Hello again.
I have a brief lunchtime break to jot down a few more notes - I've spent Tuesday out with Philippe and another of the vets here at Weatherford Equine Medical Centre (previously got the name wrong) travelling about. The Texan countryside west of Weatherford is fairly bleak and monotonous - not much change from flat country with shrubbage around 3m high. Some areas are nicer at the moment where the leaves are changing with the Fall, but otherwise there's a lot of brown grass and harsh terrain.
My favourite response so far has become this story's title - I asked a guy the other day how he was going, to which he replied 'Why I'm blessed thank you Sir'... geez mate, no need to brag to the rest of us heathens...
I had a great day with the Halls yesterday which included primarily visiting a well known painthorse stud and a very well known cutting trainer by the name of Tom McCutcheon. The setups were amazing! The money that goes into the facilities and horses is astounding - all involved seem to live a life of luxury, horses included. One of the extremely famous stallions there enjoys a life nearly entirely made up of eating, swimming and sex. Lucky bastard.
The day started, however, with the biggest accomplishment - I ventured out on the roads of the USA for the first time today. The experience was a good one... for me, anyway - I was driving a large RAM pickup which may have subsequently been reasonably intimidating for any drivers in the near vicinity. If I'd have been in a plane I think people would have suspected a terrorist threat. No incidents however, so that's a bonus ahead of my more extensive roadtrip which will begin tonight. We had catfish for lunch and even saw a coyote running across a field which apparently is extremely unusual, so along with seeing some exorbitant horse training facilities and passing the local NASCAR track and a couple of universities, I feel like it was a fairly wholesome Texan experience.
My ideas of practicing my modest array of Spanish haven't really come to fruition so far - I've made a couple of fairly bashful attempts of 'Que tal?', 'Como estas' and 'Si, claro' so far with some of the stable hands and waiters, but I'm really going to have to jump in the deep end. I've been deterred from entering any Mexican districts at the risk of coming out with one or two less kidneys should I attempt it.
The food has been a bit of a worry - after the abundance of fresh produce available in California during my trip last year, Texas had big shoes to fill. Unfortunately the only big things Texan food will be filling any time soon is pants - fast food is the main player, whether it be Italian, Mexican, burgers, grills, whatever... I may come back a couple of sizes bigger, even in a week or two. We did have a good brekky of French toast at an eatery on Sunday morning which was served with a disproportionate amount of whipped cream. Sunday morning was an adventure in itself - the eatery was filled with people either dressed in glad-rags or camo. Glad-rags for Church and camo for hunting. I can't imagine the camo having worked that well for the prospective hunters, they would have been more suitable dressed up as boulders than as trees... if one of the guys there had been a couple of inches taller he may just have made a perfect circle.
So the roadtrip is going ahead tonight - I'm dropping Flippa off at the airport around 6/7pm and then heading on to Dallas for the night. The roadtrip has been made even more ominous for the citizens of Texas now as Flippa is taking his GPS with him, thus leaving me navigationally unassisted. Probably watch out for me on the news.
Hope everyone's well! I'll be sure to post some more ramblings as soon as I can track down a computer in the next few days.
Hope everyone's well.
