Day Three–On the Road Again

Note: No mileage stats for today.  At 5000 miles, the Prius demands maintenance by putting a Maintenance Required message on the display, which blocks the trip stats from view.  Have to find a Toyota dealer to get the oil change and also to fix whatever Aryn did to my iPhone plug.  It now charges when the car is first turned on, but immediately turns off with a message to consult the owner’s manual for instructions on how to plug an iPhone in.  This happened immediately after she switched cables to charge her phone.

The trip really starts after today – Carlsbad is the first scheduled place to do stuff.  It also marks the end of the long driving days – or, at least, the long, driving-only days.  From here on out, there’s something to do or see at the end of most of the drives.

The day started with finding a bunch of ants in the room at Austin.  Not hundreds or anything, but consistently a dozen or so on the desk.

I’m hoping none decided to make a home in the netbook and thence to the car. 

Aryn went to a springs with her friend in the morning, while I slept in after poker last night and headed off to pick her up between noon and 2:00. 

On the way, I stopped for some BBQ — since Aryn doesn’t eat red meat, I figured I’d do that when she wasn’t with.  JJ’s Hamburgers and BBQ, Voted Best Tacos, Breakfast All Day:

With variety like that, it has to be good, right?  I got a big pile of beef brisket, fries, potato salad, and a sweet tea.  The brisket was pretty good – tender and flavorful, but the sauce was a bit salty for my taste.  Not bad, but probably not Texas’ best offering.

Interesting menu items included a “Cheddar Pour”, which seemed to be a hamburger on a platter with cheddar sauce poured around it and, possibly, toasted in the oven to give the cheese sauce a crispness (not sure about that last bit, but the picture on the menu seemed to imply it. Sadly, we’re leaving Austin today, so I can’t try the 7-pound breakfast challenge …

We got on the road and a very positive benefit of the detour to Austin was a much nicer drive.  The original route had us on I10 all the way across Texas.  From Austin, though, we took 290 south, back to I10.  This was a fun drive with lots of curves and hills. 

Once on I10, this stretch with an 80-MPH speed limit and me keeping it between 80 and 85, the gas mileage was less than stellar.  I now understand why Texas has such high speed limits – with everything so far apart, you have to drive that fast to get anywhere.

Even this drive was nice, though, with rolling hills and trees giving way to the more pronounced hills and scrub of desert.

And finally a long stretch on a two-lane road (70MPH limit) to New Mexico after eight hours on the road.

I booked the hotel for tonight and tomorrow through Priceline yesterday.  Carlsbad is a tough place, because there are very few hotels and they’re pretty expensive.  As an example, the Super8 was $79 for these two nights.

I bid $75 for a 2.5-star.  Priceline showed only two 2.5-star hotels available, a Fairfield and a Best Western.  They rejected that bid, but counter-offered at $89.  In order to bid again, because there’s only one hotel zone, I’d have had to drop to 2-star – so rather than pay $75 for the Holiday Inn Express, I took the offer at $89 and wound up with the Fairfield.  It’s normally $159 for those nights.

So for not much more than the $79 Super8, we get a much nicer room, internet, and breakfast.  Yay, Priceline!

WARNING: The remainder of this post contains graphic content, reader discretion is advised.

So Saturday and Sunday were my first days wearing the Magic Underwear.  When we left Friday, I wore regular underwear and have two pair of the Magic Underwear.  Sadly, the Magic Underwear Company doesn’t seem to supply any instructions for the best way to clean the Magic Underwear in a hotel room, so I had to improvise.

Saturday night, I took them in the shower with me.  They do shed water, as it took some doing to get them wet and then squish them up with some of the hotel shampoo.  After rinsing, I hung them on the shower rod to dry.

They’re pretty comfortable new and the pair I washed seemed okay, if still a bit damp, this morning, but the real test comes tomorrow when I have to wear Saturday’s pair again.  If they don’t feel clean and comfy, I’ll be stopping at Walmart.