It was right about here, in Rio Grande City, that Old Danny Boy
took on a couple of hitchhikers. For the next hundred miles or so Ray, Willie
and ODB were on a “Seven Spanish Angels” marathon. Finally, Ray got off but it
wasn’t long before Merle got on for another hundred miles of “Pancho and Lefty”.
Click on the links to those two songs if you want a sound track for today’s report.
Me, I’ve heard them enough to last a while.
Our route hugged the
Mexican border for 150 miles before heading north through central Texas. In the
border town of Nuevo Laredo the GPS took us on a “short cut” through
neighborhoods that had definitely seen better decades. I tried to get him to
stay on US 83 but no, ODB almost always goes the way his GPS screen indicates.
In fact, this route most likely was the highway years ago. I must admit that the
GPS has taken us to places we would have never seen otherwise. The streets were
narrow and trashed, the homes crumbling but inhabited, and the poverty
overwhelming. I feel so lucky to have my nice clean garage, even if I do share
it with a lime sherbet Vespa scooter. By the way, I kind of miss that lime
sherbet Vespa scooter and we’re just one week into a four-week
trip.
A couple of
observations on Texas driving.
Here in Texas there
is a driving behavior that’s new to me. US 83 is mostly two lanes. It has a
center line and fog lines. The shoulder of the road, the area on the other side
of the fog line, is quite generous, maybe eight feet wide. Here’s what happens.
Slower vehicles, upon being overtaken, pull over onto the shoulder lane to allow
faster drivers to pass. Even in no passing areas, passing still occurs as cars
and even big trucks pull completely onto the shoulder lane while maintaining
highway speed. Some cars split that fog line full-time. Here’s the
rub.
Traffic coming at
you EXPECTS that YOU will pull over into the shoulder lane so they can pass cars
that remain in the regular lane. ODB was quite surprised the first time this
happened. Had he not moved onto the shoulder, the oncoming car that was making a
pass would have hit us. At first, we thought it was an anomaly. Then it happened
again several times. It’s weird. In these parts the shoulder of the road is a
“Plan B” lane.
Furthermore, there
are no cars in Texas. Only trucks – semis or pickups. That’s it. If it’s a
pickup, it’s most likely white and usually has a brush guard mounted on the
front bumper. It’s a Ford, a Chevy, or a Ram. No imports. The smallest pickups
are full size models and they go up from there.
There are more
Border Patrol cars than police cars by far. However, roads are heavily patrolled
by state, county, and local law enforcement. The speed limit on two-lane US 83
is 70 MPH.
Cheapest gas price
yet on the trip? $2.49 in south Texas.
Okay, back to
today’s ride . . .
We’re headed north
now, on US 83. The Border Patrol has a check point set up ahead and all traffic
must go through. On our way in, we pass through an array of electronic video and
camera equipment set up on portable black tripods – very intimidating stuff.
These devices scan license plates and automatically search a data base for tags
reported missing or stolen.
They now have facial
recognition software, so as you drive in, they take your picture and scan a
national DMV database for your identity. It takes only a few seconds for
powerful computers to match your face with your drivers’
license.
When we pull up the
checkpoint the agent looks at ODB’s license, at his computer screen, back at
ODB, and then summons the Officer in Charge.
“Mr. Clooney, please
get off your motorcycle.”
“Mr. Clooney?”
“We know you are
George Clooney, Sir, and you are in BIG trouble for using this fake
ID.”
It takes a while for
ODB to convince the Border Patrol that while he does indeed look very much like
George Clooney, he is, in fact, Old Danny Boy Dreier.
I am NOT making this
up.
HE made this
up while we were riding today. He told me if I didn’t print it he’d fill my tank
with regular gas instead of premium. I HATE regular gas! I told him my journalist integrity was on the
line but I’d go ahead and print it.
An hour before we
arrived in Abilene a bolt of cloud-to-ground lightning flashed followed by a
clap of thunder loud enough to hear over even my racket.
“That’s God,” I
said. “You are now going to pay the fiddler for threatening me with a tank of
regular.”
We stopped while my
unrepentant rider donned his raingear. Before long we were riding under a row of
storm cells. Nothing serious, but enough rain to give me a measure of
satisfaction that Old Danny Boy was reaping his grim rewards.
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