I'm in a foreign land

I had to go to Ft. Worth on business this week and if I had been sent to Uzbekistan I would have felt more at home. First, it seems the wind here blows at 40mph constantly. The plane felt like the little Cessna that I used to fly as it touched down. I saw a skinny girl with big hair get blown to the ground coming off the plane.

Next I got to the rental car desk. Having never owned a car bigger than a Civic, I love a compact car. They said that they were all out and I could take either a passenger van or a Hummer. Holy crap! I figured the Hummer was smaller, but after getting into it (by using the built in rope ladder) I had to wonder.

While driving, the significance of the wind became more apparent. If you are unfamiliar with a Hummer, it is similar in size and shape to a school bus and the flat sides act very much like a sail in a side wind. It took much more effort than I expected to hold the Hummer in its lane with its slow steering response, high profile, and higher center of gravity. I apologize to all those H3 drivers that I figured were drunk. It appears that the blame lies mostly the car and not the driver.

Another amazing difference is the lack of exit only markers. I'd move over to the right lane because, despite its size, there is a very narrow field of view out of the H3 and I was only comfortable going the speed limit. The locals felt otherwise and typically went 70 in the 55mph zone. After a mile or two, without a sign announce it to be such, the right lane magically became an exit-only lane. After three or four times of having to take evasive measures to get back onto the highway, I realized that if there are double reflectors marking the lane boundaries, you were about to be forced off the road.

The good part about Texas is that the highways are all twice the size that they seem. For example, a four lane highway also has 2 lanes in each direction parallelling the highway 100 feet to each side. These are called 'Frontage roads'. I'm familiar with the concept, but Texas uses them unlike any other place in the world. Perhaps it is because Texas is giant.

Texas fills its expanse with meat. For lunch at my meeting you had to give $8 and you could eat a literally unlimited portion of flesh. There were 2 kinds of beef and 2 kinds of chicken. The fatty meat was only comparable to the fatty sides. The potatoes had a 1/2 inch of golden liquid protecting them from the air. I figured it was butter, but it tasted different. I would provide a description, but it was unlike anything I've tasted before. That's not a compliment.

Of course there was also a "vegetable". A salad made from a few pieces of lettuce covered in a ivory blanket of ranch dressing and adorned with golden threads cheddar cheese was there as a side dish.

After the meeting I drove across 8 lanes of highway to get back to my hotel. At the 4-way stop sign chaos reigned. It seems that a person turning left has right-of-way over another going straight. I wondered what the person in front of me was waiting for, but when it was my turn to go the guy coming the other way seemed intent on cutting in front of me rather than turn left behind me as I passed. Good thing I had the Hummer.

All in all I miss my family, my car, and everything not Texan. I'm done with the long, slow, drawn-out speaking, the giant bull statues and the wind. And it has only been 20 hours.