This internet connection is slooooooooow...

I’m in Dallas tonight (at a hotel with sloth-speed internet access), which always seems to be our first stopover on any road trip out of Texas. All roads lead through Dallas… actually, that’s not true – last year, we drove to San Diego by way of El Paso. There is pretty much absolutely nothing between Austin and El Paso, except for a large quantity of windmills. Driving to El Paso gives you an exhausting picture of just how big this state is. There is an inevitable point where you scan the dusty horizon, searching for some sort of civilization – or at least a “Welcome to New Mexico” sign – and, upon realizing there is nothing there except the same landscape you’ve grown painfully accustomed to over the last six hours, exclaim, “how is it possible that we’re STILL in Texas??”

But driving to the north through Dallas gives you a populated stopping point to break up the monotony of a passage through Texas. So we’ve set up camp for the night (in a manner of speaking… I haven’t literally been camping since I was a kid…). We met dad for dinner at the Antares restaurant, which is one of my favorite places to eat in Dallas. It’s a revolving restaurant in a tower, so every hour you have a complete view of the city. You can eat dinner and fight vertigo at the same time. I tried to take a few pictures, but most of them came out a little blurry – I guess even the slight movement of the rotation made it difficult to hold the camera steady. But I did get a cool shot of the reflection of our dinner table candle in the window.

Nothing too interesting to talk about otherwise – except that Rick invented a new word on the drive up from Austin. We were stuck behind a frustratingly slow truck towing a trailer in the left lane, and Rick finally passed him on the right (since the driver was obviously not interested in following that “slow vehicles keep right” rule…). It’s fine if you need to drive more slowly than everyone else, but it seems like the polite thing to do is to allow other drivers to pass. Once we were finally clear of the truck, we had the following exchange:

Rick: I understand if you have to drive slower because you’re towing something. I have no quabble with that.

Me: Did you just say “quabble”??

Apparently “quabble” is one of those expressions formed when your brain is mulling over two or three different words and your mouth can’t decide which one to choose. In this case, I’d say a mix of “quarrel,” “problem,” and “trouble.” Quabble. Seems like a reasonable linguistic creation… maybe…

So tomorrow we head toward Albuquerque, hopefully after fueling up on a plentiful amount of Starbucks coffee. Because if I don’t get my morning dose of caffeine, I’ll definitely have a quabble…