California Road Trip -- Day 1

For those who love a good dose of juxtaposition . . .

1. Welfare and Comfort are west Texas neighbors.

2. We’re riding in a VW Beetle convertible. I’ve plugged an inverter into the cigarette lighter so that my Mac can power up. We’re listening (via the amazing VW speakers) to the Ipod I just charged. And we’ve just left Comfort, Texas where I paid $7.50 for a BLT and salad and we tried to decide if the Double D Restaurant, Bakery and Biergarten was painting their brown walls white or their white walls brown as we seemed to have caught them in mid-paint. That or they liked the cattle hide motif the walls suggested in their current spotted form.

3. Stan asked what one might call a resident of Comfort.

I offered up, “Comforter?”

“But definitely not a Duvet,” he concluded.

Yes, we’re having a good time.

4. Fact: Red VW Beetles do not fly under the radar in west Texas! they do however get off with a warning from cute State Troopers clocking them at 77 mph in a 70 mile zone. Stanio Andretti (as Brit referred to him) that was driving at the time in case you're curious. And, no, we're not sure which one of us batting our eyes at him made the difference.

5. Stan saw the terrain shift from city streets, to hill country, to flat plains and noted spottings of sheep, goats, cows and horses. I spent much of my non-driving hours writing (which is what I do now in this non-vacation existence that some folks are having a hard time grasping as my new 'normal' and how I hope to make a living) and listening for his alerts to views worthy of notice. The sunset, as always, took up the entire sky on the left and was suggestive a spilled can of red paint. The moon, humungous on the right, comforted me and rivaled the glow of the Mac.

6. We didn't stop in Happy but we did note our passage through.