Day One: I headed out of New Orleans fueled by a last stop at the Drive-Thru Daquiri. Drive-Thru Daquiri! After preparing thusly for the long drive to LA, buy cialis we set off through the bayou, and stopping in St. Martinville, recipe heart of Cajun country. We are talking giant elms and lazy. lily pad covered currents and air as thick as honey. Then we took a ferry over the Gulf of Mexico, landing in Galveston, Texas. It was dark and hot and wet. The seagulls flew in low as I stood on the bow, getting sprayed with saltwater. Texas was this endlessly huge dark thing up ahead. I never felt so small.

The sprawl of Houston seemed interminable, but we finally hit the central part and stopped there. The people in this restaurant were crazily friendly. We ate pie and watched some Cheers re-runs they were playing off a DVD. So there I was chewing on raw texas beef, a thousand miles from Boston and, well, you know.

Houston was pretty beat, so we did a long burn all the way to Austin.

Day Two: We stayed at a Motel 6, standing over the balcony in the broiling midday looking out over a sad and dingy pool where a man was frying himself to a bacony consistency. I spent the day milling around downtown and at sundown saw the great exodus of bats from beneath the bridge. It was an unreal swarm. Then we looked around the strip at the University of Texas Austin. I saw the Whitman tower and walked the plaza where those folks were mowed down by the be-tumored sniper. We searched in vain along the downtown strip for a rockabilly show, but hell, it was monday night, so we settled for a yummy Austin beer in a bar that was kinda punk until this wretched second band took the stage in which some fat guy screeched about sodomizing us, to its tuneless cacophany of muffled guitar and a ululating backup singer.

-xo from the road