I was in a car with two girls and a dog. Being confined in close quarters with people for almost an entire day while fleeing for your life really teaches you a lot about other people, and also about yourself. For example I learned I could grow to hate someone so much as to wish they stayed behind in a hurricane and had taken their chances. (While letting me use their car to flee.) But then after all was said and done I feel much closer to her now and no longer pray for her demise. I also learned Adriana and I are great friends, and I would do anything with her. Including running for my life and being a refugee in Texas.

They told us to pack only the things that were most important to us and get the hell out of dodge. I took three changes of clothes, my new chucks, all of my pictures, this here laptop, and Amanda's stuffed pig and was ready for the worst. Adriana took a guitar, her favorite jeans, her photo albums, and some cosmetics and together we took what we thought might be one last look at our lives and then sat in traffic for what seemed like eternity. Vera kept complaining about the traffic, and saying she felt like just turning around and going back... Over and over and over again until I grinned as I pictured a 25 steel rod whizzing through the air on Ivan's forceful breath and easing gracefully through the front of her skull. This never happened of course. Instead we had to get off the traffic ridden interstate at least ten times, because she had to pee, or eat, or get gas (despite the fact that for the first 11 hours we had not even gone through a quarter of a tank. ).

Texas was pretty much as I expected it to be. EVERYONE had a Bush/Cheney '04 bumper sticker and every gas station we went into smelled of fried chicken and had a woman with impossibly high hair working behind the counter. Houston itself was a typical metropolitan area, and I spent the better part of an hour using the internet to try and locate good bars for us to go to. It was kind of a big let down, as most cities probably will be compared to here. We ended up randomly finding the Franz Ferdinand after party, and proceeded to go there and get drunk (except Adriana, who is not drinking anymore) You'd be surprised what a good pickup line "So, we're refugees from New Orleans fleeing the hurricane, wanna make out?" is. (for the record " Hey my name's Ivan, think you can handle this category 5?" is not as successful.) We were supposed to go to some kid's house for an after after party, but he gave us a fake number (or Adriana put it in wrong, if you're asking her). So I being the drunk boy wonder that I am, make them take us BACK to the Franz Ferdinand party to which I begin shouting at people, ordering them to tell us where the party is. Included in my victims was, you guessed it, Glasgow's IT band of the moment, Franz Ferdinand. They told me they were tired and going back to the hotel and I called them liars and proceeded to further pump them for information about "the party". That was when they began ignoring me and I made my way back to Vera's car defeated. The girls decided they were hungry and I decided I should drink more , so as they drove to Denny's I was rifling through the trunk for more INCREDIBLY hot Miller High Life that had been cooking in the trunk for well over two days. It tastes like apple cider kind of. That was when I accidentally popped off the lid to the gallon water jug that was also back there and soaked dozens of my pictures.

So to sum this all up, I drove 20 hours to save my life and my photos from a hurricane that never came, then got drunk and destroyed said photos, which would have been fine if we had just stayed home in the first place. I did however get some really cute t shirts at the best thrift store ever, along with a hand painted glass jar that has quaint flowers accompanied with the word "nipples" imprinted on it for no seemingly rational reason what so ever. I love Texas.