Wind and West Texas

This blog will be short, as I have about twenty minutes before Starbucks (there was no other internet option) closes. Also, I'm going to make it an early morning because a weather check revealed that the wind could be blowing as hard as 35 miles an hour tomorrow afternoon. Today it was blowing around twenty, and I didn't like it.
It becomes exhausting after a while, correcting for gusts trying to push the motorcycle off the road. Plus, it turns out, wind can dehydrate a person pretty fast.
I arrived at San Angelo State Park today hot, and thirsty. I felt a little delirious trying to set up my tent while the wind tried to turn it into a kite.
But enough complaining - it was a gorgeous ride out of Austin, through Texas hill country.
Weeee! It really felt like the road trip was in full swing as me and the bike zoomed and curved around the hillsides, covered in purple flowers and scrub. The towns were all funky and quaint, and most of them had rivers flowing low over big boulders.
Things got hotter, drier, flatter and emptier the farther west I rode. And did I mention, windier?
The state park I'm camped at for the night is not beautiful, but stark and vast. My campsite seems to be no smaller than three acres, and comes with its own pavilion. Everything is bigger in Texas, right?

Austin with John was great. The city has an edgy, outdoorsy feel and I enjoyed strolling around the University of Texas and other quirky streets for most of the day.


I hit up the Texas History Museum. It felt like I'd just walked in on a giant party that Texas was throwing for itself. Everything was larger than life, and sometimes neon. The section on Texan/Indian relations mostly centered on missionary work. Here is one Comanche pictogram of a missionary. It reminds me of doodles I would have done of a dictatorial grade school teacher:

A highlight was watching the documentary, "Barbeque: A Texas Love Story." This was followed up, eventually, by a visit to Ruby's, an Austin barbeque institution. I had brisket, and it was delicous. Maybe the highlight of the night was watching around a million bats fly out from under a downtown. Apparently this is one of the major tourist attractions in Austin, and I think that is pretty cool in itself. The bats came out right at dusk and swooshed in formation, like flying monkeys, up and around Austin's sky scrapers. They kept coming, for at least twenty minutes, until we moved on in search of food. What would a trip to Austin be without hearing some music? The tunes at the Hole in the Wall first came from a soulful cowboy with a guitar, which came close to satisfying my honky tonk jones. Another band followed, whose bizarre sound I cannot begin to justify with any adjectives currently floating around in my head. But there was a one-eyed woman dressed like a pirate playing accordian, and a man who looked like an auto mechanic on stand up bass, and a meniacal banjo player who sang zombie love songs. Maybe not a traditional Texas music experience, but memorable all the same! My time is out here. It is on to Roswell tomorrow, if the wind does not blow the bike back towards Austin. If you are worried about potential encounters with Aliens, never fear: I have already been warned. Plus, I have been honing my alien self-defense skills in the evenings. And thanks to Billy, I have a tazer. All this combined should keep all but the most persistent extraterrestrials at bay.