I put my fingers up to my forehead and began messaging. A headache had come on. That stinks. Thirty minutes till we arrive home and I get a headache. A few minutes later my normally unconscious swallow was now dry with a little pain. Then my ear began to throb.

I was officially back in Austin.

You can tell by the allergies.

My two good friends Michelle and I travelled to Marfa this week.



While all my other friends went on cruises or had friends in town or did the SXSW thing or even just worked, we travelled to West Texas with my new dog Janie.



It all happened rather quickly to be truthful. I planned on taking a few days off after playing Youth Minister for two months at my job while Kevin took a much needed sabbatical. Then my boss instructed me to take a few days off (bonus). I have a friend in West Texas who said I should get out of the I35 bubble and check out the rest of Texas. So I mentioned this to Chris, Michelle and Frank one night as we sat around discussing the Oscars who agreed that a trip to West Texas would be fun. Next thing I know, within a few days of UT's Spring Break, we had decided to actually act on our musings. Sans Chris who had to work, Frank and three women (Ann, Michelle and Janie) took off for Marfa where we had rented two little "houses" (one bedroom abodes) to spend a few days.

I shortly discovered on the drive up there (where I spent most of the time sleeping, petting Janie, and running through my songs for FBC's production of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat)



that "the mountains" where I had been told we were spending vacation were not like the mountains up north and east with tall trees, steep and narrow roads, snow, etc. The mountains of west texas are in the middle of the desert. They are desert mountains: shades of brown spotted with dark green shrubs and cactii.



Although they were not purple mountains majesty, they were majestic in their own way: stilling, peaceful, powerful. I began to understand that the Westerns I had never really watched with the cowboys and the horses and the deserts took place in these hills. They were not sci-fi, outer space, or magical-land fairy tales like the other movies I watched that I had no context for. Those western films were about real places real people.

One film, Giant, was actually filmed in Marfa. We visited the hotel where the actors had stayed and I saw the brown hills they ran horses in, pulled my ballcap down to keep the dust that blew in their eyes out of my own and appreciated the cool breezes at night that required an extra blanket that the day's hot sun didn't require.

My vacation had begun.