Friday, 8 and Saturday, 9 January 2021
There's no point in posting a route map, because I took pretty much the same roads for this trip that I did when I came north on December 30th. On one leg of the drive I took I-35W instead of I-35E, but otherwise the roads were the same.
At various points along the highway I came across "ice prevention operations" - or the signs for them, at least. This whole area is unusually forecast to have snow on Sunday, and I'm glad I'd planned to get back north on Saturday.
Our vet appointment was at 2:30, and I'd left Cedar Hill before 7:00 AM, just in case. Most drivers could make that drive in about 3 hours, and when I was driving Momma's Honda we usually made it in 4 hours, including a rest break. But I don't like going too fast in the RV, and I don't like rushing the rest breaks for the dogs too much, and I didn't know about weekend traffic or road conditions, and I had this appointment time, so it wasn't like an oh-we'll-be-in-around-3:00 kind of trip. Of course, that meant driving with the sun coming up, which it does at 7:30 these days, and the glare was surprisingly hard to avoid, even though we were going south. But I still wanted the cushion of extra time.
It turned out that we got to Austin by 12:30, so we had lots of time to wait. I had an odd experience then. I'd taken us back to our old neighborhood to walk the dogs around and one of them pooped so I had a little bag I wanted to dispose of. Friday is trash pick-up day in that neighborhood and I found a trash can that hadn't yet been emptied so I put the poop bag in there. The next door neighbor was outside and started yelling at me to get that bag out, that he'd taken my photo and if I didn't he was going to report me to the mayor, that it was considered theft of services for me to do that, and on and on. Well, I didn't agree with much of anything he said, not caring in the slightest if he reported me to anybody (and being sure the mayor wouldn't care either) and knowing for certain he was wrong about the legal basis for that theft-of-services claim, and besides it wasn't his trash can and anyway the truck would be coming by within the hour. On the other hand, I know a lunatic when I see one so I took the bag of poop out of the can and walked away with the dogs. And darned if he didn't watch me until we were out of sight. Wanted to be sure I didn't put it in someone else's trash can, I guess. To be fair, I would have. But I wonder whether he's always been like that or if his mental health is suffering from the pandemic-induced isolation.
At the vet's office, they still have Christmas cards posted, and I saw one that said, "Feliz Naughty Dog" which isn't one I've seen before. And the dogs both got their first canine influenza shots.
We spent the night at the Northwest Austin KOA in Leander. Leander, pop. 56,111, is about 20 miles from the vet's office, and I liked this campground much better than the one in east Austin I'd stayed in a couple of weeks ago. They still charged a lot of money because of being so close to Austin, but the campsites here were much more level than at the other place. Also the other place wouldn't let me pay actual coins for the laundry machines but instead I'd have to put money on a card and too bad if I put more money on the card than I ended up needing, whereas this place used real money. The drive from here to the dentist's office is about 10-15 minutes longer than from the other place, but it's not like it's an hour more or anything. So I decided when I came back down at the end of the month, I'd plan to stay here.
The next morning I started much later - about 10 till 9:00, and I stopped at a grocery store before we left, figuring if I waited until I got to Cedar Hill I'd be fighting a Saturday afternoon crowd, plus other people stocking up before bad weather set in. Much better to go early in the day.
On Wait Wait ... Don't Tell Me! I got to hear Peter Sagal commiserate with everyone for the "terrible events of December 37th" [aka Jan. 6th] and promise that next week he'd be glad to welcome us to 2021.
It was a little discouraging, hoping so much that this year would be better than last, only to have a sitting president rev up citizens with tweets about how the election was being stolen; with tweets telling them to come to a "Big protest in D.C. on January 6th. Be there, will be wild;" and when they got there recited long lists of examples he claimed showed how the Democrats and fake media had stolen the election, and gave exhortations for these citizens to "fight like hell or you're not going to have a country anymore" and to "walk down Pennsylvania Avenue and give our Republicans - our weak ones . . . the kind of pride and boldness they need to take back our country." An hour's worth of this.
And walk down Pennsylvania Avenue they did. And because almost all participants were White, none of the law enforcement agencies believed there'd be any violence so weren't prepared to deal with it. As a result, 5 people died and, I believe, a complete insurrection with assassinations was just barely averted. I believe most of these people truly thought following these instructions from the President of the United States was the right thing to do, the patriotic thing to do. It doesn't change the fact that they were doing the most unpatriotic thing that's happened in our country since the events that led to the Civil War. And it really doesn't change the fact that it was the president who spent weeks telling everybody the election had been fraudulent and the results needed to be reversed. Yeah, I'm with Peter Sagal - this should all be relegated to the 2020 bonfire.
I saw an electronic sign on the highway saying, "Slow Down - You're Already In Texas." And another one saying, "Drive Friendly - The Texas Way." Uh huh. Sorry but friendly is not the word I'd use to describe driving in Texas. Over and over just today I had people refuse to move over so I could get on the highway, even when no one was anywhere near the lane next to them. Nope. Not friendly. I'd have to go to Indiana for friendly drivers.
I was surprised to see that Texas has a cheese cave in the Waco area - the Brazos Valley Cheese Cave. They say that the cave itself is currently closed to visitors, but they've set up a big observation window so people can see into the cave, and they've got a store where they sell their cheeses. It clearly sounds like a place I need to check out.
I passed 2 ranches next door to each other; one was named "Fat Chance" and the other "Second Chance."
I noticed that a volunteer highway litter crew near the DFW area was identified as Woden's Folk Kindred. This turns out to be a group of Heathens. Some aspects of their approach to religion appear in their webpage addressing treatment of addiction, depression and PTSD, which they call a Path to the Healthy Way. Here's the link to that page in case you're curious. https://www.wodensfolkkindred.org/heilvegr
Today (Saturday) was my Daddy's birthday. He'd've been 101 so not likely he'd have lived that long. But having him die at the early age of 66 robbed both him and me of a lot of years we might have enjoyed getting to know one another as adults. I was really lucky to have had that with my Momma and it makes me even more aware of what I missed with Daddy.
Speaking of which reminds me of a book Daddy read when I was young called The Super-Americans. It was about Texans and included such gems as "no Texan has a father or a grandfather. They all have daddies and granddaddies." The times when that was true have nearly gone now, but you can still hear language like that in the more rural areas of the state. For a 2010 perspective on what the book was, you can check this link. https://www.texasobserver.org/twilight-of-the-super-americans
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