July 18

I arrived in Brownsville at 6:00 this evening and am settled in to a room at the Red Roof Inn with a high speed LAN connection. Tomorrow I go looking for a customs broker. One of the brokers with whom I’ve been communicating informed me today that her Mexican broker is no longer doing "menaje de casa"” work and I have not heard back from the other since I sent him a message informing him that I would be at his office early Wednesday morning.

During my four days of driving since leaving Elma last Saturday morning I have covered 2741 miles, or an average of 685 miles per day.

The drive today and my drive through the Cascades on Saturday were by far the most scenic. Today I left the dessert Southwest, which often looks like one big strip mine, and South of San Antonio drove through what I suppose one would call a coastal plain. The area between Corpus Cristi and Brownsville is particularly nice with lush, green grasslands, shrubs, and trees. (Did you know that Arbusto, the name of Bush's failed oil exploration company, is Spanish for shrub or bush?)

US Highway 77 from Corpus Cristi to Brownsville is a beautiful highway that is more like a boulevard, with a very wide grassy median with occasional palm trees. The only draw back was the storm of flying insects through which I drove most of the way.

This morning, a bit East of Fort Stockton and South of Odessa and Midland, in an area predominated by mesas, I came upon hundreds and hundreds of very large wind powered electric generators, such as one may see in the Columbia Gorge. And just outside of Ozona I left the freeway to get gas and came upon a very pleasant young couple who waved me down for help.

All but two of the lugs bolts had broken in a rear wheel so they had pulled over with their SUV at a slant on the shoulder. They had jacked the beast up, I suspect with the jack parallel to the slant; the jack buckled; and when I came upon them the wheel was setting on the dirt. Fortunately neither was hurt. I pulled out my jack and as I was positioning it under the leaf spring, thinking it would probably not jack the rig high enough, two fellows in service trucks stopped to help. I was able to use my jack to get the leaf spring far enough off the ground to enable one of the other fellows to get his jack under the spring and raise the vehicle far enough to get the wheel on so they could limp the two miles to town in search of a permanent fix.

One of the fellows who stopped to help, the one that actually did something, was all business while the other was a big, round, very friendly bubba type with a wad of chew and lots to say. It was heartening to see folks stop to help the couple.

The couple noticed my Yucatan license plates and commented that I must be learning to speak Spanish and indicated that they are they are learning English. We spoke a bit in both Spanish and English, bid farewell with warm thanks, and I was on my way.