Texas: Guns and Grasshoppers

June 17, 2012

Killeen, Texas

I feel terrible even thinking this but its getting a little difficult staying in one spot. After all being on a big adventure to me includes meeting new people, trying new foods, and getting myself into ever changing situations. On top of that its difficult writing an adventure travel blog when you're really not traveling. While I love spending time with my brother, certain complications including my lack of access to money among other things have arisen that has made our stay here in Killeen less then perfect.

On top of that we had to change hotels today due to the large number of soldiers currently meeting up with there families, but that right there is another obstacle. With everything going on in my life right now the last thing I'm interested in seeing is countless happy couples and families reuniting. Cold? Maybe, but I'm just trying to be honest here.

Yet with every challenge comes the opportunity to make the most out it and that's exactly what I'm trying to do. Last night I ran into an odd character. We swapped our adventurous travel stories to remote areas of the world, but at the end when I asked him what he did with a friendly smile and knowing gleam in his eye he replied “Well I work for the government so if I told ya I'd have to kill you.” Its hard to believe that he could truly be a secret operative or anything similar of the sort, because after all he looked a lot like the Dude, long hair in the back with a hippyish beard and short buzz cut on top. Who really knows though? I'm sure secret operative’s aren't given a James Bondish type of dress code, but I can really only speculate.

Anyway, while we were talking he told me about a local gun show, and being in Texas and struggling with questions of masculinity partly due to my male rider always present I thought why not? We went for the last thirty minutes, proving to the woman working the counter that the ATM did in fact work to buy our tickets, but maybe she just recognized that I wasn't the type? We handled various types of firearms in various types of extremely macho designs. While I'm not a huge fan of guns (more a fan of gun control) it really was pretty fun. When the announcement came that the show was ending I walked away with two favorites in mind: a revolver that took a shotgun shell, and a rifle that took pistol ammo. With those backwards picks in mind maybe the woman at the counter was right: I wasn't really the type to truly appreciate a gun show because after seeing an entire arsenal of effectively deadly weaponry I had managed to pick the only two odd balls out of the bunch. Still cool though...

While that was my adventure for the day I feel like something else happening here bears some discussion. It appears for two months out of every year Texas is struck with a plague of locusts. Okay maybe not locusts but grasshoppers. They are everywhere! In the bathrooms, in the parking lots, at the bar getting obnoxiously loud leaving lousy tips, basically anywhere you can imagine. Now I don't know what that says about Texas Biblicaly or anything, but I'll let you make your own assumptions.

While me and my brother are having a great time, the new hotel is ten times as nice for half the price, and we have some things planned coming up that should be fun. Doing as they do in Texas and in following suit with today's gun show extravaganza tomorrow we'll be trying to go to a gun range and then off to a lake to swim. It should be both relaxing and fun, but with every day I spend here I feel the always increasing urge to get back on the the open road.