Overnight, we stayed in the small town of Memphis. It was a very small town, because it only took me ten minutes to run clear across it this morning. The far side, away from the highway, had no streetlights at all, so it was utterly dark. I had a headlamp, and I used my phone as a flashlight. It actually felt a bit like I was doing an ultramarathon again.
The town is slightly scary beyond being very dark. There are a lot of bible verses quoted around. We saw bible verses on roadside billboards. We went to eat at the Rock Inn Cafe and the menus there had bible quotes on the bottom. We also heard more coughing than I was comfortable with. Unfortunately, the mask I had brought with me decided to break so I did not have enough protection.
After the morning run, I had intended to grab a quick bite at McDonalds. However, the restaurant was drive-thru only. Since we are in an 11 foot tall truck, we couldn’t do that, and with no other options, we couldn’t go in. So I did not have a good breakfast. That meant only eating the breakfast bars and fruit we had in the cab.
Of course this meant lunch was very important. I would have no energy to go for a run while Catalina was picking up lunch, as we had done in the previous two days. But that is probably a good thing. We have been seeing signs around here saying “Hitchhikers might be escaped convicts”. I don’t think it would have been safe to go careering down the side of the road with little to no I.D. on me. And with the heat, I couldn’t even guarantee wearing a shirt.
In any case, we had a lunch at an In-n-Out Burger. The ingredients were fresh, and the fries actually tasted like potatoes. The Neapolitan milkshake was very pleasant. I would recommend, except because they only cook when you order, it felt like it took fifteen minutes for our food to come. I think people using the Drive-Thru got priority.
After that we pushed through and drove to Sugar Land. We passed through Houston during rush hour, which was not pleasant. But we got to Catalina’s family home at around 6:30. We were done.
2021-10-6 23:13