The Beauty of West Texas

We are alive and in our hotel room in El Paso, Texas. Don't know how much blogging I can do right now, as I'm in need of dinner, as my body is saying, "It's 9:21 PM, why haven't you fed me dinner yet?! You know I'm used to eating at 7ish PM!"

Waiting on Papa....Johns that is.

So here is some highlights of the road trip between Dallas/Fort Worth and lovely El Paso:

• 40-something degrees, a complete overcast sky, with a misty feel of rain in the air when finally hitting the road out of Dallas/Fort Worth at 10 AM after meeting up with my friend
• 60-something degrees and clear skies at 7 PM arrival in El Paso

Pizza arrived...thank goodness. Pretty sure the delivery boy was on his first day or so, as he was late and didn't know if I needed to sign the credit card receipt...and then was like, "Yeah, sure." Of course he didn't have a pen. So then I was like, "Well let me see if we can find one in here" and he responded "If you don't have one, that's okay, you don't have to sign it." Ummm....okay...

• We stopped in Abilene for a quick visit at the alma mater -- got a private tour of the school's new Welcome Center, by the building's director (a close friend) -- and a bite of lunch at the wonderful Abilene classic -- Betty Roses.
• Once we left Abilene I knew the drive was going to be miserably boring over the next 7 or so hours. I mean let's face it...it's West Texas. The furthest out I-20 I'd ever been before was to Midland, so I didn't really know what to expect from there on out, but I was not setting my expectations too high...HA!
• THERE ARE MOUNTAINS IN WEST TEXAS!!! I couldn't believe it! I was co-piloting by that point, and my friend was like, "Wow, look at the mountians up there in the distance" and I was like, "Nah, it's a mirage" ;)
• About the only "entertaining" points for me the rest of the drive were: the sign that informed us that we were now entering the "Mountain Time Zone"; the multiple Border Patrol trucks camped out in the ditches along the highway (trying to be sneaky, I suppose -- but I feel their bright white trucks in the dead/brown brush weren't too well hidden); the Inspection Check Point that the Eastbound I-10 traffic were forced to go through; the mad dash of about 12 illegal immigrants that darted across the highway a matter of yards in front of our vehicle, causing us to have to swerve suddenly, to narrowly avoid hitting them; and the time the Border Patrol pulled us over and was about to ask for identification, but stopped short when he heard we had Cyndi Lauper playing on the iPod -- at that point he simply said, "Nevermind, no ID needed."
• Okay, so all but two of those last entertaining things happened, but those two were ones we were imagining happening and how much more exciting that would have made the last few hours of the trip!

Okay...time to start getting ready for relaxing in bed, as there is another day of hours of driving ahead of us tomorrow. However, we are debating trying to get up and get gone by possibly 8 or 8:30 AM to get on the road and possibly be in Tucson, AZ in time to catch the Cubs vs. Diamondbacks game at 1 PM. We'll see. Otherwise, we'll just be heading all the way to Phoenix tomorrow and no baseball until Monday morning practices.