I am sitting in Coffee Slingers in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. I ordered a mocha. A regular mocha, no iced. It's foggy outside and a bit...Pacific Northwest in general climate. Actually the city reminds me a lot of Tacoma. Have I written up my theory on the familiarity of places?
My thinking (based on a podcast education and sciency tidbits) is that the brain only processes so much new visual input, so a lot of extraneous detail in the surroundings gets duplicated with previous input. Like if you see a big dark building in your periphery, the brain just draws from previous memories of big dark buildings instead of processing all the details fresh. So when you are somewhere really new it's like WOW all this new stuff it's all so DIFFERENT. But then once you've been there for a while, it stops being new input. But also when you are places that are sorta familiar, you are getting recycled data filling in the blanks, so Oklahoma City can feel like Tacoma just as parts of downtown San Jose feel like downtown Portland. It's an idea.
So yeah, Oklahoma City feels like Tacoma thus far.
I don't have much battery remaining. I was up late watching TV on my computer in my car at an I35 rest stop.
I wanted to check out Mondo Gallery before I left Austin, but it didn't open till noon. So I had a slow start. Caught up on internet stuff. The gallery was pretty neat. There is a Mike Mitchell portraiture exhibit up right now. Just nice, dynamic side portraits of Marvel characters.
After that I poured the ice water out of my cooler and hit the road. It was only 5-6 hours to Oklahoma City, but I didn't have anywhere to crash, so I opted to just stop at the last rest stop before OKC. So I took my time and listened to podcasts.
Texas has some REALLY nice rest stops. Like gym equipment, play ground, many covered areas, nice bathroom, full vending machines, interactive displays. Really nice full on rest stops.
But the instant I got to Oklahoma, the scenery improved ten fold. I don't know what happened, but over the border there suddenly were trees and hills and greenery, instead of vast expanses of... plains. Texas has that feeling of going on forever. Which is does. I spent four nights in Texas, and it was a lot of driving to get to Big Bend and Austin and then not so much driving to get out of Austin, but it was still all north on one interstate.
I passed by two car accidents and two flat tires on the way up. I don't know if that is an omen or just Texas.
Oh! And I was only honked at once in Texas, and for the same reason I get honked at everywhere (unwillingness to take a free right on a red) so whoo! No bad experiences in this state. Actually I had a lot of good experiences. Maybe because I went the National Park & hip city route, instead of.... Houston.
But yeah, Oklahoma City. Then Kansas and over to Missouri. Let's have some fun!
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