Saturday 9 Sept: They're Bigger in Texas

Saturday morning, we left Carlsbad; driving east, we intended to cross Texas and spend that night in Shreveport.  Just before we left New Mexico, we stopped at a gas station and I used the restroom.  I am a big girl and some bathroom stalls tend to be a bit cramped.  So I basically had to back over the toilet, while straddling it, to swing the bathroom door shut.  I guess the rational that not having the door swinging out means that fewer people might get smacked with a door as someone exits the stall using an inconsiderate barreling technique.  Who knows?

When we entered Texas, since I already had a good state map, I wasn't concerned about stopping at the Welcome Center.  So our first stop in Texas was in Sweet Water, where we joined I-20 and also where we stopped for lunch.  It was a lil diner type place that made an awesome steak.  At the end of the meal, I visited the restroom, almost dreading it because restaurants don't make bathroom cleanliness a priority, indeed it seems most public places don't.

I must say, it was HAH-you-jah.  It was like the state's general attitude of being bigger than other states {uhm, pretty damn sure Alaska has ya beat there, at more than twice your size} applies to everything within the state.  I popped into a stall, thought, "dahyum, this is nice and roomy" and then had to hop UP onto the seat.  My feet were dangling and I thought of some comedian's line about how sitting on the jacked up toilet seat in the handicapped stall makes them feel like Shirley Temple waiting for Bob Hope.  Then I thought of Lily Tomlin being Edith Ann on Saturday Night Live, "ain't that the truth?".

Then I thought, "wait....am I in the handicapped stall?"   But no, I was not.  I was in a regular stall, there were four or five just like it.  This meant that I just had to see what the handicapped stall was like.  I would have had to pole vault onto the seat.  But the acoustics were amazing.

Texas, well, I didn't take any pix of the landscape but I will say that traveling along I~20 meant that we went swiftly and steadily through the width of the state and hit Shreveport just slightly after dark.  Our host was great and we loved her lil Ladybug, a pooch with a snaggle tooth that extended out and up from her bottom jaw, on her left, giving her a slight pout that made you want to love on her even more.

Sunday, we drove from Shreveport, LA to Starkville, MS.  We stopped in the Jackson area, at Steak Escape in Flowood, for lunch.  But that's another story, for another day.