day nine

wichita falls, texas, to texarkana, texas, 331 miles.
thought i was going to be in arkansas tonight, but it turns out i'm one exit off the freeway shy of arkansas. seems like i've been in texas a long time. not sure whether that's because it's big or because it's still BORING. why did we want texas anyway? of course, i'm saying this having seen just the northern part. i'm sure places like brownsville are much more scenic and interesting. galveston! oh, galveston. i don't really have anything to say about texas despite umpteen hours driving through it. except it has nice speed limits. you go 70 on the freeways, and you go 70 on little farm roads. everyone goes 70, all the time. nice. and i absolutely detest texas mud. yesterday, when i had to take a little detour because of a "major accident," according to the sheriff's deputy, i was following a car with texas plates that pulled into a driveway, then backed out to turn around. after i did the same and got going down the road again, it felt like the entire car was going to fall apart. shimmying, shaking. if the car had a front axle, i would have been certain it had fallen apart. got out and looked, but saw nothing, so started slowly down the road again. little by little the shimmying smoothed out and i picked up speed. eventually i was doing 70 and everything was fine. the only thing i could figure is that i had picked up some nice red texas mud on part of the front tires when i turned around, and it had dried and was causing the problem. but when my shimmy problem was gone, so was the car i had been following. I WAS IN THE MIDDLE OF TEXAS AND HAD NO CLUE WHAT DIRECTION TO GO TO GET OUT OF TEXAS. fortunately, a nice guy driving a huge combine stopped and opened the door when i climbed onto the thing and told me where to go. today, there were a couple of firsts. number one, i was so engrossed in the fabulous texas scenery that i missed a turn and had to backtrack about 20 miles. the second was when i made an intentional detour and drove north about 10 miles into oklahoma, just so i could say i had been to oklahoma. noticed on the map that there's a durant, oklahoma, and i almost went there to see what marketing plans they had for kevin durant of the sonics when he becomes an oklahomaniac. also stopped in paris, texas, but the hilton girl wasn't there, and the guy putting out flags around the town square for the fourth of july didn't know if she had ever been there. i just finished spending a day and a half driving across texas, and i must admit i'm still looking for a reason for its existence.
tomorrow, texarkana to memphis, where i'll pick up olivia. it's about 5 p.m. texas time, and i just got off the phone with her. she's in the airport in hawaii getting ready to fly to seattle, where she'll have a layover of about 12 hours before flying to memphis. will be good to see her. miss her. miss a lot of folks. hope you're all well. don't worry about me -- i'm getting used to talking to myself. and i've been asking lots of questions of the folks behind the counter in the hotel lobby today so i can get used to talking again. good night olivia, good night ray. good night, texas, wherever you are...