The Captain was recently abducted by aliens and taken for a ride in a spaceship. OK. I exaggerate. The truth is I went on a business trip to Texas and drove with a colleague in a space blue Lincoln Town Car from Houston, where NASA HQ is located, to San Antonio, where there are droves of aliens of the illegal variety. The trip was indeed a long strange trip and one worthy of The Captain’s blog. What follows is a running account of my perceived reality, no doubt hijacked by my extraterrestrial imagination.
5 PM Wednesday. Blasting off with a coworker from Houston in the Lincoln via the mega beltway on our way to San Antonio, a city everyone in Houston promotes as being nicer than Houston, which is kinda like saying a Mule is better than an Ass because it was bred with a Pony. Hoping to catch a glimpse of an Armadillo, a creature that looks like it would be perfectly comfortable foraging for glow worms on Mars. The hotel gift shop was selling Armadillo Beanie Babies, so my hopes were high. 6 PM. Still leaving Houston, I think. Hard to tell, though. It all looks the same – oversized industrial buildings rubbing elbows with “used” tire shops, strip clubs, and the odd attractive brick house with bars on the doors and windows. Houston is now behind us as we venture through fields of scrub trees and cows. We are determined to find an out of the way place to stop for some authentic Texas ribs. Huge billboards everywhere. There’s one for a place called Buc’ees, which boasts it possesses the taste of Texas – 100 miles away. Must be good. More cows. No freakin’ Armadillos. Big billboard for something called Schlitterbahn. My coworker and I theorize that this is some cheap Czech or German beer. There seem to be a lot of billboards with Czech or German sounding names, like Czhilispiel. How did so many Czechs end up in south Texas? Must have gotten schlitfaced drunk in Minnesota and took a wrong turn and realized – holy shit, it’s warm down here, let’s settle! More Buc’ee the Beaver signs. Can’t tell if they sell food or indulgences, or both. Wait! I think the worst seller of indulgences was a Czech. 7 PM. Large building looming ahead on the left. A meat packing plant! That’s not normally exciting, unless your heading down a long, straight highway that cuts through a cow field. Across the way there’s an exotic animal farm. Curious. Wonder what kind of meat they’re packing across the street?? Wonder what Giraffe tastes like? Finally some road kill. Looks like a partial torso of an enornmous rabbit. Must be a Hare. Where are the f*&kin’ Armadillos??! Blah, blah, cows, grass, blah, blah, blah. 7PM. Sign for Mike Mikeska’s BBQ!! This could be worth checking out! Fifty miles and 4 more Buc’ee signs later, we spy Mikeska’s and decide to go in and have a look; it appears authentic (grimy with every square inch of wall covered with a stuffed animal head). They were…cough, choke…out of ribs!! I suppose that’s what you get for trying to procure BBQ ribs from a Czech…We decide to climb back in the spaceship and continue west toward Buc’ees. Which makes me wonder…it’s dry here, no water for beavers. Why a beaver for a mascot? I have my theories, which are naughty and will remain unstated. Hold on…approaching another BBQ joint, this time with an American sounding name. My coworker and I debate the prudence of stopping again and before we notice, we miss the exit and are now downwind of the rib joint, tortured by the heavenly wafting of hickory scent for several miles as we curse our indecision. We have now been conditioned to look for Buc’ees signs…red flags waving in my mind – could this be an alien plot? Is Buc’ees a front for a real alien abduction center? Seems to explain Texas…Must…push…away…thoughts. There. Much better. 8 PM. WHERE ARE THE F*&KIN’ ARMADILLOS???! My coworker and I are getting impatient and hungry. Thank god for the Lincoln and its heat massaging seats. OMG. There it is! The exit for Buc’ees!! As the sky is now darkening, we can see the neon for miles as we approach. What we found was shocking: Absolute proof that life forms from another planet have indeed landed on earth and built a secret headquarters – a giant Rest Stop with a “convenience” store that sells 67 varieties of beef jerky, along with Ciabatta Ham sandwiches. Apparently not sure what to sell to humans to lure them into their lair, the aliens must have broken into a TV satellite signal and started watching commercials, using this stolen (a federal offense, mind you) info to build giant human traps. And what was the final piece of evidence that confirmed that our theory was correct? Enormous, well-lit, CLEAN rest rooms!!!! For decades, the brightest human minds at NASA have tried to build one of these without success. It has to be Aliens!! After peeing, we fled. And satisfied our hunger at the next exit with some very affordable Chilis dinner specials and our fear with likewise affordable Margaritas. 10 PM. Sated, we drove the last 15 miles to San Antonio. Upon entering the San Antonio Loop, we soon learned the grim truth. Buc’ees was just a scouting outpost. The actual alien HQ was in San Antonio and the brand spanking new highway loop complex a veritable Hotel California Expressway– you enter and drive endless loops (we did for at least an hour) and but you can never get off. I kid you not – there were numerous exits that did nothing more than take you off one loop and put you on another. We must have driven past our hotel a dozen times before we managed to escape! Midnight. We got to our hotel, a structure with a lush green open air courtyard fenced in on all four sides. We looked up into the dark Texas sky, ready to exhale and congratulate ourselves on having eluded the aliens, only to notice a faux sky overhead. ..those alien bastards had us after all.
Believe The Captain when he says: you haven’t lived until you’ve peed in an alien restroom.
Yours from the brig of a Flying Saucer,
The Captain
Ps: Czhilispiel is Czech for Chili fest. And the Schlitterbahn is not, as we guessed, a type of beer or a highway for drunk drivers, but a world class waterpark. I bet Buc’ee lives there!
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