So there was Christmas, and there was New Year's Day. And all was eventually quiet. As the events are fresh in mine memory, let me recount them to you, O my brothers and sisters.

John Lin really enjoyed his time in Texas. I think he had hopes that it would be 'another country,' but except for the big sky and the double-wide trailers in the prairies, it was all too familiar. McDonald's, big cars, malls, avarice, sloth, etc. There were honky-tonks and chicken fried steak, to be sure, but I sensed it fell short of the gun-totin', cowboy, shootout one would hope for. But he got to visit me pa and ma on their own turf, and says he understands the wave/particle duality of my nature a bit better.

So John packed up his bags and mosied back to Cali. And in flew Ryan Cox, fresh from the hectic family gatherings common in Ohio, where it's hard to get a few moments to talk to long lost relatives one on one.

We spent a nightlife in Houston, long enough to talk to some starry ptitsas, and real dobby devotchkas, exploring in greater depth the bars in and around Rice Village that John and I stumbled upon some daze earlier. There was even a bit of "highway flirting" on the way back home that night, but she was lost in the fog.

Then it was off to the Santa Fe, where the artists and the hippies and the Indians who tolerate them dwell. We saw a "miracle spiral staircase" at the chapel of San Lorenzo, allegedly built by the caprenter St. Joseph, of Jesus fame, and held up by the hand of God some say. I suspect it has more to do with the particular geometry of a spiral, but is that not, in itself, a miracle?

We momentarily stopped by St. John's College, just long enough to consider that we had no business being there, as it was doubted that Ellie would be around and/or see us. So we left Santa Fe in the red dust and headed toward a dangerous lab where new and nefarious weapons of mass destruction are regularly made, totally unchecked by benevolent and effective upholders of international law.

Thinking they wouldn't let us in, we headed toward their junk site instead, a place known as the Black Hole.
There we tiptoed past atomic detonation wires,
old bombs, Geiger counters, and all sorts of random military-industrial paraphernalia. I picked up a wicker basket and a bunch of steel balls for the home.

After visiting some supercool Indian ruins in Bandilier Nat'l Park, we finally started driving toward the American dream-- Vegas at New Years! But the moment threatened to turn into a bitter nightmare, as we heard on the wireless that five suspicion men-- no, terrorists! -- had illegally entered the country and were surely up to some big-bad no-good. Ryan's mom was certain they were heading to Vegas, perhaps to gas the revellers in the midst of their New Year's bacchanalia. So our heroes sped at alarming speeds in Japanese comfort toward Nevada, unwilling to allow such a dastardly fate to befall Sin City.

to be continued...