Seb just had his first Texas tea here at a Starbucks in El Paso. I'm pretty sure Jed Clampett didn't drink Green Tea either before or after shootin' for some food. We came into this overpriced coffee emporium to avail ourselves of free wifi - scorning, in an unhealthy fit of class consciousness, the same service offered at McDonalds across the street - in our quest for a bed/floor/carport for the night (so much for class consciousness). As it happens, Sarah Serendipity, sitting at a table behind us, started up a conversation with this rugged, handsome, modest, yet surprisingly sensitive father of three, and it turns out that, in a burst of common sense and prudent self-interest, she'd just taken herself "off the list" for Warmshowers.org. I'm not saying it's easy for me to appear desperate and helpless, but I will say that, for some of us, it comes a little more naturally than for others. In exchange for our passports, the rights to Seb's first three children's books. and, of course, lifetime mini golf, we have secured floor space in a basement apartment two blocks from the University of Texas at El Paso campus.

The photo at the top of the page is of the mighty Rio Grande River, christened forever more the Rio Gonde. Apparently a dam in Colorado is hoarding all of the water traditionally coursing this way, but it's still a shock to find out that "crossing the Rio Grande" involves a camel, not a boat.

We passed thousands of acres of pecan trees today. Yup, we did. Turns out you harvest pecans the same way you discipline wayward children - grab them by the neck and shake the idiocy, or pecans, out of them. Worked for Seb, although the chiropractor bills are sometimes irksome.

Time to cycle to subterranean levels of hospitality. We'll see if up through the ground comes a bubblin' crude...