Because of my unknown time to be spent in Houston, originally I thought to stop at a restaurant and have some crawfish, I planned a short day. It turned out not only not short but I started late as well.
I did start early yesterday because of the long day and the heat. For the first couple of hours, I could only look at the scenery on one side of the road because of the sun. Knowing that today was short, I not only woke late but spent my time getting ready. After all, I did want to miss Houston's rush hour. I think I did but with traffic that heavy, particularly on I-610 between I-10 and 59 and again on 59 going north around downtown, who can tell.
When 59's HOV lane came up, almost a completely separate road, I was so excited that I took it, completely ignoring my printed Google Maps directions. (Not to complain but they are hard to read. I will take care of the Google caused problem tonight, namely: all the white space between the instructions and the distance makes it easy to move up or down a line. The rest is my fault: 1) I don't wear my reading glasses when I ride, in fact, shouldn't wear them for distance. 2) For the tank bag to fit well on my gas tank, it is rather close my body and it is difficult to depress my chin enough to see the paper. Which brings us to 3), the tank bag viewing area appears large enough for an 8 1/2 by 13 inch paper and my mere 11 inches slide down. What's more, the directions I'm most interested in are generally at the bottom of the page.)
While I have most assiduously avoided learning the temperature thinking that that might psychologically make it seem hotter, today I took my jacket off until it felt like I was sunburned. I normally wear it for safety reasons, including bug protection. Although long sleeved, my shirt literally had no SPF factor. I can also feel that my face is sunburned even though I put on SPF 70 sunscreen.
On the ride from New Braunfels I found a pace truck, a big semi going the speed I wanted to go and able to block some of the headwind. Finally I had to pull off and get gas and lost it. Almost as soon as I got back on the Expressway, I found another one. After this one through some road debris at me, I realized that my earlier truck had weighted mud flaps on his trailer and this one didn't. I gave up on the modest attempt, I was pretty far away in both cases, to draft.
After the HOV lane ended, I found myself beside a big rig that wanted to move over--into my lane. I wasn't about to argue so sped up, closing the gap between me and a pickup that happened also to be going the speed I wanted to. Sometime later I was thinking to myself that Houston really has a pervasive odor of burned hydrocarbons. But then I thought back to when I was in stop and go rush hour like traffic and hadn't noticed this odor. Once again I sped up, got around that pickup and was breathing better smelling air.
Sleeping in this morning reminded me that my travel plans didn't take into account the time zone changes. Not only is it harder to get up an hour earlier on successive days, but my arrival the night before is later than I had hoped. All of this brings me back to the reason today ended up being such a long day, and the irony of it. After following and not following the details of my Google Map directions, I finally arrive at my destination, a specific hotel in Marshall. Since I do not know whether or not I can maintain my schedule, I typically don't make reservations but depend on the surplus of hotel space. (In now my third cross-country trip by car and motorcycle, I have never had any problem just dropping in and getting a room.) Not so tonight in Marshall, TX. Not to denigrate Marshall, but I don't know of anything there that would fill up over five hotels. The only explanation I could think of is that this is overflow from the Gulf cleanup efforts.
What makes this so ironic is that this was the only hotel I had originally planned on staying at. I was to be camping every other night. For a brief moment, I thought about camping tonight but then as hot as I was, the air conditioning just called out to me.
Instead, I got out my directions for tomorrow and followed them into the night until I found myself a little hope, Hope, Arkansas, that is.
Pictures and memories of living in Houston to come.
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