I’m writing from a roadside motel room in Victoria, Texas. You’ve probably never heard of Victoria, Texas — most of the people that I told I was coming here thought I was heading for the one in British Columbia — and there’s good reason for that. There’s not much here. It’s misting, cold, and there are trucks running by on the highway that runs between Houston and Corpus Christi, which is located agonizingly close to the window of this here room.

This is one of the less glamorous parts of my job. I do occasionally get to travel to random parts of the state of Texas to do workshops and the like, and more often than not they’re in the parts of the state that need them. Places like the Rio Grande Valley, Victoria, the panhandle plains cities of Abilene and San Angelo, and the reaches of far west Texas that make places like El Paso seem civilized.

It’s not a long trip from Austin – a little over two hours – but it’s far enough that the prospect of getting out of bed super early to drive down here for an 8:30 am start time seems like a really bad idea. Hence the roadside motel room.

Victoria might not be the most happening place, but it is significantly less scary than some of the places one passes on the way down here. About thirty miles up the road is a little place called Cuero, and the First Baptist Church in Cuero had a little sign out front that read, “If Jesus returns before kickoff, there will be rapture in the stands.” It’s kind of a sign a sort that this is the type of thing that they consider amusing in Cuero.

But the reason that I remember Cuero is thanks to a former colleague of mine who will have forgotten that this blog exists, assuming she ever knew about it in the first place. She was an interesting sort of being, and she had what can only be described as major personality quirks.

Despite the fact that we had discussed our respective abilities to speak foreign languages, the first time that we came down to Victoria on business she announced to everyone in the car (I learned Spanish in high school and Natalie speaks not one but three Romance languages: French, Portuguese and Spanish) that “Oh, look. That town is called Cuero. I speak Spanish, and cuero means leather. I’ll bet that town used to be a tannery.”

Now, that’s fine enough, but she said that at least three more times and then actually rolled down the window as we drove through Cuero to see if she could smell the tannery. [She couldn't, although she claimed at the time that it might be because I was driving too fast. Apparently I was exceeding the maximum speed of tannery fumes at 35 mph.]

On the trip down here, Natalie and I kept trading little bits of wisdom gained from our departed colleague. For example: apparently, according to her, if you can’t finish your salad, you should eat the darker pieces of lettuce because those are the ones that have more vitamins. Also, she refused to sleep in a hotel room with two beds because she thought that a ghost might sleep in the other bed. And then there was the time she threatened to rip my face off in a meeting with outside vendors … ah, good times.

So, I’m here in Victoria, having once again failed to smell the fumes from the tannery as I drove through the town named for leather. Perhaps this time it was the rain that kept the fumes in check. Who knows?

I hope you’re keeping safe and dry wherever you are … and let the ghosts in the next bed get a good night’s sleep, OK?

Tags: texas, Travel