181904 - Jacksonville TX: God's Asshole

We left Mississippi behind to hit up the Tops in Texas rodeo that night in Jacksonville, TX. An hour and a half after leaving Mississippi, I got a phone call from Cabot Lodge. They had found my license and credit card in the room. We had to go back and get them, adding 3 hours to the trip. It was boring, but unfortunately part of our lives. Bad start to the day’s trip and the first hiccup in what has been a very smooth trip up to this point.


Heading to Jacksonville, we already knew that we had tickets to the wrong day of the rodeo. Sean accidentally bought ones for Saturday instead of Friday. We didn’t think too much of it because the tickets we bought cost more than the Friday ones and the lady at the ticket office said it shouldn’t be a problem. At about 9:15 we arrived at our destination. In all honesty, I thought there was a pretty good chance that the GPS was leading us to our deaths. This place was in the middle of nowhere and it was a pretty sketchy drive on some back roads until we arrived at our shithole of a destination.

A George W. Bush doppelganger was running the ticket booth. He seemed nice enough at first and we politely explained what happened with the tickets and were promptly denied entrance… some nonsense about the computer systems not allowing it. W noticed my hat and then said, “I know Moosejaw, that’s by Detroit. Ick!” He then went on to make disgusted noises regarding NY, Boston, Jackson, Austin, and California as we mentioned where we were coming from and where we were heading. “Too many liberal democrats in Austin.” “Ugghhhhh, California, ick!” “Boston and New York? More like Sodom and Gomorrah. Ick.” W said he liked the views in San Francisco, but that there were too many “flights” there. Sean misinterpreted this as an odd criticism of the San Francisco Airport, rather than as the homophobic barb it was meant to be. So just to review, he hated every place in the US, except Jacksonville, San Antonio, and the views in San Francisco (although there are homosexuals who occasionally obstruct those views). We thought we could talk our way in, but we were just wasting our time with this dickhead. Good first impression of Texas for me.

Sean was furious. I really thought he was going to snap. The rage consumed him. He reminded me of an infected from 28 Days Later. This all culminated with Sean asking Francella to do this – the first shot fired it what Sean promised would be a full-fledged multimedia war against the town of Jacksonville, Texas. Fun times for the next few hours on the way to Austin. If by fun, of course, you mean awful. We made it to Austin around 2:30 AM and Laura welcomed us with a nice setup in the living room, which was much appreciated. Today sucked; it reminded me of Brandon Bird’s Bad Day on the High Seas.


- Kyle