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Today I wanted to get from Fort Stockton, TX to Oklahoma City, however some severe weather cut the day a little short.

I think when I get back to Ohio I’ll try to lobby my local government to have 80mph speed zones basically in West Texas there is no reason at all to speed and I think I only saw one police car looking for speeders, in other parts of Texas that was very very different. It seemed like a lot of people were just going as fast as they felt comfortable which fell a little under the limit of 80mph.

The first order of business was to get to San Antonio to see the Alamo. IT was pretty easy to find and once there I was really impressed with how well the people knew the trivia. It seemed that everywhere there were parents pointing to diagrams of the Alamo and saying that’s where such and such a thing happened to teach their children and it was very cool, but then I did overhear a girl that was probably in high school ask “Who is David Crockett?” (and not in a sarcastic tone) *sigh* must have been a public high school Also all of the various items called “Davey” Crockett, “David,” but I’m not sure that was the source of the confusion

From the Alamo I traveled north to Austin and asked Foodio54 for a recommendation. The site sent me to Green Mesquite BBQ. This was a small place, but they provided huge portions. I ordered the “4 meat plate” and selected sausage, ribs, turkey, and chicken. I guess those don’t all go together, but I was starving and it sounded good at the time. The meats were all excellent, it was kind of like a blue-collar Brasa, which if you’re unfamiliar with, has wait staff in suits bring you fresh meat until you explode for a flat price. Instead of guys in suits they had girls wearing t-shirts that said “horrifying vegetarians since 1988″ I love Texas

Going north from Austin to Dallas / Fort Worth the police were incredibly crafty in catching speeders, after spotting a low profile police car (no lights on the top, just on the grill) in my rear view mirror I set the cruise control to 70 (the speed limit) and decided not to even try to speed the rest of the day, which is probably what they wanted. They waited with radar guns on bridge overpasses, in ditches, behind bridges, swerved through traffic in those low profile cars, and did probably dozens of other things I never even noticed and people were getting pulled over left and right. Really it was pretty impressive, I don’t think I’ve ever seen such an effective and intense speed enforcement like that ever before.

While going through the Dallas/Fort Worth area I could see a ton of lightning to the north so I flipped on the XM weather/traffic for the area and they didn’t seem too concerned. Then I flipped through a few AM/FM stations and they didn’t seem very concerned either, but the storms seemed to be really bad. I called my Dad who looked online and recommended I stop as soon as possible. I ended up in Gainesville, TX and I turned on the weather channel to see what I missed. The reason the Dallas/Forth Worth people weren’t concerned is that the massive severe thunderstorms were all going to the north, right where I would have been driving. From the safety of my hotel room I watched as the storm raged outside, happy to not be driving in it.

Tags: Big Road Trip