Tennessee looks wide, the topline border of Wyoming looks longish on the map, but Texas is flat out enormous. We knocked this drive out after waving hello and goodbye to 857 friendly reminders of the never-ending length of the Texas highway system.
Austin provided our brief respite from the road and a reunion with friends who showed us East 6th, Two step, and good times. Austin essentially is a respite from much of Texas culture. It’s weird and the bumper sticker slogan wisdom is spot on. Austin is full of hills, hipsters, tacos for all meals of the day, bats (the aerial mammals, y’all), winding roads, and stone cold liberals. Flip the previous sentence and the reflected image is the rest of Texas. We identify and have to stop and wonder if that makes us weird everywhere. Late twenty year olds have that phase. A personality re-adolescence where questions about life spring up throughout normal daily activities. Am I the only one who does push-ups while watching Colbert Report? Is it cool to go shopping for frames now? All these activities, hobbies, and mechanisms of life are analyzed and distilled to make us who we are and accelerates momentum towards who we may become for the next decade and beyond. Either way the road rolls on and here we are only part of the way through Texas.
One commonality throughout Texas that we checked out while in Austin was the barbeque. Carolina, St. Louis, and others 
lean heavily on the sauces and vinegars to set their over the fire grub apart. Texas leans on its bulls and they oblige. Whatever grading system you want to use its top of the class. A+, Carne perfecto, or AAA (I did see a 5-A ranch roadside so maybe AAA is obsolete?!). Salt Lick BBQ is the King of Kings. Just outside Austin, an old stone pit stocked with hickory wood and a mop for basting is all that’s needed. The spot is BYOB too, as if they needed extra credit to get a perfect grade. Go there and ask no questions. The emptiness of our plates and lack of ability to speak full sentences afterwards was like a second Thanksgiving.
We abided traffic laws and skipped the drive through liquor stores and headed out of town. Back roads to highway ten nabbed the hybrid from DC plenty of looks. The state bird, whatever that is, should be changed to a F-150. If they can get secession on the ballot this should be a political landslide. Lyndon Johnson is apparently from small town Texas and his presidency has yielded acres of land for a state park in his name and hundreds of billboards, commemorative rocks, windmills, and smoked sausage with his namesake.
Our dangerous proximity to the border meant AT&T texted updates about international roaming/data rates and two checkpoints from U.S. Customs. Texas ended with a pop up shop of suburban sprawl. El Paso is ripe for anthropological study, if anthropology majors want to also see 857 mile markers that is. Interracial couples, the lengthy tentacles of corporate ownership, and the affects tireless heat have on people are just a few doctoral topics for the picking.
The road curved, oddly, northwards alongside the Rio Grande and extended straight out through the desert again. We waved goodbye to green sign number one and the chilies on the New Mexico state welcome sign foretold more tasty times ahead.
"It's all happening." 