I woke up at the parking area on Interstate 10 around 7:00 am. I had slept for approximately 5 hours, but felt awake. It was still a very long drive home. There's a guilty feeling about all this driving I had to do: I wish I could just get out and do something, other than to just drive and think. Right out of the parking area, and a cop pulls over a truck which just passes me. At first I thought he was going to pull me over for having my headlights off, but there was plenty of light.
First I needed to make a stop and call work telling them I would not be coming in today. So at the first opportunity in the town of Ozona, I left a message for my boss. It's not the first time I have gone on a road trip and was not able to make it back on time.
Since I had the rest of the day to cover about 400 miles to Houston, I decided to take the scenic route towards Austin and get off I-10 towards San Antonio. On the way to Austin, I stopped at a library in the town of Llano to use the internet for about an hour. In Austin, I ate at a Jack-In-The-Box on 290 heading out of Austin towards Houston. It was about 4:30 pm at the time.
Austin is a busy, congested city with the Texas government body, the University of Texas, and the Silicon-Valley-like businesses giving the city life. At one time I would love to have lived here, but definitely not anymore. Crowded societies are okay to visit and explore, but definitely not where I would want to live. This is one part of me which has definitely changed in the past decade or so.
I drove in to Houston after dark, and had a tailgator on I-45 for miles even though I was driving in the right lane and he had many opportunities to pass. He eventually decided to use the next lane as I was about to take my exit. Instead of taking my exit, I tailgated him until the next exit. Probably wasn't right of me and it didn't make me feel any better since that incident probablly didn't teach him any common sense. It was an end to a long trip of driving.
As always, I seem to understand a little bit more about myself after each trip because of all the time in solitude to comtemplate about life.