Deep in the Heart of the Past, A Cautionary Tale About Overplanning

Farewell to the middle west for now. Hello to the new south.

I got an early start to the day on the morning of the 13th, as I was eager to make it to Austin and visit one of my closest friends and his wife. Wichita is very close to the border with Oklahoma, and before I knew it I was a visitor there. As you many know, Oklahoma is called the Sooner state. This is drawn from their history. You see, in 1889 the congress of the United States opened up "Indian country" to legal habitation by American settlers. However, some people cheated. They got a head start on their countrymen by hours, days, or months and staked claims before the official start date. These cheaters became known as "sooners" and the state has adopted them as their mascot. I would offer up a snide observation, but I'm from Indiana and I'm not even sure what a "hoosier" is, so I better not throw stones.

The vast American prairie begins to fade as one drives south trough Oklahoma. Slowly the flatlands transform to gently rolling hills; stands of trees become more and more prevalent; and wheatfields give way to oil wells, riverine forests, and larger towns. Chief among these is Oklahoma City, a metropolis of the middle USA. Here's the surprise of the trip so far: the coolest rockabilly show I've heard this side of Shake the Shack on KEXP is right here in OKC. Rock-it radio's rockabilly lunch is a pretty amazing show, only the annoying DJ insists on talking over the songs! Poindexter, I can hear it! Shuddup already and let me enjoy it. I don't need the commentary.

Oklahoma must have a senator or something who was instrumental in getting the Obama stimulus package passed. Interstate 35 southbound was ripped all to hell and gone, in the middle of a total reconstruction in about three places. All the southbound traffic was shunted into a single northbound lane, slowing me down painfully. It's the biggest highway project I've seen on the trip so far. I felt economically stimulated. I admit to getting so frustrated at one point being trapped behind some doofus semi or mobile home that when it did finally open up to two lanes, I found out that my car can indeed go 110 mph. Fortunately, no state troopers were in the vicinity, and my scofflaw ways went unpunished for the time.

But Oklahoma was merely a path to my real objective: the great state of Texas. I came swooping in from the north, through the countryside above the metropolis of Dallas then south toward the state capitol. In truth, I had driven across Texas before. In 1996, when I was first moving to Seattle, I visited a friend in Norman, OK then headed east across Oklahoma and the panhandle of Texas. I took in Lubbock and Amarillo on that drive. Let me tell you, those places are nothing like what I experienced here. In west Texas, the terrain is all sage grass, flat land, and borderline desert. In populous east Texas, by comparison; there's greenery, rolling hills, and urban sprawl. Not quite southern California or New Jersey sprawl, but there is a whole mess of people living between Dallas and San Antonio along I-35W. I arrived in Austin in the early evening.

I was in Austin to visit one of my closest college friends, Ian Nyberg, and his wife Rebekah Jongewaard.
Ian was my roomie as an undergrad for two years, and then for another 2 years or so after graduation. He was the braintrust and prime mover behind Tequila Tuesday, which (along with the SCA and the University of Chicago's Major Activities Board) is where I learned how to produce events. These days he is a doctoral candidate in philosophy at the University of Texas, and has just finished defending his dissertation. He should officially have the alphabet soup after his name in a few short months. Congrats, Ian!

After enjoying a quiet evening of home cooked food, Ian and I hit the town of Austin to do a little mellow touring and walking about. Many of you have probably heard very favorable things about Austin: they are all true. To begin with, this town is an American treasure for music. Janis Joplin, Willie Nelson, Stevie Ray Vaughn, The Fabulous Thunderbirds, and my personal favorites the Butthole Surfers all got their start in this relatively small city of 700k people.

The city is built across a string of man-made lakes. These lakes provide ample outdoor adventure opportunities, as well as cool civic parks...like the one that has the bike and running track and this bronze of Stevie Ray Vaughn. See how it all comes together?


There's also the University of Texas main campus. Like many major state universities, this one has it's share of important contributions to academia, including major advancements in the understanding of molecular biology, a significant history in computer science, and the Lyndon B. Johnson library. Also the campus is just cool looking, and it has the largest football stadium I've ever seen.

The tower below is the very one where a deeply troubled marine and UT engineering student named Charles Whitman went certifiably crazy and murdered 13 people by rifle and shotgun fire in 1966 before he himself was killed by Austin police. This was after murdering his wife and mother as they slept the evening before.

The Whitman case was, to the best of my knowledge, the opening of a sorry age of inexplicable random violence in the USA, which (hopefully) reached its pinnacle in the Columbine massacre. If there were to be a 'gruesome tour of America,' it should include this place. The aftermath continues to this day. It is only in the last few years that they have allowed tourists back up into the tower. And still only on weekends. It's a shame, I'm sure the views from there are magnificent.

It was great catching up with Ian and Rebekah. As I have mentioned in this blog before, there are many stops I have made on this tour so far where I felt I could spend days. But not until this stop did I feel sad to be leaving. But Ian had work to do, and I needed to keep moving. It is all too hard to maintain the relationships that have made your life worth living. I am all too fortunate to have found the kind of relationships that endure despite inadequate nurturing.

The next morning, after a farewell breakfast, I headed out on the road again. My next planned destination is Tampa, Florida and there is a lot of highway between here and there. I decided to head south toward Houston to hook up with Interstate 10, which would lead me all the way across of the Gulf of Mexico to Florida. I wanted to slow down the pace of my trip a bit. The first week and half had included some days of very hard driving, and those days had taken their toll. At the risk of sounding cliche, I'm not as young as I used to be. Slowing down a bit would serve the dual purpose of making it a little easier on me mentally and physically, as well as giving me a bit more time to take in the sights along the way.

With this in mind, I figured I'd stay overnight in Lake Charles, Louisiana. I actually made it there even earlier than I expected. I did a quick little tour of the city and it's pretty lake, not done justice by these pictures simply because I have been dogged by overcast skies since leaving Colorado.
















But it was still early and Lake Charles lacked the kind of something-something that made it feel like the right evening destination for me. Given that the vast expanses of the west are now behind me and I'm in substantially more heavily populated country, I decided to push on the short hour or so to the town of Lafayette.

They call this stretch of the nation "Acadiana," though the origins of the term are evidently disputed. It was settled by french speaking people from what are now the Canadian maritime provinces. We tend to know them as "cajuns" for the most part. Lafayette is deep in the heart of Cajun country. The stereotypes usually make me think of bayous, swamp boats, and cypress trees. The reality, however, is that this is a pleasant land of slowly rolling meadows and grassy wetlands. Further to the south I'm sure you can find the stereotypes...but that's not where the real people are, and I love to find the real people.

A recurring theme for me on this trip is trying to find the right balance between planning and spontaneity; between forward progress and local experience; between road trip and leisurely tourism. I don't know if I'm doing it right. I can only say I think about it, and I'm doing it the way that _feels_ right at the moment. Today I got one of the greatest object lessons in this balancing act.

I came into town planning to have a real cajun experience. I've been relying on my Lonely Planet USA guide quite a bit, and it had a several page entry for Lafayette, extolling the virtues of this-or-that nightclub and the properties of the downtown area. I scouted. Nothing Lonely Planet says is wrong per se, but it's just another kind of script. Still intending to follow their recommendations, I set off to find a motel for the night before changing into some steppin-out clothes. Well...one thing led to another and the motel became hard to pin down. Don't even ask. By 7:30 I was tired and cranky, but I had obtained a room at a motor inn on the outer edge of the city. I was not enthused to head back into the downtown. Fortunately for me there was a little place only about a block over called the Blue Dog Cafe. I figured I'd just grab a quick if uninspired dinner there and then maybe try to salvage an evening of listening to some live music.

It turns out the Blue Dog Cafe is founded by or around the artist George Rodrigue, who is from New Iberia just to south of Lafayette. He's a moderately well-known contemporary American artist who makes his name from oil paintings invariably featuring a blue dog looking out at the observer. This is his place. And what a place! The food was probably the best I've had on the trip so far. The clientele was an eclectic mix of grizzled old cajuns, local business folks, oil workers, and college students. And the beer tasted the best of any I've had in recent memory...aided no doubt by the high 80s temperatures with 100% humidity (Acadiana could also be called America's sauna, as far as I'm concerned). I spent my whole evening mostly listening, and chatting with some of the folks. I could not have done better. Jack Kerouac has never been far from my mind on this trip, but I haven't felt like him until this evening. My takeaway: planned spontaneity can never happen. But every once in a while, if you're really lucky, a frustrating evening will be sneakily replaced by one of the times of your lives.

May you all have many such experiences. And may I have yet more as I push across the deep south tomorrow.