Here’s a video of my train and 2 week Houston experience. I considered using some Houston Rap for this reel but decide to go with something from the Katamari Damacy Soundtrack instead. Only like 5 nerds will understand.
Song We Love Katamari – Houston.
I don’t own the rights to this music.
The train ride from San Francisco to Houston takes about 54 hours and isn’t much cheaper than flying. However, being a jobless vagabond my current abundant resource is time(not money), and trains are incredibly charming.
From Oakland to Bakersfield is a nice spacious ride. There were even kittens. On the bus from Bakersfield to LA an older woman lamented about just losing her house to the fire and fleeing to her daughters place south. Union Station in LA was utter chaos. Fights, yelling, children stealing apples. A great art display though. LA to Houston delightful. Pros: Sat next to a Director and we talked about films for like 4 hours, Met a fellow illustrator, Spoke about quantum physics, love, war, nutrition, religion and conspiracy with strangers, and enjoyed sprawling desert skies. Cons: Train was about 8hrs late, food options were minimal, sleep was challenging, and couldn’t really shower or change clothes for 60 hours
Upon arrival a stranger who looks like JB Smoove comes up to me and offers me a ride to my destination. I throw caution to the wind and abuse my male travel privilege by accepting. My cousin and her husband were kind enough to let me crash with them, their 4 kids, 2 dogs, 3 turtles, 1 parrot and a fish in their big suburban Texan palace with a pool. It again makes me realize how much money I’ve wasted on Bay Area Studio rent over the past 6 years. While I didn’t plan on seeing any family during my adventure I’m happy I did. It was great to catch up and play fun uncle to the kids. Lots of swimming, skating, push up competitions and amazing home cooked meals.
Upon leaving I start what becomes a struggle theme for me during my 2 weeks. Being a person who loves long walks and sticking to strict budgets I chose not to rent a car. Being the semi spontaneous type I chose to wait until 2 days before to book any Airbnb’s and also not book anything for more than like 4 days. WHO KNOWS HOW LONG I’LL STAY ANYWHERE. I thought It felt very laissez-faire.
This resulted in me having no where to stay in the 5hrs between check out and in times often. Walking long distances with my giant backpack and 60lb suitcase. Waiting in parks or under trees on the side of the road, or in coffee shops. Also since waiting till the last min usually the cheaper Airbnb’s were taken.
Another struggle I had was learning how to receive mail without a permanent address. I heavily researched this before leaving, but things rarely go to plan. My bosses gifted me gift card for some cool travel gear, so I put in an order to be sent to a Houston Post office via General Delivery. This actually worked fine, but that wasn’t the correct post office so they were literally about to return it when I arrived to pick it up. Unfortunately the backpack I picked was too small for my skates so had to repeat the process. Second time didn’t go as smoothly and ended up extending my time in HTX to wait for it. This bag was worth the wait though. I love it.
In all honesty a month after leaving Houston, I’m really thankful I chose to make these mistakes in the US. I know many people were a little underwhelmed when I mentioned my first stop (one of the many reasons I didn’t want to share my locations). But I’m happy I trusted my process. Yeeting myself off to another country as a first move without a stateside practice run would have been disastrous.
Aside from this Houston itself was pretty fun. Had a turkey leg that fed me for 4 days. . Right before I deleted my IG on the train I also saw one of my friends was hosting a BIPOC Mental health conference called Melanin Minds. Was fun to do that and get back into my yoga practice there. Checked out the Space Center, and some cool Museums and of course skating2 skate groups there. One does distance street skating and the other is more vibey dance street skate. Met a lot of solid human beings via both.
A note about Ubers there…the vast majority of them were either gorgeous or older white males whom I disagreed with politically. That being said almost all the conversations were really good. I started all of them with “How long have you been driving today.” Each led down an unexpected path. Very refreshing. One of my friends once asked: How often do you put on a southern accent? As soon as a driver hit me with a slow southern “how you doing today?” found that converting to my childhood Arkansas Drawl.