On Texas and San Antonio

A few details I forgot to mention yesterday. We left Houston and drove, without air conditioning, for something in the neighbourhood of 300 km. By the time we got to San Antonio keeping my eyes open was becoming difficult. Driving is mentally draining, not physical work in the slightest, but staying alert for three hours at time is very exhausting, sort of like trying to sit through a baseball game.

We arrived at a hotel that Lesley decided was (from outside appearance) in acceptable condition (it turned out the inside was in pretty bad shape). I checked in, at which time the woman at the front desk asked for ID, I showed her my driver's licence and remarked that she had probably never seen one of those (Ontario driver's licence) before. She looked at it a while and said:

• "Oh you're from Cah-ni-dahh"
• "Yeah"
• "There was a guy from Cah-ni-dahh here just a few days ago, but he didn't have this on his licence. [rubbing the top part of the licence, as if to erase, where it reads "Ontario"] His started with a.. uhm, M I think."
• "Manitoba?"
• "Yeah that was it, Man-it-ob-ah."

Canadians rest easy, the Americans have heard of us!

The following morning we went out for... brunch, yeah that's it brunch. I declared that as I was in Texas I wanted Mexican food, we can have proper Asian food anytime but if I'm within spitting distance of the border I want Mexican at least once.

It turns out that San Antonio was built along a river, called, if I am reading the map correctly, the San Antonio river, there are a number of picturesque shops and restaurants along the side. If you are thinking tourist trap, well yes it was, but it was pretty, and if you were driving from Houston to say, El Paso, stopping for a walk along the San Antonio river would make for a pleasant change.

After the San Antonio river we went to the Alamo. Now I've been told that the Alamo has special meaning to Texans that the rest of us cannot understand and I will concede that is probably very true. First it was painfully obvious that the Mexicans were the evil invaders who were being held at bay by the brave and gallant soldiers, who are to a man, heroes. Second it was made painfully apparent that I was walking on a shrine, as if I was prancing up and down the Church of the Nativity or perhaps the site where Moses encountered a burning bush. Everyone talked in a hushed whisper, besides Lesley and myself no one was under the age of 60. Clear instructions were posted that we were not to touch the walls, evidently the walls are sacred.

Frankly the entire experience was creepy. Maybe because Canada never fought for its independence, maybe because Canada is a nation of compromise where we use words rather than guns to establish a national direction, but this borderline nationalism that I see in the United States, and veneration of military, it is of great concern. How can America lay claim to any moral authority, when its citizens have understanding of only the sword? Yes I am sure the guys who fought at the Alamo were brave, perhaps even gallant, but this deification, its not healthy.

After the Alamo we started driving North to Dallas, stopping on route at a massive outlet mall. I bought some fudge then took a nap, Lesley was overwhelmed and gave up after just a few stores. While I was buying the fudge the woman in the store complained about the cold (the temperature had dropped to about 10 degrees). I told her:

• This is not cold, where I'm from is cold.
• This is cold.
• No, cold means snow and sleet and freezing rain, this is not cold.
• Where are you from?
• Canada.
• I could never live there, I just could not survive that.

The legend of The Great White North continues!

As we drove it started to rain, rain turned to snow that melted on contact that turned to snow that accumulated. We arrived in Dallas at around 8:30.

Lesley decided she wanted fresh fruit, I decided that I could use something that wasn't processed and didn't have corn syrup added for sweetness. After extensive searching, I found a banana, Lesley found a cup of soup and and ice-cream sandwich. I miss Toronto, I miss fresh fruits and vegetables. (Heck even preserved fruits and vegetables.) When we asked the guy at the front desk where we could get some fresh fruit he pointed us to a Sam's Club. I miss the corner fruit stores that dot so many residential areas of Toronto. Texas is a state where everything is a suburb, there is almost no downtown and apparently no fresh fruit either. To any Texans who might read this, I'm sorry, but I've already been to Los Angeles and your cities bare a striking resemblance to a city everyone already agrees is totally dysfunctional.

The weather here is an awful lot better than in Canada, but I am still glad I live in a place where, cold means, real cold, not 10 degrees above zero, maybe its the cold makes us realise that the past belongs in the past and should not be a guide to the future.