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Long story short: I canceled an event in Houston on the Monday following Hurricane Ike’s tragic path through east Texas. I could postpone my flight and arrive on Tuesday, but any other changes to my schedule would cost me at least $600. So I went. I landed and immediately drove to Austin, and then on to San Antonio.
Chicago
I arrived in Chicago on a Monday morning. It wasn’t particularly painful to leave Charlottesville this time. I had time to clean my apartment over the weekend, so I did not have the sinking feeling of knowing I would be greeted with a chore on my return. But it had been a tumultuous week leading up to the trip, and I needed the kind of distraction travel uniquely forces on someone. Between New Orleans and this trip, I’d snuck away to Los Angeles to spend the weekend with someone–for a second time in two months, actually. (Neither trip is documented here.) At the end of the trip, I initiated some kind of discussion of whether or not we were dating, and he said it wasn’t something he would consider, and despite all we’d gone out to see and do that weekend–from horse racing to gallery openings at the Brewery, the world’s largest colony of artists–it cheapened the experience for me a bit. I’d seen it coming. So going into this trip, I had a fresh start for, essentially, everything. Everything except, of course, my job.
I just wrote out this whole thing and WordPress deleted it. Curses! WordPress, please give me back an hour of my life, or at least let me be as witty as I think I was the first time I wrote those.
The route: Fly to Houston, drive to San Antonio for a night, come back, fly to Atlanta, drive to Birmingham for a night, come back.
I took an overnight trip to Houston in mid-December for a work event.
Upon arrival, I checked in with my rental car company and waited for my per-policy economy car to be pulled up. Suddenly, an agent drove up in a shiny black Tahoe. He got out and walked toward me, and I said, “How much would it take for me to drive away in that?” Five dollars. Done and done. I felt really badly, though. Everything about Houston seems to live up to a bad stereotype in some way, and I was doing it, too.
I don’t particularly care for Houston. It’s inevitable that I would say that after living for any period of time in Austin, and adding Dallas to my repertoire again doesn’t help. When I read “Dressin’ Texan,” Patricia Marx’s March 19 New Yorker feature article, I thought, “Yes! Yes, so true!” Houstonians seem awfully concerned with what Dallas does. On Houston, a Dallas socialite might remark, “What about Houston?” Any city that’s known for political and economic scandal should probably lay lower than Houston does. In a way, I think that Houstonians account for the stereotypical Texas identity, but the rest of Texas almost seems to wish Houston would pipe down.
It became apparent early in my tenure at U.Va. that I should plan a trip to Texas. My job was originally conceived as being one in which I would be based in my region and travel from there, reporting back to the Office of Engagement at U.Va. I was eager (!) to get out of independent film / festival development and unable to find more work in reality television casting in Austin. A Real Job where I could stay in Texas and travel extensively would also be a Dream Job. When I was extended an offer, however, I was to be relocated to Charlottesville, Va. Given that I’d just moved halfway across the country to be somewhere other than Charlottesville and had found the friends and social/cultural experience I wanted, I was dismayed (!). But I was also really excited. And let’s be honest– Texas was in my region, and Austin was centrally located between Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio. I would be back. And I would have the best job, ever.
