Category: Travel

Got home a bit ago after driving 16 hours from San Antonio. Trip was relatively uneventful and the weather was fairly decent after some early rain in Texas, late rain in Missouri. Clear enough to know when I was at my closest to the Western White House, and performed a little symbolic gesture signifying the level of my respect when I passed.

Trip was educational and enlightening, but will be the last solo cross-country trip I do. Without sharing the driving responsibilities with another, after a while the stress builds up and you can’t relax, even when there’s nothing to stress about. And when unusual events happen, you can overreact.

Tonight, coming over one of the passes in the dark and the rain in Missouri, I rounded a corner to be met by braked cars. I slammed on my brakes and hit my emergency signal, and then spotted the cause of the halt — a sports car was by the side of the road, completely engulfed in flames. No matter how much you see it on TV, in real life the effect of a burning car up close is a lot more of an impact, and a lot less entertaining.

(I imagine the same can be said of war.)

The fire department was there, but far back from the car. There was little they could do without shutting down the highway, and little that could be salvaged in the car. As for the tank exploding, that’s a pretty common myth about cars burning — cars rarely explode, I’ve been told.

However, if there had been police there, I have no doubts that the line of us that formed to inch past the car would not have been allowed when it was in full flame. I could feel the intense heat as we passed — this couldn’t have been the appropriate thing to do. Or maybe it is.

I saw three young men talking to one of the firemen, and am assuming they were from the car and no one was killed. Regardless though, you will think less of me when I say that not long after passing the car, I pulled over myself and for some reason started crying, and couldn’t stop for 30 minutes.

I do not cry that easily, I truly don’t. I think it was the shock of the car and the horror of the moment when I looked in the flames and thought that they might have engulfed people. And I’m tired. And a wuss.

Now, if I were a journalist I would have pulled over, grabbed my cameras and got some great pictures and possibly even sold one or two. But I’m not a journalist; only a writer of words and taker of an occasional picture, glad she’s home, and swearing that she will no long go on these solo cross-country trips.

And that she’s going to buy a fire extinguisher for her car.

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

Today was a day on foot rather than in car, and I’m feeling the difference tonight. However, my mission to San Antonio was a success and I was able to get a photo of the Alamo facade. It’s for a specific use, so I won’t be publishing it here, but I have another photo or two…or three…or so…that I’ll provide for your edification.

San Antonio is a beautiful city. A block from the hotel is La Villita, an old Texas village made into artist shops, and on the other side of it, the Riverwalk. This lovely meandering walk follows the natural course of the San Antonio river as it flows through the city. It exists as a result of an organized effort by the women of San Antonio to preserve the River’s natural boundaries, and also to prevent the River from being converted into a sewer system. Now it’s a wonderous place of color and music and restaurants, not to mention a place for various plays and other events.

Across the street from the hotel is the Hemisfair Park, including the Tower of the Americas, which I’ll visit another day. A couple of blocks from there is the center of San Antonio tourism – the famous Alamo.

The Alamo was packed – people literally everywhere. It would be nice if there was a way to connect disparate pieces of online information rather than have to gather it all together, manually. For instance, I could pick my destination to visit and provide the date, and find a hotel in San Antonio using Hotwire, and then get explicit driving directions from Mapquest. However, a third component would have event information that would then provide me a warning that the weekend I picked also happens to be the weekend before the famous Alamo Bowl, one of the highly popular college Bowl games.

I thought about taking one of the river boat rides, until I saw the line.

Despite the crowds, there’s always a quiet place you can get away to, to relax or to play.

I ended up having lunch at a Mexican food place, sitting at a table by the river. However, other diners preferred different cuisine.

The newspapers in the stands all around the area I walked today were full of the story of the tragedy in Iran. One had headlines that read, “Apocalypse in Iran!”, an accurate term because of the near total devastation of Bam. An odd term to pick, too, considering the religious connotations associated with the term, apocalypse.

My heart goes out to the families of the thousands who were killed, and all those left homeless or hurt. When you read how the town has had a rebirth recently and had been thriving, it’s destruction is that much more bitter. Our history is also left poorer at the devastation of a temple that has lasted through the ages – 2000 years old, and now, totally destroyed. Look at the photos to better understand this loss, and though we say that the cost of human life far exceeds that of a bunch of mud bricks, the loss of history, and heritage can have an impact on the people, long after the tears are dried. Bam may be rebuilt, but it will no longer be Bam.

Heritage. This was never more understandable than when walking about the Alamo here in San Antonio, a modern building by comparison but no less symbolic to a people, and not just people in the US if the visitors were any indication.

(Of course, the story of the Alamo is one of ‘bravery in the face of oppression’, but there is always more to a story then the first one you hear; however I’m too tired tonight and that will have to wait another day.)

I am so glad that the national community, including the US, is helping the people in Iran – but we should have been there ten years ago, helping the people to bolster their homes and hospitals and heritage after the last devastating earthquake.

But that’s a story of boundaries, which will, also, wait another day. Tomorrow I drive home. By the way, during the trip I received news that a publisher has accepted my book proposal. I’m back in business.