My hair is ridiculous

After a couple days on the beach, a boat ride, several long drives and a nervy encounter with a Sheriff's deputy, my hair - unruly at the best of times - is now absolutely ridiculous. The masses of individual curls have formed a number of collectives to give the whole a more chunky, yet unified, hair society. I'm not sure whether to label it a syndicalist movement or anarcho-collectivism or what, but watching the revolution unfold has been fascinating nonetheless. There's blonde now, too! My hair has been on a darkening trajectory for years now, and while I was kind of hoping it would hit black before it all went gray, so as to have given me the full range of colors (I was born a redhead, it turned blonde, etc), I'll take random bits of blonde, too I guess. Multicultural societies are so much more interesting, aren't they?

Anyway, the boat ride was all kinds of fun. I guess. I like boats and I like birds and so a bird watching boat tour sounded just about perfect, right? The thing is, both bird watching and boat riding aren't things that lend themselves to a ton of words. I mean, what do you do on a boat? Ya stand there and look at things. It's windy. Everything smells fantastic, but really? You're still just standing there looking at things. I also realize that I can't maturely discuss birds, either. So let's just surmise the tour this way: We got on a boat! And there were waves! And there was a lot of wind and I got a little sunburned and we saw Whooping Cranes and a Peregrine Falcon and Egrets and Herons! And then we saw dolphins!!!!!!!!

Ok. Here's a warning to you: when entering the tiny Texas 'ville of Skidmore, you will notice the speed limit decreases to 45. This is cool, you'll probably slow down anyway. The problem is that shortly thereafter you'll notice the presence of a Dairy Queen and your brain will cease nearly all functions that don't directly pertain to getting ice cream into your mouth. Unfortunately, this meltdown coincides with the passing of a giant blinking sign that says, "SCHOOL ZONE: SLOW THE FUCK DOWN, ASSHOLE. WHAT, YOU WANNA MURDER CHILDREN?" At least, that's what I think it says. I didn't see it, obviously. I did, however, see the cop sitting alongside the road, and checked my speedometer to find I was traveling at 42. "Heyyy, that's under the speed limit! I'm practically Texan!" So when said cop pulled out a moment later with his lights flashing I knew it wasn't for me, so I kept on going for the Dairy Queen, found myself a parking spot and was about to step out of the car when I realized that I'd been blocked in. Shit.

After a somewhat confusing exchange - "I was going 42." "Actually, I clocked you a 38." ".....Wait, what?" - the whole school zone (30mph) thing was explained. Then the deputy proceeded to scare the shit out of me by having me get out of the car and ask me about 800 questions. When I told him I was in Texas visiting an army buddy, he brightened, but then seemed extra suspicious. "You look..... really young to have been in the army." So that led to 800 more questions. My life story later and dispatch finally confirming - over a loudspeaker that the entire town could hear, I'd like to add - that my car was really mine, I wasn't a serial killer, and it was pretty unlikely I'd smuggled a few kilos of coke or a guy named Jorge in my cooler, he let me go with a warning. Then he gave me directions to Austin that avoided the "clusterfuck" that is San Antonio traffic. Awwww, whataniceguy. (Really, he was pretty cool. I dunno why I get all nervous around the police when drill sergeants don't even bother me.)

The rest of the drive to Austin, though, sucked and we didn't get a hotel room until around 10pm. Too tired and frustrated to deal with heading into downtown, we went to the neighboring hotel bar and I sucked down whiskey sours while eavesdropping on the pilots and flight crew members who were also there drinking. Today, Tony is coming down for a doctor's appointment, and afterwards I hope to buy him things and get him to drive us around. Tonight is the New Model Army show, which I'm pretty damn excited about. In the meantime I'm sitting in my hotel room watching the humidity/smog grow into what I can only hope will be a ferocious thunderstorm.