unspecified

This sign is right outside my hotel in Los Angeles.  I took a photo of it so I could look at it later and figure it out, but I still don’t understand… did Los Angeles not have taxis until three weeks ago?

Yesterday I took the Texas Eagle (which, as far as I can tell, is the same thing as the Sunset Limited) from San Antonio to Los Angeles.  It was pretty much a tour of America’s Wastelands… I fell asleep looking at the scrub of West Texas and woke up to a view of the Salton Sea.

Last night we walked around downtown Austin to see some of the New Year festivities.  Someone-or-other built a giant beautiful wooden clockwork to count down the last few days of the year.  Lots of people crowded around it to write resolutions or generally contribute personal graffiti.

After we paced around in the dust for a long time, the action started to pick up.  There was a performance from ArcAttack, guys who really know how to do things the hard way.

And there was also a psychadelic-type dance tent which was frequented primarily by small children.

Finally, around 8:30 (they adjusted the time to make sure midnight arrived at a child-friendly hour), the main event.

The fire was very hot, and very close.  Several times little vortices sucked up clouds of cinders and rained them down on the crowd… the thought crossed my mind that we were lucky to be in the front rows in order to be among the tramplers rather than the trampled.  Ultimately, though, the whole event went off without a hitch, and Aidan was delighted, despite the burn holes that we later discovered in his clothing.

Right now I’m sitting outside a grocery store in Austin.  There’s a flock of noisy, whistling blackbirds in the tree above me (they look like grackles but don’t sound like the kind we have in MN.)  Behind me is a crowd of little kids discussing some arcane card-game (maybe Yu-Gi-Oh.)  Off to my right is a playground full of little yelling kids.  My laptop is plugged into an oak tree which has a power outlet on its base for some reason.

Aidan saw all this rigging over the horizon and declared it to be a ship.  This was visually correct and yet didn’t make much sense geographically.  I guess coal-mining involves big airborn blocks and tackle.

I had another Yankee moment during this drive.  Each time I pulled over to snap a photo I worried that an angry guy was going to burst out of a shack brandishing a shotgun.  When I shared this concern, Mary pointed out that what we were driving by were hobby farms, most likely owned by wealthy Motorola and AMD employees.

On the road from Dallas to Austin is Italy, Texas:  home of the Monolithic Dome Institute.  I can’t offer up much explanation, here — I played with Aidan in a big empty field while Mary walked around inside the visitor’s center.  When she came out I asked what she’d learned, and she said “Not much!”

My best guess about this stuff is that it’s sort of a resort — only instead of the attraction being scenery, or a canyon, or a waterfall, people come to see the wind.

It’s probably best if I say as little as possible about Dallas.  The landscape there combined with my generally dour frame of mind had me spending a lot of time dwelling on the fact that humans are no better than locusts, laying waste to the land while ravenously devouring mass quantities of undistinguished Sysco-provided foodstuffs.  This despite the fact that everyone was consistently cheerful and friendly towards me — it’s uncanny what bad architecture and poor food can do for my state of mind.

In any case, here’s one bright spot:  We visited the Dallas Museum of Art to view a traveling King Tutankhamun exhibit (something of a reunion tour for the items which inspired such a frenzy in the 70’s and which I’m pretty sure I visited as a kid.)  I was really delighted by the cartoonish nature of the heiroglyphics, but what really stood out for me was this fan:

In particular, this bit:

Over Christmas the internet service went out at the hotel in Dallas.  The hotel was essentially abandoned for the holiday, and  what staff was present didn’t have much interest in my communication problems.  So… I have many days of photos piling up.

Mary graciously predicted that I would probably not like to stay for a week with a stranger, and booked us into a suite with a nice cafe on the first floor.  At the moment this cafe has some excellent sunbeams.  Traveling in style is surprisingly affordable during a depression.