Texas..

If you look closely behind the sign, you can see the wingless fuselage of a jet airplane. I tried to get more of it in the shot, but I was in a serious hurry to get away before the owner came out and pointed one of his microwave weapons at my head. Or worse -- insisted on explaining his theories on how the United Nations wants to force everyone to get an H1N1 vaccine.

Anyway, I'm in Houston staying with my old friend, Harry Wiseman. Coming to Texas at the end of big trips has become a tradition for me. I did it in 1998 when I took an Amtrak here from Los Angeles after riding my bike down the Pacific Coast, and I came again in 2002 at the conclusion of my year abroad in New Zealand and southeast Asia. Harry and I watch TV and go to cheap buffet restaurants together. It's where I decompress.

In Australia, I picked up a battered hardcover copy of Mark Twain's "The Innocents Abroad," which is the account of a cruise Twain took to the Holy Land in 1867. He's awfully whiny throughout most of the journey, making fusses about everything from the poor skills of French barbers to the lack of luxury at Turkish baths. But I stuck with the book because I often felt the same way on the road, particularly when I visited some of the same places in the Middle East.

I read the following passage was while I was in a 747 flying from Sydney to Los Angeles. It's near the end of the book, after Twain and his fellow passengers reached Jerusalem on donkeys and knew they would soon board their steamship, the Quaker City, to return to America. They were relaxing at this point, laying on divans in their hotel and smoking.

"...[I]n time this fatigue will be forgotten; the heat will be forgotten; the thirst, the tiresome volubility of the guide, the persecutions of the beggars -- and then, all that will be left will be pleasant memories of Jerusalem ... memories which some day will become all beautiful when the last annoyance that encumbers them shall have faded out of our minds never again to return."

I wasn't on a donkey in the desert -- I was packed with 15 other passengers in a Toyota van. But some things about travel haven't changed much in 140 years.