Day 11: Austin, TX to Lubbock, TX

Just a driving day today. We didn't do anything in Austin. I know we will get chastised for that, but there are some destinations that we just don't have time to explore. We also were staying a good 20 miles or so outside of the center, and were eager to get going on today's leg.

Thankfully we were staying on the road we would be taking so hopped on and off we went. The drive today was quite long but really enjoyable. Rte 183 is a nice road as it has a 70mph speed limit, even when just one lane each way, and occasionally slows down to 30 to go through towns. This is a nice change from the major highways that we have spent hours on at constant speed. Having these breaks keeps one interested and it's nice to see the small towns. I want to get a sound clip of a needle being scratched across a record to play as people do stop and stare when two bright Elises roll through.

From 2007 USA Elises

Rural Texas is definitely big American truck country. Even though Jared's Elise in this picture is a little ahead of the truck it still looks ludicrously proportioned:

From 2007 USA Elises

Further along the trip the terrain opened out a little and some of the hills had a nice reddish tone to them:

From 2007 USA Elises

There is also a huge wind farm up that way consisting of what seemed at least a hundred wind turbines:

From 2007 USA Elises

We ended up in Lubbock, which is in the middle of farming country. The locals we met were very friendly, but we knew we were not spoiled for choice culturally when the response to "Are there any nice restaurants around?" was answered with "There is a Red Lobster up the road". I have to say that in over 3500 miles and over a dozen states, everyone we have met has been incredibly friendly, which is a major factor in enjoying the country the way we are.

We have two days to get to Vegas, and quite a long way to drive. Tomorrow's destination is Santa Fe, but we may head to Albuquerque as originally planned as this will make the next day shorter by an hour. Indeed we may go past there even and try and get as far as possible, as we have to get to Vegas by early evening on the 18th.

Day 10: San Antonio, TX to Austin, TX

Today we decided to head back down to San Antonio before the much awaited drive up through the Texas hills. On the way I finally got a new Compact Flash reader at Best Buy. Just for good measure we tested the CF card from the ChaseCam in a machine at the store. Thankfully it was ok, and it was an opportunity to use Windows Vista for the first time. It seemed quite nice but it crashed within 5 minutes. We popped the card eventually and left with a load of fatal error message boxes on the screen. All we tried to do was look at a clip off the card. Unimpressive.

Finally we saw a ludicrously large item by the side of the road. Not quite "World's Largest Something-or-other", but it's a start:

From 2007 USA Elises

We visited the Riverwalk area of San Antonio. It's astonishingly pretty and incredibly relaxing. One forgets that one is in the middle of Texas when walking by the side of the water there. It had an almost European feel to it.

From 2007 USA Elises

From 2007 USA Elises

As usual there are more pictures than I link here in the gallery. The "2007 USA Elises" links under each picture will also link to the gallery.

Adjacent to the Riverwalk is a little gallery of shops. I picked up this Peruvian woolen rug thing that will look great at home on the wall. The shop staff were very proud that their merchandise was all authentic from Central and South American craftsmen. This was good of course, but the items are not cheap and I expect $200 is quite a lot for some of the places where these (very skilled) people are living, so I quipped that of course 90% of the price will go to the original artist. They insisted that they maintain a close relationship with them and they do indeed receive a healthy cut.

From 2007 USA Elises

Leaving San Antonio we headed north west into the nice hill country. Weather was perfect; warm and sunny with a breeze, but not too hot. This was the first moment in the whole trip that I felt like we were closing in on the west coast. The hills reminded me a lot of some areas in California.

From 2007 USA Elises

At Fredericksburg we spotted another Elise on the road, but otherwise it was a town that didn't seem to have much worth stopping for. We had been advised to stop there but kept going as the only building of note was "Whittington's Jerky Store (Since 1963)". A bit further up the road a small sign indicated that we had entered a little town called "Hye". I was hoping that on the other side was another sign saying "Bye", but sadly there was none. Further along we came across this metal cow thing. Very cool looking, and it was solar powered too. One day I will find out what it does at night. Hopefully it has laser eyes and breathes fire to some techno moosic.

From 2007 USA Elises

We were told to visit a twisty road called 'The Devil's Backbone', but he must be a spineless fellow to be honest given the road. Not really what we were expecting, although we suspect that perhaps we missed the main bit. Anyway, at that point we had driven enough off our main path and just gave up and rejoined the road to Austin.

After some frustrating hotel hunting we eventually found accommodation and went out for some (surprise) steak dinner with my friend Mike and his family.

From 2007 USA Elises

Automapic.com update

In the last couple of days the site has had problems adding or deleting markers and other lockups, like when I upload GPS data. I will work on this tonight (promise), but only after some Texas BBQ food...

*update* I am homing in on the problem. Hopefully fixed later today.

In car cam update

I bought a new Compact Flash reader today, and I now have access to all the in car video I have taken. Hooray! Hurroo also though. It turns out the card hasn't been able to keep up with the data being sent to it, and all the clips have occasional blips in them as the data stream gets reset.

According to the ChaseCam forum I can:

1. Use a lower quality video setting.. or a lower screen resolution on the PDR.
2. Use a faster Compact Flash Card...or a smaller Compact Flash Card.
3. Make sure your card is freshly formatted before use.

Seeing as the card came in a ChaseCam pack, I would expect to be able to use it so I don't think 2) should apply. I will try formatting but I have a hunch that I need to reduce to quality to get rid of the errors.

Day 9: Houston, TX to San Antonio, TX

This morning I posted a request on EliseTalk asking for some things to do in Texas. Lo and behold someone responded saying that there was a LOST (Lotus Owners of South Texas) meet about 10 minutes away in 2 hours time! We got our stuff together and headed over. We knew we were on the right track when a black Elise appeared behind us, and arrived in a three car convoy.

LOST are a wonderful bunch of people and welcomed a couple of outsiders warmly (I suppose that made Jared and I The Others). There were a good dozen people there driving mainly Elises, with a Seven and a couple of Esprits too.

From 2007 USA Elises

They had their meeting and we convoyed over to a British pub for lunch. The drive was quite fun. Most of the time I was following the V8 Esprit which sounded phenomenal. I captured a ChaseCam video of it, but am still scuppered by the faulty CF reader so how it turned out will be a mystery until I get a new one. I am praying that the card itself hasn't gone bad as I have taken a lot of video so far that remains stranded on it.

The food was good and the company even better: "Everybody say warranty"

From 2007 USA Elises

As we were leaving someone noticed that Jared had a sizable piece of metal sticking out of his rear left tyre. We had to make a stop at a repair shop and after the usual lecturing on how to correctly jack up the Elise they removed the offending item. Thankfully it hadn't punctured the tyre and we were soon on our way.

The LOST crew had given us some good tips on how best to cross Texas, including one suggestion that we should 'drive to Houston airport and catch a flight to New Mexico'. Reassuring stuff indeed for the days ahead, but we also managed to collect some terrestrial tips and updated the route once more. Today's plan was shortened to a relatively short drive to San Antonio where we would stay tonight.

From 2007 USA Elises

The weather was cooler today; a welcome change from the hot and muggy last few days. Storms were threatening in Houston but towards San Antonio it was really pleasant. We arrived in the city in the tourist section which is a really nice area. It's refreshing to see a US city geared towards pedestrians. We visited the Alamo:

From 2007 USA Elises

It reminded me of the joke the late, great Brian Glover told in An American Werewolf in London:
There was this aeroplane over the Atlantic on its way to New York, and it was full of men from the United Nations. So halfway over the ocean the engines run low on petrol, so they have to lighten the plane. So they heave out all the baggage, but it's still too heavy. So they chuck out all the seats, but it's still too heavy. Finally, this Frog, he steps up, shouts "Vive la France", and leaps out. Then an Englishman, he steps up, shouts "God save the Queen", and he leaps out. But the plane is still too heavy. So the Yank delegate, from Texas, he steps up, shouts: "Remember the Alamo", and chucks out the Mexican.

Hotels in the city were pretty expensive apparently due to a boxing fight, so we traveled north for a while past the airport and found a really nice, quiet place for a more reasonable price. As we were arriving at the hotel we finally saw our first other Elise driving around. It only took almost 3000 miles, 9 days and 13 states!

We couldn't pass on a good old Texan meal. I almost made it through an enormous chicken fried steak and some nice large margaritas (I made it through the drinks, just not quite the food).

From 2007 USA Elises

More Texas to come tomorrow...

Day 8: New Orleans, LA to Houston, TX

New Orleans by day and New Orleans by night are so different they are, well, night and day. The older one gets the more enjoyable the days are over the nights., at least for me There is always something going on but we really struck gold as the New Orleans French Quarter Festival started on Friday. Music and food all over the place.

From 2007 USA Elises

From 2007 USA Elises

Here is a little video of a jazz band playing.

We milled around there for a couple of hours, eating different dishes and listening to some great live music. One thing is for sure: the cities following New Orleans are going to have to do pretty well to match that. I actually experienced the first bit of sadness leaving New Orleans as we were leaving when a great event was starting. Also I had been there less than a year ago for the wedding of some good friends of mine and a wave of nostalgia for that great time swept over me.

But...nothing gets you over the last like the next, and we headed onto Houston. The drive there was made to feel longer than it actually was due to another thunderstorm but more so by the awful road between the two cities (I10). Not much happened during the drive. After entering Texas I was expecting to see more adventurous food, but was still a little aghast to see a big sign advertising a "Human Buffet". After some scrutiny I realised the M was just a really poorly crafted N.

Regarding the itinerary, we have decided to not go to Dallas. We played with the idea of taking the long trek through south Texas to El Paso, but after gathering a number of opinions we will do one day in San Antonio, then take the hill roads to Austin, and then go north west through Texas, staying in somewhere like Abilene or Lubbock, and then onto Santa Fe.

Some people have been asking where the in-car footage is. I have taken quite a bit of it, but the compact flash reader I bought in Panama City has stopped working already, so it is all stuck on the card still. I am not taking any more for fear of overwriting the earlier clips. As soon as I get a new way of retrieving the clips I will put some up.

From a technological struggle to a triumph: I have started using my phone to record little voice memos to myself when on the road as reminders when writing the blog. They are extremely handy, especially given my awful memory. Since learning this Jared suggested I do one day's blog as a podcast. It's an interesting thought, and if I can stay eloquent and interesting for sufficient time I may do one. Every voice memo I have recorded so far starts with "also..." which is really starting to annoy me, so I would have to fix that first :)

Day 7: Panama City, FL to New Orleans, LA

..and then there were two.

Hot news of the day: Cory has left to go house hunting with his wife in Ohio. We wish him all the best with it, and understand that the timing has been bad for this trip with him and the whole house situation.

This has left myself and Jared to fly the Lotus flag for the rest of the tour. We had a sit down and thought about the trip, and decided it was a good juncture to see how we could improve things. We decided that we are doing too much city-to-city driving without enough local culture, so from now on we are selecting some things to visit between destinations.

Putting this plan into action, we decided to take the coastal road from Panama City to Pensacola. It seemed like the area was being aggressively built up and was a hot new area, but later when speaking to a couple in New Orleans I learned that it sustained considerable hurricane damage and is being rebuilt, although I think the truth is a combination of the two.

On the outskirts of Panama City we visited a diving museum. That sounds boring but it was a great little place. Outside the building was an array of small submarines.

Inside we were greeted by a man called Doug. If one was asked to imagine the archetypal nautical enthusiast then he would be the result; sailor's cap and white beard. Brilliant. UK readers would have immediately thought of Uncle Albert, although the beard could have been bushier.

Without any ceremony or introduction he launched into his lecture, declaring "The air on land is so-and-so inches of mercury and for every 100 feet one descends in water the pressure..." and continued for a few minutes on this theme. Upon finishing we introduced ourselves and he then then took us through the museum, playing DVDs and explaining the items. He was a really nice fellow and the museum was precisely the kind of diamond we were hoping to discover in the rough off the major roads.

After traversing eight states in the first two days we had been in Florida for five, and it was a little refreshing to hit new state borders: Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana.

One charming thing about the south is how people introduce themselves. We met a family at a petrol stop and the wife came over, shook my hand and said something like "Hi I am Lou-Anne Henderson from Mobile, Alabama". More information than I am used to in an introduction but I appreciate the openness. In hindsight my response of "hello" appears to be a little insufficient but never mind.

A more confusing question we experienced was 'what's on the dash?'. My answer of 'not too much, a little dust and a parking stub from yesterday' was met with a bemused look. I then found out the man was trying to determine what the largest number on the speedometer was.

We arrived in New Orleans and met up with my friend John and his friend Larry, had a nice fish dinner and patrolled the French Quarter for a while, catching some good live music and having a laugh.


I finally got the ChaseCam going today. It's a fabulous product but thankfully I did some tests clips and realised I do far too much 'steering-wheel guitar' and moved the camera location from the back window to in front of the rear view mirror. I took a fair amount of footage and will get some clips online once I decide the best place for them. I think Picasa can host video.