Houston

Amanda volunteered me to make strawberry pancakes for everyone and I made a double batch, but Joann was off at work (substituting) so we struggled to eat it all.

Then it was time to pack the car for the drive down to Houston. Joy drove, Amanda navigated, and I watched the billboards and strip malls from the back seat.

Nearly half of all the billboards were advertisements for lawyers urging you to sue. Most urged people to sue over car accidents or were just general puns on their names. "say Yee-haw for Yee Spikes" or the duo of 'Pusch' and 'Nguyen' who had dozens of billboards indicating they would 'push' for your rights and 'win'. Another lawyer was always pictured carrying a sledgehammer. Some of his billboards were just an image sledgehammer and vague messages that came across like a threat.

One billboard I saw several times was just man's face and the message "Is your sink leaking? Call 832-lawyers". It was as if the only way to fix any difficulty, problem, or mishap was to hire lawyers and sue someone.

We saw a few billboards for epoch times which boasted they were '#1 trusted news' with a bland image of some white man. For some reason these advertisements gave us the creeps, and I made a note to look them up later. Apparently the epoch times is super right wing publication put out by the Chinese cult known as the Falun Gong

The other ubiquitous billboards were for buckees, a gas station/market. The buckees stations were huge, with 30 or more gas pumps stretched over plot the size of a football field and the billboards were everywhere. Along the highway we would see one every two miles for hundreds of miles. Their advertising budget must be insane. We had no interest in joining the insanity, and my only regret is all my attempts to photograph the long stretches of billboards and massive installations turned out blurry.

We passed through heavy rain on the drive down to Houston. The water was coming down so hard we were in danger of hydroplaning. Semi-trucks and unnecessarily massive pickup trucks and SUVs raced past us at 70mph. After passing through the weather system we found ourselves travelling down a highway lined on each side by a thick screen of trees which was a reminder we were in the south.

We stopped once along the way for unclear reasons (were we hungry or did we just want to stretch our legs?). Amanda instantly went onto ebird and found a drainage pond behind one of the strip malls and Joy dropped us off to stretch our legs while she drove to a nearby Popeyes to buy a chicken sampler.

The runoff pond had a kingfisher, green crowned night herons, and a snake, but I was more interested in the blackberries that grew along the trash and fire ant filled lawn between the pond and parking lot. The blackberries were clean, juicy, and delicious.

On the way to Houston we passed an enormous white statue of a man along the highway with signs indicating it was of Sam Houston and the art installation was called a tribute to courage

We were in Houston to visit Dave Preece and his wife Mary. They lived in a subdivision with a unique architectural vibe that emphasized decorative arches and angular rooflines.

We arrived, walked up the Texas shaped paving stones, and knocked on the door. Dogs started barking inside, and we heard Mary yelling at them to get down. Five minutes later she gave up trying to get them to go into the backyard, and we were let in and introduced to Elsa and Tucker.

Tucker in particular was of the hyperactive, drooling, and licking sort. I hate interacting with any animal where you come away wet. This unfortunately applies to most dogs. I like dogs, but I find the smell, drool, and constant licking disagreeable.

Dave was Arnie's older(?) brother and a retired police detective. He had some crazy stories of his time on the force including one where he pulled up to arrest a man, and they had a fight in the parking lot surrounded by a crowd of onlookers. The battle went back and forth a few times and when he finally subdued the guy and got him in the squad car, a woman came up and handed him his gun (which had apparently come loose in the altercation).

Dave's health wasn't the best. One of his knees was swollen and scarred from multiple surgeries. He had to be careful when he got up to avoid making it lock up.

Tucker decided he needed to lick me all over and I spent my time squirming away until they'd built a fort with the ottoman and the couch which he circled like a shark. Eventually Mary gave me a dish towel, and we discovered I could threaten to hit him with it, and he would back away, but I had to be on constant guard because he was relentless. After four hours of dodging his tongue I was exhausted.

We ordered Mexican food from a local place and Mary locked Tucker in a back room. Throughout dinner, we heard him hurling himself against the door like an enraged xenomorph. Fortunately we had our own room to sleep in that night, though Mary cautioned us to lock the door because the dogs were smart enough to turn the knob. When I sat up to blow my nose (because I am mildly allergic to dogs), they barked and pounded on the door.

It stormed that night. We experienced more lightning in that one evening than I'd ever seen in Monterey in the decades I'd lived there. The thunder rumbled constantly. We were woken sometime in the night by what sounded like a lightning bolt hitting the light post outside.