off in the heat of Tucson, cars and boxes trailing his truck along the streets of my neighborhood.
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