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the last few months i’ve sort of flitted with interest in 8-bit, lo-fi, experimental electronic, etc. music. so i decided this evening after work i’d head to the one place in houston i could think of that might actually have stuff in-store from this very small scene: soundwaves. i searched around but didn’t find anything. i finally gave up and went to the counter to ask about it. the guy wasn’t really familiar with the genre term or some of the band names (other than bit shifter), but when i was describing it he seemed interested. we talked about electronic music for awhile and where to find stuff and he said he’d been friends with someone who was a unix engineer that was into that kind of stuff. which was cool, so i said that’s what i was too. some more chatting, off into discussion of analog synth music and moogs and such. every now and then local bands were mentioned, then he said “there’s a band called the entertainment system” and i said “yeah, i’m familiar with them” and he responded “i was in the entertainment system for a couple of years.”
*sigh* i refrained from saying “oh yeah, my wife tamara tabo and i knew alistair isaac. well, she knew him better than i did. i mean, they fscked each other and had an affair behind my and everyone else’s backs and now they’re supposedly both living in california or something.” instead, i just said i enjoyed chatting with him and walked out so he could take care of the next customer.
funny how an enjoyable search for 8-bit music ends on a sour note about 2-bit people.

got up and smoked a cinnamon swisher that i’d bought last night. we checked out of the hotel and took off. us84 to natchitoches, then highway 6 to many. at many we traded bikes for the first time. we crossed that long bridge over the toledo bend reservoir into Texas. stopped for pics, of course, and traded bikes.
21 to 103 to lufkin. at lukfin we ate at bryan’s bbq, which is the first place we ate at when we got back into Texas on our road trip last summer. it was very good again, like last time. although this time they were playing top-40 country radio instead of good old country stuff. 94 to 19 to huntsville, where i ended up putting us going down i-45 instead of on 30. but it gave linc a chance to see the huge sam houston statue on i-45 (photo op). we then got back up to 30. at fm1791 we parted ways, he headed on 30 toward austin and me going down to houston.
i took fm1791 to fm149, both enjoyable roads. i hit 249 which i took into beltway 8, then i took 8 around to my house. i got home around 6pm. 17978 on the odometer, so the trip was around 1700 miles or so. and thus ends the road trip.
i was at home about an hour and a half, then i headed downtown to kaveh kane’s for the monthly geek gathering. in my car.

we managed to keep from staying at the nasty hotel in meridian. we stayed at a place across the street from it instead. we got up and took awhile to find jimmie rodger’s grave. then we hit the road. we took us80 from meridian to brandon. at brandon we stopped and ate a place called annie d’s. (a cop at the gas station recommended it.) it was good – home-style cooking. we jumped on i-20 then headed south on the natchez trace parkway. that’s a very nice road – scenic, little traffic, etc. the only problem was a 50mph speed limit…but i guess maybe that explains the minimal number of vehicles on it. at natchez we took 84 into louisiana. (nowhere to stop for a state sign pic…grr.) we decided to try to make it to natchitoches (pronounced “knack-uh-tosh” evidently), but it got dark and chilly pretty fast so we stopped in winnfield. we put in right at 300 miles. instead of eating supper, we just went to a convenience store and bought some junk food. i got some bbq corn nuts, a chocolate moon pie, a chocolate yoo-hoo, and a starbucks mocha drink.

i had the breakfast at the hotel this morning. i had an interesting conversation with an old gentleman. i went back to the room to pack and leave, but work had called and left a message and i had to do benefits enrollment before i could leave. which was a pain to get done. so we lost about one to one and a half hours for that.
but then we took off and went to the hank williams museum. it was pretty cool. we dropped by the monument and took a few pics, then we went by the cemetary where hank is buried. we then went and ate at noble’s, which is where the elite (pronounced “e”-light…*shrug*) used to be and was the last place hank played before he died. montgomery seemed like a pretty cool town, but we didn’t spend too much time there.
we then took off on us80 back to meridian. unfortunately, the temperature dropped fast so we decided we would stay in meridian. i think the news said it’s supposed to get into the 30’s tonight. we were going to go eat, but then i started feeling sick. i think it was something i ate. and right when i was finally feeling almost completely over my cold/sinus problems. (hopefully a night of sleep will get it over with.) we’re planning on getting some good miles in tomorrow.

day three started off nice. the lady at the front desk of the nasty hotel gave us the name of a local meridian place to eat, so we headed to downtown meridian and ate at jean’s. meridian seems like a cool town.
after the marathon night drive, we only needed about 140 miles to get to montgomery, so once we’d finished eating we headed out on us80. we crossed into alabama during the day, which was the first state line we crossed on this trip during daylight hours, so it’s the first one we stopped to get pics of. right after entering alabama, my brother almost hit another bird…this time, a buzzard. i kept laughing thinking about that getting stuck in his handlebars and splattering. evidently a cold front or something rolled through the night before, because it was overcast and chilly. once we got past selma, the clouds took over and it got very misty/foggy. about 30 miles out of montgomery it got dark and started a light rain. we got into montgomery around 5:30pm, cold and wet, so we didn’t hunt for a place to stay – we just went to the first thing we saw. (which fortunately has free wireless internet access.)
after taking some time to change out of wet clothes and warm up, we went back out to find a place to eat. no local places were to be found open after 9pm (at least where we drove), so we ended up eating at a waffle house. it’s odd how almost no one seems to know where good local places to eat are. you ask people and they invariably tell you about a chili’s or outback steak house or something.
we had originally thought we’d get to montgomery and check in to a hotel and have a couple of hours to do stuff, but no such luck. so everything will have to happen tomorrow.

day two started decent enough: really good breakfast, nice conversation, and getting on the road. seeing as it was halloween, i put on my halloween outfit. we took i-10 to 383n to us190 to baton rouge, where we met a friend of linc’s (my brother) for a late lunch/early supper. we ate at the chimes, right by lsu. (i always forget how many attractive young ladies there are around college campuses.) the food and conversation were both enjoyable. we left right around 5pm, but it got dark pretty fast. we originally didn’t want to do much night riding since we wanted to see the countryside, but we needed to get more distance. (that’s foreshadowing.)
we took highland road out to 42, which then detoured to places unknown for awhile, then 42 to 22 to covington, where we looked for a place to stay. no luck. (at some point here my brother hit a bird that splattered guts onto his jacket, and we ran into a talkative fellow who claimed to be from austin and was doing roofing.) so we headed up 21 to bogalusa, which in addition to being a scary, smelly town (at least the parts we saw), had no vacancies. so we took 21, which turns into 35 at the mississippi state line, to columbia. which had no vacancies. so we took us98 to i-59 (at hattiesburg…which we had already been told had no vacancies). we stopped in laurel…no vacancies. (see a pattern?)
it was now after 11pm, and it was cold. we were stopped for a break at a convenience store lamenting our bad luck, so it of course immediately started to rain…a little, harder, harder, pour. so we moved under the roof over the pumps and put on our rain gear. then it stopped raining. but the ground was wet and since it might rain more we kept the gear on. we took off and drove all the way to meridian. somewhere around 1am i started losing it. it’s scary to be falling asleep on a motorcycle, but we needed a place to stay. we rolled into meridian around 2am and found a place with vacancies. it was a nasty excuse for a hotel: a cockroach greeted us, and there was some kind of fleck of raw meat or something on the wall. but i didn’t care at this point. i hit the bed and fell immediately to sleep.

we stayed up late saturday night hanging out over at jack and sue’s, so we slept a bit late. so we didn’t take off until about 10am. i had to go by work, then we went to eat before hitting the road. le peep in the village (near where i work) had what appeared to be a long wait, so we went to the house of pies on kirby. there weren’t that many people waiting, but the cooks were putting food up way faster than the wait staff were taking it to the tables…there were plates on top of plates and the manager was kind of freaking out. so they didn’t seat people for awhile. we eventually got seated and had a good send-off meal.
then we hit the road, where the first thing i did was go to far up 59…maybe that’s not a good start. 🙂 we ended up going down 90 until just after nome, then taking 365 down to port arthur. once we got on 365 we started to see a lot of fallen, broken trees and lots of twisted pieces of sheet metal roofing and other stuff sat out by the road. people were also burning a lot of trash and wood they’d cut up from fallen trees. port arthur still had a lot of visible effects from the hurricane (torn up buildings, non-functional traffic lights, etc.). not having a good map of port arthur, we made a couple of big loops through various parts of town until we finally found 82. we were thinking we’d go along 82 if it was open, since it runs along the louisiana coastline. (here’s where mithras can opine that it’s so i could mock the hurricane victims.) 82 was open until you hit the bridge at the border, where there were police or gov’t people or something, and it was only open to local traffic. so we had to turn around and go back around up to i-10. we went over a couple of huge bridges, and from up there you could see a lot of blue tarps on roofs.
it was already dusk by the time we were going through bridge city, so we decided to stop in lake charles. we weren’t sure what the helmet laws are in louisiana so i was planning to stop at the welcome center (where we could get a new state pic as well)…but the entrance and exit were barracaded. we then made it lake charles…where all the hotels were booked. (rita plus katrina.) when i asked how far we’d have to go to find a room, two people said probably 100 miles east or west. i was worried we were going to have to find a manger to sleep in, and i don’t think my brother or i had plans to miraculously deliver a halloween baby. fortunately, after i explained our dilemma they let us stay at a best western if i signed a paper saying i would only stay for one day.
then we went to find a local place to eat. (why eat at chains when you’re on a trip?) it was around 8:00pm or so, and pretty much everything was closed. it looks like the town is still disoriented from rita. we eventually found a place around 9pm called deangelo’s. it’s a chain, but they only have about 8 places, mostly in louisiana. it was pretty good.
i’m now at the best western, where they provide free internet access. but no shampoo, evidently. oh well. we did have a good breakfast provided by the restaurant, and got to talk for awhile to a manager about the status of things in lake charles. some things open, some not. lots of trash still waiting to get picked up.
today we should make it across all of louisiana hopefully. we didn’t cover too much distance yesterday.

my brother is coming down this evening. tomorrow we leave on a week long road trip. the general purpose of which is to head to montgomery, alabama and seek out hank williams’ grave. i’m not sure what else we’ll be doing, but it’ll be nice to get out on the road and get away from things.
in preparation, i went and took care of the 16k maintenance on my bike. i also got new front and rear tires. my front tire was pretty worn, but my rear tire was actually showing radial cords. yikes! i stopped riding it after i realized that, so it sat for about a week before i could get it to a shop. i also went and picked up my new motorcycle plate and put it on my bike (image). it’s one of the “native Texan” plates, the picture being the alamo and san jacinto monument with a Texas flag background. and for riding in cooler weather, i picked up a polyester face/neck mask and a black knit skull cap with flames on it (heh…that’s funny). and today i picked up some halloween gloves that have skeleton hands. that way i can look like ghost rider. 😉 hopefully we’ll have a good time on the trip.

when tamara and i moved into our house, they were building a brand new albertson’s just a couple of blocks away. it was open 24 hours. it was great. then they stopped being open 24 hours. but it was still a good store. then albertson’s shut down a bunch of stores, including the one near here. so the skanky kroger that’d been across the street moved in. it wasn’t as good, but it was okay. they were open 24 hours at least. then they stopped that. a couple of weeks ago they put caution tape up around their gas pumps. “odd,” i thought, “i don’t remember a new hurricane scare and gas shortage.” then a few days later i went to buy some groceries…and the store itself closed. now there’s a sign on it saying a food town is moving in. a food town! bleh.
another thing is when we moved into the house we didn’t realize there was a landfill right across the major street from us. “oh great,” i thought, “that’ll be a benefit when we sell.” after a couple of years i guess they filled it up, because soon there was an incredibly hilly something taking shape. it turned out to be a golf course. what luck! but then after a couple of years the golf course closed. now it’s just sitting there as far as i know. maybe they’ll turn it into a motocross course. or a depository for radioactive material.
finally, when we moved in, we realized there was a “dead end” sign in our front yard. i used to think it was funny, seeing as i like to joke about failure and such. now i just think i was being laughed *at* by the gods, not *with*.

that’s a line from an old joy electric song, and appropriate over these last couple of years…
tamara loved (loves?) shiny, glittery things. it was such a cute personality quirk. i could pretty much be assured that she would like anything i bought her that fell into that category. it was one of a number of unique traits i really loved about her. the fact is, she was a very unique individual, and i think we had a lot of things in common that it will be very rare to find in another person. there was so much possibility between us.
unfortunately, she appeared to self-destruct and allowed herself to get involved in an affair. as much as i would like to believe alistair took advantage of her frail mental state by feeding her lines to bed her (as he knew very well she was married, but obviously didn’t care enough…if he cared at all…as a person, much less a believer), i know she had plenty of times where she made her own choices.
i put up with a lot of things during this time because i believed we were partners. i was stumbling forward in a state of shock most of the time tamara was making her new lifestyle choices. i couldn’t believe she was the same person i’d met, fallen in love with, and married. but she was. and even though she seemed to momentarily reappear and ask to seek reconciliation with an acknowledgement of the wrong and harm she’d committed, it wasn’t long before she was gone again, replaced by a person who was looking for self-satisfaction and pleasure in whatever means presented itself most immediately. it was this new person who chose to take half of everything, even while she maintained with mutual friends that she was fully intending to honour the agreement we’d made. blatent lies, but it didn’t stop her. unfortunately, the “legal” system has been blindfolded to truth and fairness, and she was able to walk away with what everyone who has any knowledge of the situation knows is not fair.
am i bitter? yes. am i hurt? hell, yes. would anyone dare deny me my pain? if i forget about all of this and let it go, it’ll be because i’ve moved on to something else — not because i’ve found any justification for her actions, or alistair’s behaviour, or the legal system’s decisions. because there is nothing just or right in any of that. do i want to move on? yes. i would love to find a new, positive direction in my life as far as a relationship goes. the problem is, i’ve not permanently moved on yet. and what i had was pretty good, overall. until the complications in our lives piled up too high and we had problems dealing with the issues, and then she betrayed my trust and turned and walked away from me. (and don’t think the irony that isaac was the name given to the long-time-coming but promised child of abraham and sarah is lost on me, given what we were going through and who she had the affair with.)
after one of the last counseling sessions, she read me a letter she had written to me, detailing a possible plan for us staying together. a plan that involved us moving to one of the coasts and starting a new life, seemingly cutting all ties and forgetting everything up to that moment. she even had plans of what we could do. it was so horribly difficult for me to not agree to it, because i wanted so much for our marriage to be good again, for our life to be good again…but i knew it wouldn’t actually solve the crisis we were in. i knew it wouldn’t fix things for long. it also didn’t really seem about our marriage, but about tamara doing what she needed to do for her to be happy. it wasn’t a plan with consideration for me, for us, just everything she would like to do herself. looking back now, it’s probably…i don’t know. i just know i couldn’t agree, and it hurt like hell.
during this conversation outside the counselor’s building she cried, and she gave me that sad expression i’d seen so many time before, clasped her arms together in front of her and moved into me, and i wrapped my arms around her and held her tight…for the last time. and even though she’d betrayed me and was continually inflicting more pain, i just kept wishing i wouldn’t have to let go and everything could be better.
i have no false notions any more. but that doesn’t keep me from continuing to feel the pain from the hole inside of me where my partner, my lover, my best friend, tore herself loose and left me behind. i know i need to move on, but a good portion of my life disappeared when she chose to give up on our life together.
i pray G-d can see His way to provide me with peace and fulfillment in this area of my life, both in dealing with my broken past and with looking with hope into the future.