Day 4 – July 6, 2002
We decided to stop rather than driving through Texas all night. When the sun goes down on the Lone Star State, the air gets a chill and the shadows come out. A funny feeling was palpable in Waco like a fog of bad vibes. Texas should be its own country.
Mix #18 Lack of Energy = Lack of Creativity
Maker: Dan Date: 3/96 Begun: 9:44am Ended: 11:32am Miles Covered: 105
Waco, TX – Leaving Waco, Jeremy leaves the map on top of the car as they speed away. Well, at least it wasn’t the box of mix tapes.
Another of the rules of the trip is that we will only listen to the mixes while driving from place to place not while driving around a city. This decision has two reasons. One, we feel that we would be paying too much attention to finding a place to eat or sleep and not listening to the tapes, the precious tapes. Two, we didn’t want to eat up all the tapes while we weren’t actually going anywhere because we feared that we’d finish the tapes too fast and have to spend the last day listening to the radio or other mixes and we both secretly hoped to drive into Albany airport right as the last tape finished.
Austin
All of our plans for Austin are thwarted. We had heard Las Meninas was a great place for a cheap lunch but we can’t find it. We were ready to hit as many record shops as possible but found the prices to be too high or the stores so big that we don’t have enough time to properly search through them. We wanted to find a hostel or cheap hotel but end up driving aimlessly through highway hell listening to a band called Blues Condition on the radio. Yes, they were as terrible as the name suggests. We went to Barton Springs, hoping to swim in the water but found it flooded and fenced off. Depressed and beaten, we decide to leave town to-nite instead of hanging around any longer. Austin seemed like a great city, we just wish we had had some better luck and possibly a guide to help us navigate this oasis in the middle of Texas.
Mix #19 Mopey Artistes Return to Their Secret Lives and/or Construct New Ones
Maker: Dan Date: 7/02 Begun: 8:59pm Ended: 10:21pm Miles Covered: 79
The second of Dan’s two mixes made specifically for this trip. The point of the mix was to be played in the middle of the night in Texas and to be quite scary.
It works perfectly, scaring the bejeezus out of us as we spend our second night in Texas driving on dark highways. We are afraid to stop the car for fear of men in leather masks cutting us to pieces with a chainsaw. This feels like the type of place where your car breaks down and you walk a mile or so down the road to the big house on the hill to ask for help and are never heard from again.
Mix #20 This Recording is Meant to Be Listened to On Vinyl
Maker: Jeremy Date: 1996 Begun: 10:33pm Ended: 12:08am Miles Covered: 98
Another mix up with the tape order but it’s all straightened out again, for now. The unsettling feeling of the last mix still lingers like a creepy hangover. We are the only car going west on this highway. We stop at a park on the side of the road to get some more tapes out of the trunk and Dan refuses to let Jeremy go inside the deserted building to pee for fear of being slaughtered. Out of nowhere there appears a plane runway, all lit up in the middle of a sea of black. A My Bloody Valentine song ends followed by a long, long stretch of quiet. "What is this silence?" Dan screams. "Lord Jesus, it better not be Edsel coming up."
Mix #21 A Guide to Computer Literacy
Maker: Dan Date: 7/96 Begun: 12:10am Ended: 11:15am Miles Covered: 112
The night gets darker and darker. We both stare straight ahead, scared to blink, scanning the road for deer and/or boogeymen. After counting 4 deer standing near the side of the road, prepared to hurl themselves into the side of our vehicle, sending us spinning through the Texas sky, we decide to call it a night. As we pull off the highway, we nearly drive over a raccoon who’s out for a nighttime jog along the exit ramp. Oh, sweet sleep, take us away.
