Stage 7: Wildwood, TX – Katy, TX – San Antonio, TX

We woke early for a steak and egg breakfast with the grandparents, hoping to get an early start on our trek to San Antonio. The night before, we called India’s aunt, Julie who lives outside of Houston in the suburb of Katy, TX and made plans to meet for lunch at her house. We threw back our coffee, downed our steak and eggs, packed the car, paused for a quick photo (I apologize for the blue-tinted photos that will follow. Our camera is nothing if not sketchy. I guess that's what falling off a car roof onto asphalt at 25mph will do.) with our wonderful hosts, and hit the road.

The drive through Beaumont and Houston to Katy was uneventful, but not too trying. Traffic outside of Houston was fairly calm, as we managed to miss the crush of rush hour.

Houston appears to be one of the few cities that rivals or even exceeds Atlanta’s uncontrolled sprawl. Any city with two perimeter highways is doing something wrong in my book. Anyway, we made it into Katy and caught up with India’s aunt Julie and cousin Tate for a quick wedding picture slideshow and lunch. We talked about the wedding, the honeymoon, and the 8 months that Julie’s parents (India’s grandparents) waited out hurricane Ike in the small house in Katy while they were evacuated from their former home on the Bolivar peninsula, and while they searched for a new place after it became clear that the hurricane had destroyed their old home. I can’t imagine the feeling of having the home that you designed, built and lived in for more than 25 years literally wiped off the map and turned into a mud field. I was also blown away by the amount of damage the hurricane did as far inland as Houston. Julie and Tate’s neighborhood was without power for more than a week after and they lost some major chunks of roof, but everyone came out of the ordeal pretty much unscathed and unhurt. We were certainly counting our blessings that we don’t live anywhere near hurricane country.

After lunch we climbed back into the car and headed back to I-10 towards San Antonio. We rolled into town in the late afternoon, but the sun was still hot and bright, beating down on the broilerpan of the city with white intensity. We arrived at the O’Casey bed and breakfast...

and were greeted by a serious gnome theme in our room. There were gnomes describing all the important features of the room, including the lightswitch,

Bed,

Kitchen,

And toilet.

Without these little hatted helpers to guide me, I would have been completely lost and would have probably tried to sleep in the toilet, flip the bedswitch and urinate on the porch light. Thankfully, we had no such trouble. After a quick change of clothes and check of the clock, we decided that we had better make for downtown and the Alamo before it closed at 5:30, so we hopped on the bikes and made the short trek into downtown San Antonio.

The Alamo itself was pretty inspiring and gave me a little insight into the intense pride that Texans take in their state. It’s hard to imagine what would inspire men from all across the country to come and fight and give their lives for Texan independence from Mexico when they seemed to have no real stake in the fight, but maybe I just don’t know the whole story. But, it was pretty wild to see some of Davy Crockett’s personal effects, his rifle, a beaded vest, letters that he wrote and some other things that showed that he was indeed a real person and not just a legend from Saturday morning cartoons. He was also a Freemason, along with several other prominent Alamo fighters like James Bowie and William Travis.

Who knew? Another layer to the mystery… The conspiracy theories surrounding Freemasonry and the birth of the United States could fill volumes… Oh, and here's India by her favorite tree in Texas, the huge live oak at the Alamo that is so huge that several of its branches have to be held up by steel cables!

After our visit to the Shrine of Texas Liberty, we made for the San Antonio Riverwalk, the super-touristy Disneyland “downtown” surrounded by cheesy themed restaurants, gift shops, and motorized cattleboat gondolas that circle the concrete river loaded down with huge families of tourists. We lingered for a while to watch some ducks diving in the water for their dinner, but quickly tired of the theme-park vibe and thought we’d find somewhere to eat that was a little bit off this beat. We were feeling half-starved and ready for some Mexican food and margaritas, so he headed up to street level from the riverwalk and made our way into the first Mexican restaurant that looked appealing. We found ourselves a seat outside on their balcony that happened to overlook… the Riverwalk! Despite our disappointment at being unable to get away from the outrageous touristy-ness of the city, at least we were up out of the melee on a balcony where we could sit and people-watch while we drank our margs and ate tasty food. The food was good, but not amazing and the margaritas may have been a bit overpriced, but we left with full bellies and no complaints. We found our bikes again and rode home, stopped by a drive-through beer store for a 6-pack of Lone Star tall-boys, and headed for the B&B to make our plan of attack for the next couple of days. All the main protagonists (Plant, Brownie, Fly, and Ol' Surly Burly) nestled neatly into our little room, and we sat down at the desk to polish out the details.

Tomorrow would be our big grind across the remaining central and western portion of the great state of Texas, taking us all the way to the bordertown of El Paso, just a stone’s throw from Mexico. We wrote down precise directions to our camping destination in the Gila national forest, then on the next day through New Mexico to the Carson national forest. Plans made, we turned in under the watchful eye of the gnomes for a good night’s sleep before the next day’s Texas blitz.

Rest Day: Wildwood, TX

We had planned to spend two nights in Texas with India’s grandparents, and the day off from driving was quite welcome after spending at least 5 hours in the car for the last 3 days. Wildwood is a small “resort town” about 40 miles north of Beaumont, right in the middle of The Big Thicket in eastern Texas. Apparently, lots of people who didn’t want to fight in the Civil War came to the Big Thicket to hide out and disappear, and seeing how thick and dense the trees and brush are here, it’s no wonder that people thought of the area as a good place to disappear into. Right in the middle of this natural hideaway lies Wildwood itself, an oddly arranged grid of streets with lots of homes, a golf course, lake, general store, basketball and tennis courts, a baseball field and lots of peace and quiet separated from the rest of Texas by a guarded gatehouse and the vast, unpopulated expanse of the Thicket. Most of the homes are owned by retirees and weekenders who come for the golf and laid back, slow-paced lifestyle, but there are a handful of young families with children who presumably commute to work every day in Beaumont. Fortunately, we weren’t here to shop for houses, only to relax, recharge, plan the next legs of our journey and visit with the Millers.

After a restful sleep, we woke that morning to a beautiful blueberry pancake breakfast with fruit, sausage patties, coffee and juice. Grandpa Miller’s pancakes had quite a reputation, after hearing rave reviews from Dr. Benjamin Jones, no small lover of all things cake. Ben had the singular opportunity to sample the glory of these flapjacks in the days before our wedding when he was staying at India’s family home in Decatur. Somehow he managed to put away a heaping stack of five; my stack of three and India’s meager two paled in comparison. After breakfast we were treated to a brief driving tour of Wildwood, saw the golf course, the horse pastures, some of the homes that the Millers had considered in their search, and made the trip out to the Post Office where all the residents have PO boxes to receive their mail. There seemed to be miles of paved and dirt roads to explore, along with powerline cuts, grassy fields, and four-wheeler trails to explore, so India and I thought a two-wheeled expedition might be in order, especially since neither of us had been on a bike in nearly a week, and we were both starting to feel a little pudgy and soft from all the sitting, driving, eating and lack of exercise.

We saddled up and headed out in search of some four-wheeler trails that a neighbor had informed us of, somewhere off the campground area in the northeast corner of Wildwood. We crossed a narrow, wooden bridge into the slightly wilder, more wooded section of the town, far from the manicured lawns and well-tended greens of the areas around the golf course.

It took us a little while to find the campground, and we were misled once onto a false trail that went nowhere except to a tiny town in the woods populated with little cat houses, and perhaps ten wild or semi-wild cats that scattered when we rolled up. We quickly realized that this tiny singletrack didn’t lead anywhere and turned around, wondering who in the world constructed the little homes for these animals, and why… It was a mystery that remained unsolved. We eventually found the campground, complete with water and electric hookups for RVs, off a disconcertingly empty street. We would discover that there were a lot of these streets in this section of Wildwood, parts of the town that had been laid out and had streets built, but had very few, if any homes. The campground was even emptier, without a single soul around. We scouted the perimeter and found what appeared to be a trail leading off into the Thicket, but which required the fording of a creek of unknown depth and bottom composition with a sizeable tree branch laying across, making any mounted crossing impossible. We looked at the creek, looked at each other, and considered the idea of shouldering our bikes and marching through the boggy creek, through the muddy abyss and across to the brambly four wheeler trail that would lead us… somewhere. We had come ill-prepared for an adventure of this magnitude, with only a single waterbottle each in the flaming Texas sun, no food, and only a single spare tube stuffed in my saddlebag. And who knew what evils might lurk below the water’s surface? Swamp leeches? Snapping turtles? Alligators? Deadly venomous serpents? The thrill of exploration and the call of the wild were strong, but we turned tail and headed back for the safety of the road. Maybe some other time… We turned tail and followed the four-wheeler tracks along the perimiter of some grassy fields, and then back to the road.

We found a couple of hidden stashes of sandy double-track off some dead-end dirt roads, but after we found ourselves in someone’s backwoods backyard with two dogs barking us down, we decided it might be time to make for the lake and cool off with a swim.

We headed back across the bridge to the more civilized part of town, parked our bikes under a little pavilion on the man-made sandy beach on the lake, and made for the water.

It was warm on the surface, but the water below the thermocline was nice and cool, making me wish I had gills or a four-foot snorkel to allow me to stay down longer.

Moist and refreshed, we headed back to the house on Sassafras Lane for showers, lunch, and some discussions over a map. It was time to firm up plans for the second half of our journey through Texas and into the west. To continue my education in Texan heritage, we planned to make an easy drive to San Antonio the next day to see the “Shrine of Texas Liberty,” The Alamo. We would stay the night there in a bed and breakfast and have some restful sleep and showers to steel ourselves for what awaited us on the day following: a 600 mile grind through central and west Texas, all the way to El Paso and on into southern New Mexico, where we would camp at the edge of the Gila national forest, near the small town of Kingston. From there, we would turn north through New Mexico for a shorter and more scenic drive to Taos, a city just shy of the Colorado border where we could camp in the Carson national forest, and which would put us within a half-day drive into the mountains to Crested Butte, where we would spend 3 nights at the Elk Mountain Lodge riding legendary mountain bike trails and exploring the Rocky Mountains. From there it would be another two days northwest to Portland. Honestly, we were both so excited about Crested Butte that it was harder to think much farther ahead than that.

However, our kind hosts were thinking ahead to dinner, and preparations had begun for a Texas-sized steak feast, rounded off with twice-baked potatoes, homemade rolls and a salad topped with grandma Miller’s legendary French dressing and bleu cheese. We sipped cocktails on the patio while the grill heated up, chatted, snacked and prepared our bellies for wonderful food. The dinner was delicious, but someone decided that I should be given and entire steak to tackle by myself. It was quite a challenge, but I was unable to polish off the massive slab of beef, so we saved a chunk to eat with our eggs in the morning for breakfast. After dinner we looked through the Miller/McGuinn family album that went back several generations and relaxed while our food settled. Then we were off to bed before our trek to San Antonio.

Stage 6: New Orleans, LA - Wildwood, TX

India and I awoke remarkably well rested after our night in New Orleans. We had given ourselves plenty of time to get out of town and on the road to Texas in case we ended up making a late night of it, but now we were left with the morning and noontime to kill. Naturally, we woke with a craving for coffee and beignets, so we rousted Burns, cleared a back seat in the car and headed for the French Quarter and Café du Monde. Again, if you’ve been to New Orleans and haven’t been to Café du Monde, you’ve been running with the wrong crowd and have been painfully and sadly misled. A café au lait and order of 3 beignets is all you need to start your day properly in the Quarter. Something about drinking hot coffee on a humid 90-degree morning makes the strangest kind of sense; not when you fisrt think about it, but when that first sip hits your lips then your stomach and starts to heat you up from the inside to match the air around you, the stars begin to align and you get the slightest glimpse of the natural order of things, the way that the world is still trying to work, and the thought that maybe everything really will be alright in the end. In another, though less metaphysical epiphany, we realized that it is practically impossible to eat beignets heaped with powdered sugar without sullying your black shorts. Maybe this is why all the local Quarter folks seem to be wearing white pants…

But, we didn’t come to the Quarter this August morning just for breakfast. We had a mission: to seek out a famous bar called Pat O’Brien’s and purchase a Hurricane glass for India’s grandfather, Dick Miller. Her grandfather made occasional trips to New Orleans when he was in college at Mississippi State and frequented Patty O’s. In those days, when you bought a hurricane you paid an extra dollar as a deposit on the glass. When you returned it unbroken, you got your dollar back. I can’t even imagine how many of the tall, thin curvy glasses wound up smashed on the patio bricks and the stone floor of the piano bar by the end of the night, but one glass had been safely carried through the madness, out of the French Quarter, and through all the years in between by India’s grandfather. Then, Hurricane Ike tore through the Texas gulf coast, right over the Millers’ longtime home on the Bolivar Peninsula, and all the way inland to Houston before it was downgraded from hurricane status. Their home was wiped off the map, replaced with a field of mud. They recovered what they could, including a most of a set of prized heirloom china that had been miraculously preserved in a protective casing of mud and silt, but the hurricane glass was lost to the wind, water, and mud. We thought (inspired by India’s sister, Ajyra) that a new hurricane glass from Pat O’Brien’s might make a nice housewarming present for their new home in Wildwood, Texas. We knew that O’Brien’s was off Bourbon, but the tight, narrow streets of the Quarter tend to confuse even Burns, our faithful local guide. We marched around the quarter for a while to find Bourbon Street, and then walked nearly the length of Rue Bourbon to find destination, just around the corner on St. Peter. The door was open, the air inside cool, dark and inviting. We found the atmosphere to be a welcome change from the sweltering heat outside, took our seats at the bar and ordered three waters and a hurricane glass. As we sat and sipped, between conversations about Burns’s experience teaching English in China, enforced national pride, and the Chinese way of eating, I realized that it would be a shame to make a gift of a hurricane glass that had never had a hurricane in it, so I asked the bartender to fill ‘er up. Burns followed suit and ordered an Abita, while India stuck smartly to the water. The hurricane was delicious, but nowhere could I find a recipe for the tasty, fruity rum drink aside from buying a jug of their special drink mix. Too bad. If anyone out there reading this has a reputable and authentic recipe for a New Orleans Hurricane, let me know. Feeling the rum doing a happy dance in my belly, we finished our drinks, rinsed the treasured glass and made our way back out into the street for another wander to the car, parked somewhere off Esplanade. We found our way with the help of a kooky old French woman on her way to happy hour on her day off, scorched our bottoms on the flaming hot leather seats, and headed back to Burns’s place uptown to pack up and head out.

We said our goodbyes to Burns and Maxx the house cat, climbed into the car expecting a quick 3-1/2 hour drive to Wildwood, a small community outside Beaumont, TX. We were expected for dinner around 6:00, and expected no real trouble or delays. However, we were soon informed that our quick and easy drive would take somewhere around 6 hours, making us woefully late for dinner. "Well, we'll get there when we get there," we said to ourselves, and resolved to do the drive as quickly as possible, with minimal stops for food, gas, or nature breaks. On the way, we crossed over the mighty Mississippi River, passing into a land unknown and unexplored, the western frontier that our adventure will take us across, all the way to the edge of the great North American continent and our final destination in Portland, Oregon. Please forgive the poor quality of these photos. Taking photos from a car moving at 70mph with a bug-splat-strewn windshield is not an easy job.

Up...

Across...

And Over!

We blazed west across the remainder of Lousisana and made the all-important border crossing into Texas, a state wrapped in family history for India and both her parents.

We were soon welcomed by a beautiful, big Texas sunset.

Next to getting to Portland and riding some of the best singletrack in the country, getting my Texas education was a big priority for this trip, but we had no time for history lessons tonight. A chunk of eastern Texas still lay between us and our final destination. We cruised through Beaumont, turned north toward Wildwood and made the trip in less than 5 hours, but still much too late for a steak dinner with the grandparents. The Millers greeted us warmly in the driveway when we arrived around 9:30, and we presented them with our little housewarming present. As happy as everyone was to see each other, the celebrations would have to wait. We made some quick sausage and cheese sandwiches for a light dinner, washed it down with a cold beer, and climbed into a comfortable bed, thoroughly worn out.

Stage 5: Oxford MS - Jackson, MS - New Orleans, LA

We crawled out of bed at The Ranch with a hankering for some breakfast, so we made our way for the Bottletree Bakery, an Oxford staple right off the downtown square. Bottletree was closed all day for kitchen maintenance, so we went on to BBB, Big Bad Breakfast. The portions were indeed big, but much more delicious than the name suggested. We lingered over our cups of coffee a little longer than we should have and had to high-tail it out of Oxford to get to Jackson for lunch with the Lane gentlemen, so we aimed Simon straight south down I-55 toward Jackson and New Orleans and pushed the go button. We arrived in Jackson town a little behind schedule, saw Sam, his mom, dog Zooey, cat Two before heading to lunch with Big Sam at a new restaurant in a renovated school auditorium, aptly named The Auditorium. The fried oyster sandwich was delicious and it was great to enjoy time with Sam and his dad, who I hadn’t seen in many months. We took a driving tour of Jackson historical sites with Sam after lunch, saw houses that he, Andrew, and their respective families and friends lived in over the years, and even a certain oak tree that had an unfortunate encounter with a certain Chevy Blazer some years back. After the driving tour it was back to the Lane family estate, where we admired the groovy patio, let the shamrock plant get some fresh air, and hung out with Sam and Zooey.

The Shamrock plant (left, with flowers) enjoyed Jackson very much, though it much prefers the air-conditioned areas.

Then it was on to New Orleans. Again, onward South, all the way down the last few shirt buttons of the state of Mississippi to buggy wetlands of the Louisiana border. We had both driven across the state before, but never straight up and down, and the sheer mileage was slightly staggering. We made it through the Louisiana marshlands with no great difficulty and few obstacles, across Lake Pontchartrain and into the Big Easy. We were welcomed by longtime restaurant table-jockey, lacrosse defenseman, expert bar hustler, party animal, lady-killer, soon-to-be Episcopal school gym teacher and would-have-been best man, Mr. Aaron Burns.

We pulled our bikes off the roof, threw our bags inside and discussed plans for the evening. The Revival Brass Band was playing their weekly Tuesday date at The Maple Leaf Bar, and we had been gifted (indirectly, that is) a free pass from the bar owner, Hank. He apparently has a habit of making friends and meeting people at bars and restaurants across town and giving out free passes to the Maple Leaf in the form of “Hankies,” which are scrawled on bar napkins signed by Hank himself. With our Hankie good for two free admissions tucked safely in my wallet, we started out on the walk to the bar. We saw some sights on the way, like the schoolyard where Burns will be teaching P.E. in a couple of weeks, lots of beautiful old houses, and a nearly-full moon. We were in desperate need of sustenance after our march across town, so we stopped at the Dough Bowl, a window in a wall that doled out delicious slices of pizza right next door to a store that doled out delicious 6-packs of beer. We enjoyed the lack of laws against open containers while we ate our slices and drank our beers on the sidewalk. Around the corner at the Maple Leaf, our Hankie allowed us to bypass the $12 charge at the door and invest that money in cold, delicious beverages while we waited for the band to start up. The house was packed with a lively crowd, and India and I sipped gin and tonics while Burns caught up with some of his New Orleans crew while we waited for the band to get tuned up.

Anyone who has been to New Orleans and hasn’t seen a brass band has been hanging out in all the wrong places. Had we not been exhausted from early mornings after poor sleep and an entire day of interstate driving, I think we could have stayed out all night imbibing and dancing to the sounds of the drums and horns. Revival was a fairly young band with a lot of jazz influence, but with a fresh flavor to their sound that sounded to me like the driving beat and rhythm of hip-hop or dance music, combined with the instrumental flow and improvisations of the players. Unfortunately, the three of us were lacking the energy for a big night out, so we stayed around for the band’s first set and dragged our eyelids back home. Hit the sack early (for New Orleans) and fell quickly into a peaceful sleep.

Stage 4: Decatur, GA – Oxford, MS

After getting our nagging roof rack problems worked out with the help of the friendly staff at REI, India and I set off on the first leg of our journey, directly west from Atlanta to Oxford, Mississippi. We gassed up before we even hit the highway, stopped for lunch a few miles from the border, and gunned it on I-20 all the way through Alabama without a stop. I still poke fun at my sister for being born in Alabama (though I should probably point the finger at my parents) and I don’t much care for the state in general. There are nice parts, but we had places to be, people to see. We traded driving duties just after the Mississippi border, and cruised through Tupelo, birthplace of the King of Rock-n-Roll on the way to the home of the creator for Yoknapatawpha county, William Faulker.

After about seven hours in the car we pulled up in front of The Ranch, new abode of gentlemen criminals Andrew Houston and Ben Buckner, just off North Lamar St. in old Oxford town. We settled in, took the tour of the premises, met Warehouse, their super-cute kitten, and enjoyed a cold High Life at the end of a long hot drive.

As Andrew saw it, we had two options for the afternoon. We could pack a picnic and take it to the grassy tree-shade of Faulker’s memorialized estate at Rowan Oak, or we could load up the cooler and head for the deep blue waters of the pool at the Old Town Hotel. As India and I had both been to Rowan Oak and were still heated up from the sunny car ride, we decided to make for the pool.

We passed by Faulker’s grave on the way to pay tribute, and left India at the pool to guard the cooler and look like she belonged while Andrew and I shuffled across the street for beers and ice. Oddly enough, beer is not sold out of a cooler or refrigerator in Oxford (perhaps all of Mississippi) so we chose a nice, warm 12-pack of Miller High Life and a big bag of ice, and tossed those babies in the cooler to chill while the three of us enjoyed the aquatic lifestyle in the pool. We enjoyed our icy beverages, floated on the complimentary pool toys, and shot the late afternoon breeze and watched the clouds whisp along the sky.

The sun began to set before long and we started to get a rumbling in our collective belly. When a middle-aged, overweight woman showed up to do her water aerobics routine we knew it was time to go. Still moist from the pool, we carried our cooler into the downtown square of Oxford town and descended on Ajax, home of some fine Southern cooking. Andrew and India enjoyed the country-fried steak plate, while I was fixated on The Big Easy, a country fried steak sandwich topped with mashed potatoes, gravy and butterbeans. I’ve never had a sandwich anything like it. The whole thing was about 8 inches across and came with a heaping side of homefries. I ate it all, washed it down with a cold Coca-Cola and felt like a champion. The full belly food coma started to come over us, so we headed back to The Ranch to kick back and peruse some pictures from the wedding, honeymoon and some good days back in Athens. India dozed on the couch with Warehouse, and we introduced the kitten to Brownie.

She was a little nervous about having another four-legged animal in the house, but they soon came to an understanding and were able to coexist peacefully for the remainder of our stay. Soon it was bedtime, and we all turned in to the sound of the Mississippi cicadas and the hum of the window unit AC. Off to Jackson tomorrow for a lunch date with Sam Lane, Russell Hall pot-luck roommate and one hell of a reader of poetry, and his family in Jackson, MS. From there it’s on to that down-south den of infamy, New Orleans, home of Aaron Burns and about ten billion crazy night owl partiers.

Off Down the Highway!

Okay, the car's packed, we're about to hit the road on a cloudy Monday morning.  First to REI to get some leaky roof rack situations worked out, then down hwy 20 toward good ole' Oxford town.  

Stage 2: Roswell-Decatur

We enjoyed a wonderful meal Friday night with my dad and Kathryn outside on their back porch overlooking the lake. We watched twilight turn into dusk turn into dark, talked of the move, the wedding, plans for our new life in Portland, and of course the Tour de France. When my dad asked me what I thought of the conclusion of the Tour, I told him he was opening a can of worms. Get me started on the subject of bike racing, and I'll go on for hours. We talked about the heroism and brotherly love of the Schlecks, Bradley Wiggins's inspired ride on Ventoux to hold 4th place, Contador's amazing climbing and creepy stare, and of course the ongoing Armstrong saga. My dad and I stayed up a little later than the ladies and discussed plans for the next evolution of Loose Nuts while we sipped Sambuca.

Saturday dawned a little earlier than I might have liked, but the fault line opening inside my skull left me in a catatonic state somewhere between dozing and dying. Too much sweet, licorice-y Sambuca after dinner. India pulled me through with doses of coffee, water, and egg sandwich while I recovered, moaned and groaned. We repacked the truck without a drop of rain in sight, said our goodbyes and headed down the road towards India's family's home in Decatur. Although the drive itself was fairly quick and easy compared to the previous day's tarp-covered stressfest, we arrived in Decatur in a dangerously fragile emotional state. We had already been softened up by our goodbyes to my family, and thought that a chapter of Johan Brunyeel's book, We Might as Well Win might be a nice distraction. Little did we know that we were in for a terribly sad account of Fabio Casartelli's tragic death in the 1995 Tour de France. The grief-stricken Motorola team was asked by Casartelli's widowed wife to ride the next stage in his honor rather than abandoning the tour, so they rode side-by-side at the front of the peloton behind their team car with Casartelli's riderless bike mounted all alone on the roof. I could barely get the sentences out through my tears.

So, on perilous emotional footing we arrived in Decatur, where we were greeted by India's parents and a pale yellow KitchenAid mixer, a wedding present from the family. We oohed and aahed over the mixer, looked at wedding pictures, and headed out to do some shopping. I stocked up on underwear, grabbed some black socks to phase out all white socks from my wardrobe, and picked up a couple of nice pairs of pants so I don't look like a grease monkey in threadbare, stained jeans next to my stylish and effortlessly beautiful young wife. We caught up with India's best friend and former roommate, Laura at her new apartment in Midtown. It's a nice place with lots of windows, and we laughed and joked while I lounged on the couch.

There's more to tell, but I'm getting pretty worn out so we'll have to finish this later. Bedtime for me...