CONTENTS

I periodically woke up at some of the stops along the way - small towns with a small convenience store pulling double duty as a bus stop.  It's stunning how fast civilization unravels in Texas.  Once you leave city limits, your imagination is left to go wild in the land of ugly cows, pickups, small homesteads, barren ranges, and mind-blowingly small towns where Walmart and the local pump and go serve up all the action necessary.

I didn't have my camera ready through most of the bus ride, but I did happen to catch the greatest sign I've seen in Texas while plowing through Chappell Hill.  On the sign of the lonely outpost of a small gas station, the black letters stood out against the weather beaten white backdrop.  The message was indisputable, the sign read:

I nearly laughed out loud, as we passed the station, there were non-ironic beat up pickups with gun racks parked outside.  America has become such a ripe stomping ground for satire its almost not even fun anymore.  This country has spent the last week and a half dissecting the events of our Vice President missing a quail and shooting a lawyer, while our armies fight two wars, and Iran is on the verge of acquiring a nookyuler bomb.  Yet, we've still got blind support for our current administration.  I love this country and never want to leave.

So I grabbed my camera and put my headphones back on.  Forty-five minutes from Houston and I was listening to Pavement's 'Nothing Ever Happens' and I started to record some videos as I passed small, non-descript towns with gas stations, Walmarts, and evenly spaced tracts of open land.  The song seemed way too fitting for the small town lives I was riding past.  There's a quiet desperate sadness inherent in suburbs that I've always found disconcerting.  In Texas, the small towns carry a complacency and dullness that I can't comprehend.  It's said often in Austin, but being surrounded by Texas sure is a downer.

Where Nothing Ever Happens...

Click on the picture above to see the video I recorded as I rode through East Texas.