Texas

Some of these road trips are truly legendary, and this happens to be one. How can I possibly express in words the feelings and memories of a beautiful place and time so powerfully ingrained in my mind?

This adventure started at the very end of the summer before I started my fourth year of college. I drove from my home town in Iowa to Wichita, Kansas to pick up Roxanne. We left Towanda, Kansas a day or two after I arrived, and we headed south. We drove through Dallas during the day, and were thrilled by the beautiful architecture of downtown Dallas while driving excessively fast on an elevated interstate that circled the city. We kept heading south, eventually turning onto 2-lane state highways for the rest of the journey to College Station. We arrived at Bryan / College Station around 11:00pm or midnight. After having some initial trouble finding Roxanne's mother's house, we finally made it there and greeted her mother and stepfather. Roxanne's mother was very hospitable to Roxanne and I, and she gave us some food when we arrived.

It was late and everyone was tired, so we prepared sleeping arrangements. The house was very small, so by some fluke of luck Roxanne and I ended up sleeping in the same room. Though there were no extra beds, we had a couple of air mattresses and sleeping bags. I remember initially setting our mattresses a few feet apart, then after Roxanne's parents were in bed, we scooted them together so that we could be close.

The next morning everybody woke up, got cleaned up and ready to go, and Roxanne's mother cooked us breakfast. Sometime around noon, we were all ready to go. Since Roxanne and I planned to go back home several days before her parents, we drove two separate cars. Roxanne and I climbed in the Shadow and her parents got into their Ford Taurus.

On the way south, we stopped in Houston to visit Roxanne's sister and evil brother in law. We went to an emotional church service at a gigantic Baptist church in Houston, and then we ate dinner at an expensive middle-eastern restaurant. Roxanne was extremely unhappy at being forced to associate with her sister's husband, so we got the hell out of there and kept going south. Several hours later, arriving at Corpus Christi in the late evening, we got some food at a grocery store before checking into the condo on the beach.

We remained at that splendid resort, 50 feet away from the Gulf of Mexico, for several days. Much of my time was spent working on Roxanne's mother's car. She had been experiencing problems with shady mechanics who overcharged her and didn't fix the problem, and she was very much in need of reliable transportation. So I told Roxanne that I could help, and I brought all of my tools along on the road trip. I scored supplies at a local parts store, with which I became very familiar, and set out to get this Ford Taurus running right. Over a couple of days I did a few small things, along with setting the timing correctly (it was way off), and replacing the starter motor. Roxanne's mother was very grateful, as the car was running better than it had before, and it didn't cause her any more problems.

When I wasn't getting greasy working on the car, I was having fun. The seawater in the Gulf of Mexico was extremely warm, even in the middle of the night; it felt like a salty hot tub. Roxanne and I swam several times a day, and I ran a couple of miles along the beach early every morning. We collected shells, went shopping, and ate like kings at fancy seafood restaurants, and with Roxanne's mother's wonderful home-cooked meals. Roxanne and I had fun driving around the city at night. The road to Padre Island was breathtaking at night: it was lined with neat rows of lights like a runway, with only the empty space of the sea on either side. On one of the last days that we stayed at Corpus Christi, Roxanne and I rented a jet ski for half an hour. We had a fun and crazy time taking turns driving that thing. Several times we nearly flew off the craft as it hit big waves in the choppy ocean. When Roxanne was driving, she had the machine screaming above the water for several seconds at a time, skipping along the surface of the ocean.

We were reluctant to leave Corpus Christi at the end of our stay, but we had to head back home to get ready for school. Roxanne's parents were planning on spending another day or two there, so we bid them farewell and drove north, towards home. We stopped in Houston once again, and eventually made it through insane traffic to the Houston Space Center. Roxanne and I spent several hours there; we took a tour, checked out some big buildings, and watched the progress of a shuttle mission. I still have the space center ticket.

Afterwards, we planned to eat some delicious lasagna that Roxanne and her mother had prepared the previous day. Unfortunately, it was in an ice-filled cooler, and the zip-lock bag leaked, which waterlogged and thus destroyed the lasagna. Saddened by this unfortunate event, we found food elsewhere and continued on.

Arriving back in Towanda, Kansas, I stayed with Roxanne for a day and helped her pack her stuff for school. We loaded up her car and took off together to Iowa, driving our own cars. We raced back to school, flying past each other, blowing by 100mph on wide open stretches of road in Missouri. Roxanne drove like a woman possessed in KC; I had trouble just keeping up with her. Hours later we arrived at school, where Roxanne was staying to unpack her belongings before driving to Chicago for a conference. I, however, was headed back to my hometown to load my stuff from my parent's house. So we parted ways at the intersection of interstates, waved goodbye to each other, and I cruised on home.

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