I write this from Shreveport.

Follow up:

A friend and I came down here to visit friends for Christmas. We got on the road at 6pm Tuesday, as some “weather” was inbound. I’m sure it’s escaped no one’s attention that everyone in the US has had some “weather” in the last couple of days. We were no exception. Snow began to fall before we set out, but the roads were fine. Down the I-25 corridor toward Trinidad, we drove through some near-white conditions. We stopped in Trinidad to top off the tank, grab some Gatorade, and hit the road again.

We didn’t stop again until Dalhart, Texas. I stepped out into the cold night air to secure a room for the night and…I was hit by the aroma of pig shit. I thought…oh yeah. Texas.

When we rolled out the next morning, the snow had caught up with us. I saw the sheriff pull up as we dragged our bags to the car, and ran into him in the lobby. Being me, I struck up a conversation with him. When I acknowledged we were heading South, he said that while it didn’t look like it, the roads were glazed with ice. He was here giving a gentleman a ride who’d just driven down from Utah the night before and had just rolled his car a couple of miles out of town, and I should be careful. I thanked him and off we went.

I wasn’t driving. I was writing a paper. I had a 20 page paper due by 5pm MST. I’d been working on it furiously since Sunday, or Monday at the latest, but I hadn’t yet begun to organize my thoughts until we got on the road Tuesday night. I worked until I was too exhausted to focus, then I laid back and slept fitfully. When we checked into the hotel, I worked again until I couldn’t focus, then I slept. I woke after a couple of hours (as I do), and worked until I couldn’t focus again. On the way out of Dalhart, I worked. In Amarillo, we stopped to pick up a car charger because my laptop was going dead. I worked without eating until 4:30 MST, by which time we’d found a hotel in Wichita Falls to park outside of so we could piggyback on their signal, so I could email my paper to my prof. It was finished, and it was 28 pages long.

For future reference: No matter how much you’ve read and thought about a paper, researched, taken notes, and laid the groundwork, I’d recommend not waiting until less than 24 hours from the moment it is due to begin actually writing it.

I finally got some food in Fort Worth, by which time I was winding down enough to eat. I rewarded myself with dinner at the Panda Express. I quite like this little buffet gourmet chain. I had eaten, literally, only a small grab bag of chips all day, so I wanted something somewhat nutritious and tasty. We left the highway and slowly threaded our way back to the elusive Panda, and I ordered my usual fare: chow mein and mixed vegetables.

The mixed vegetables at the Panda E in Colorado are a succulent mixture of lightly stir fried Chinese cabbage chunks, sliced carrots, and button mushrooms. In Texas, they eschew the mushrooms—my favorite part—for green beans. Green beans aren’t particularly Chinese, and they simply don’t work in this dish. Silly Southerners.

Also, I thought this was a chain, where I could depend upon the dish I knew and loved being prepared the same way, y’know? At least within the US, I mean (McDonald’s in the UK is noticeably different from ours, and their burgers don’t taste the same, but they are prepared for the British palate, if that isn’t an oxymoron).

Maybe it wasn’t a Panda Express, after all, but a cheap ripoff. The Ponda Espress, maybe.

Anyway. We got lost on the way through Dallas, which is more or less obligatory, as they will label an interstate something like I-35E to fool you into believing it goes east. For those of you what don’t know, travel through Dallas is counterintuitive. The only city I’ve ever been in which compares to the Dallas mousetrap is Washington D.C., which was deliberately designed to intimidate visitors (in particular, foreign heads of state). I wonder what Dallas’ excuse is.

When we eventually emerged from Dallas, bound east, we received texts warning of tornados on the I-20 corridor around Shreveport. About an hour west of Shreveport, we drove into what I can only describe as a monsoon. If anything, this was more frightening than the snowstorm we’d barely escaped the night before.

(Completely random intermission: Kangaroos travel in groups called "mobs." That's right up there with a "murder" of crows.)

Thus it was that, having survived myriad natural disasters--a blizzard, an ice storm, Dallas, and a monsoon--we stopped on the outskirts of Shreveport at a convenience store (or as an old boss of mine called them, “Stop ‘n’ Robs”). I picked up a six-pack of beer, three grab bags of chips, and a cold cappuccino drink, and took them to the counter. The clerk bagged my beer—which, I might add, like all six-packs comes with a handle—and left the other items scattered on the counter. I’d forgotten about this particularly Southern stupid human trick. They seem confused regarding the utilitarian intent of shopping bags.

One more thing I've noticed lately: Dairy Queen now has a tiny traditional “DQ” sign with a sizable white-on-black sign beneath that reads “RESTAURANT.” Now: an innate acceptance of DQ as an inescapable yet predictable fixture in your life is part of what defines you, at root, as Southern. So. What Einstein decided they need to clarify that they are a restaurant? Are there really people out there who believe they only serve soft serve cones and Blizzards? Really?!

I’m not convinced.

d