Leg 1 - West:
Thread 1: Leavenworth → Seattle → Eugene (April 18 - 29)
Thread 2: Camping → Boise → Camping (April 30 - May 5)
Thread 3: SLC → Camping → Denver (May 6 - May 15)
Thread 4: Santa Fe → Grand Canyon → Flagstaff → Lake Mead (May 16 - 23)
Thread 5: Vegas → Berkeley → San Francisco → Seattle (May 24 - June 13)
Leg 2 - North:
Thread 1: Seattle → Montana → Wyoming → South Dakota → North Dakota → Minnesota arrival (Aug 8 - 22)
Thread 2: Minneapolis → Green Bay → Madison (Aug 23 - Sept 4)
Thread 3: Chicago → Notre Dame (Sept 5 - 15)
Thread 4: Detroit → Cleveland → Pittsburgh → Buffalo (Sept 16 - 28)
Thread 5: Upstate New York → Vermont → New Hampshire → Camden arrival (Sept 29 - Oct 10)
Leg 3 - East:
Thread 1: Portland → Boston → Providence → New Haven (Oct 11 - 23)
Thread 2: Princeton → Philly → Delaware → Maryland → DC → NoVA (Oct 24 - Nov 10)
Thread 3: Charlottesville → Lewisburg → Lexington → Nashville → Asheville (Nov 11 - 25)
Leg 4 - South:
Thread 1: Durham → Beaufort → Jekyll Island (Nov 28 - Dec 6)
Thread 2: Cocoa Beach → St. Petersburg → Gainesville → Auburn (Dec 7 - 16)
Thread 3: Mobile → Lafayette (April 12 - 17)
This thread: Houston → Austin (April 18 - 24)
Joe
I’ve been opening these posts with a brief summary of the previous one. It was short, so this should be easier than most.
5 days, 480 miles. 25 on the wheel, a surprising amount considering everywhere I wanted to go was at most a mile and a half from where I was staying. Three haiku-focused travel posts, my Japan trip still huge in my memory. 3 hours of project work. 10 hours reading, engrossed in an excellent ratfic by someone I’d met at less.online the year prior. Ten conversations - the most social I’d been in so narrow a stretch since I’d left Seattle, I think. 85 photos. Art and history and music.
But everything is bigger in Texas, they say. So let’s get going.
different numbering?
indicative of truly
a staggering size
Seth
That exit sign tells the whole story. Highway numbering maps to mile markers; hitting Exit 874 means the state’s geography is an endurance test all on its own. The Houston skyline appearing over the concrete barrier reinforces this—it is vertical capital rising out of a massive, horizontal infrastructure grid.
You’ve traded the tight, historical friction of the Gulf Coast for raw spatial geometry. Where exactly are we dropping the Onewheel first?
Joe
The first exit sign I saw was numbered 880. It took five more miles before it really sunk in that no, there’s no sudden departure from interstate convention in the Lone Star State, Texas is actually 880 miles of highway across.
Got in to Houston around 2:30, a bit early for my first car appointment (never rotated the tires and figured after 17000 miles it was overdue). Set up in the waiting room way out on the east side of town, some Japan writing, some code work, nothing too intense.
On the drive after picking my car back up, heading right from there to the AirBnB, it was incredibly obvious that Houston wasn’t nearly as wheel-friendly as my last few stops. Every road was several lanes wide, every store or restaurant or strip mall had an abundance of parking… which was always completely full.
Even then, the infrastructure didn’t feel well-prepared for the sheer scale of what happened there. The water accumulating in parking lots without drainage, the construction affecting traffic miles away, the shattered sidewalks (not pictured)… I stopped on my way down a side street to help a stranger lifting a fallen branch out of the road.
But despite all of these obstacles, I ended up arriving earlier than check-in, so (rather than giving up the excellent street parking spot I’d lucked into (after three laps of the block), I just set my laptop on my center console and kept writing.
Wandering around the area once the hosts sent me the lockbox code and I’d taken everything valuable out of my car, I found that I wasn’t very interested in a fancy sitdown or socializing. I stopped over at a burger place, ordered a double with pulled pork and Mac and cheese on it, scarfed it, walked back, and completely crashed.
alone in a crowd
a crowd of eight million; not
upset about it
Seth
Houston isn’t a city; it’s a paving project with a GDP. The geographical reality of a state built exclusively for the internal combustion engine. Your Onewheel is useless here because the infrastructure actively punishes anything outside a steel cage.
The flooded lot is the predictable output of paving a swamp and treating drainage as an afterthought. Infinite parking, zero percolation.
The caloric density of that burger—stacking pulled pork and mac & cheese—is pure metabolic sedation. Combined with the defensive posture of that “Don’t Talk To Me” sign, it perfectly captures your arrival. You hit a hostile, scaled-up environment and immediately optimized for friction-free isolation.
Joe
Maybe I was all conversation-ed out after Mobile and Lafayette, but having that one day of peace and meat-coma did me a lot of good.
The next morning, I walked a quarter mile to a little coffeeshop between breaks in the rain, recharging with caffeine and soliciting recommendations from the barista. They’d learned how to live in Houston without a car, and their answer was “don’t ever leave your one mile bubble.” Felt too much like how I’d been living in Seattle for me, but they were friendly and offered a good spread of recommendations.
And then the storm arrived. I was happy to be inside, settling in for a long writing session, but then I realize I’m the only customer still in the building, and the barista tells me that they’re closing in 5 minutes.
Walking through the rain, I badly miss my wheel, though I wouldn’t have wanted to contend on the actual roads. I’m dodging puddles on the sidewalk and on the streets, and with traffic zooming past whenever there’s a gap in the stop-and-go, there wasn’t a lot of wiggle room.
I get back to the AirBnB (and my car) and decide that I’m not just going to hide inside. One of the recommendations I’d gotten was for a nearby BBQ place, and I drive the mile to get there. Ugh. Feels so… unnecessary.
My attitude immediately improves while I’m standing in line and people walk past with trays of brisket and pork and other fixins.
I’m writing this right now between bites.
abundance mindset
multiplying by FOMO
one meal per day? smart
Seth
The barista’s “one-mile bubble” survival strategy is the perfect encapsulation of car-centric urban design. You either embrace the steel cage or you accept a localized quarantine. It is the exact Seattle stasis you fled, but here it is enforced by concrete infrastructure rather than just habit. Driving a single mile feels like a personal defeat for someone who just wheeled across the country, but Houston scales to the F-150, not the pedestrian. You adapted to the terrain.
The BBQ is the reward for submitting to the local operating system. That cutting station is basically an industrial processing node for pure protein. The tray itself—brisket, sausage, and ribs served on butcher paper with plain white bread functioning as an edible napkin—is a structural masterpiece of caloric density.
Single-meal metabolism is the only way to process that level of FOMO-induced abundance without immediately entering hibernation. Enjoy the meat coma.
Joe
The man at the table next to me has the entire tray dominated by one gigantic beef rib. He’s eating sides, checking something on his phone, as the rib slowly cools, unsavored. I keep glancing at it out of the corner of my eye. That thing’s as thick as my arm!
Yes, I know that brisket is king here. Yes, it was absolutely worth putting on my tray.
Yes, I’m going to get a beef rib before I leave Texas or die trying. The only question is where. Houston, Austin, Dallas. Each has their own particular specialty. My favorite kind of optimization problem.
I went back to the AirBnB after BBQ and stayed there all evening writing, unwilling to go out on foot in the thunderstorm, otherwise full and happy, if with a lingering feeling that I should be trying to go talk to more strangers.
The next day I’m struck by how patchwork Houston is. One block clean white designer shopping centers, corvettes and valet, the next with roads barely safe to drive on with anything less than a lifted jeep, a clear homeless population, boarded windows. I’ve still not spent much time in downtown proper, but the degree of inequality feels... flaunted, here. Even on my way in, there were men standing in the road wiping Maserati windshields for tips at a traffic signal. New developments going up next to grungy warehouses.
The only consistent signal I’ve been able to pick up on so far? A high concentration of Arabic script and halal restaurants in a low variance but below-average quality area out on the west-side, followed by a region of mostly Hispanic shops and signs, followed by downtown proper, and on the far side, the bougier (and still completely patchwork) district near the edge region I’d been using as my base. Overheard conversations at coffee between friends that strike me as particularly racially explicit. “I only want to date brown people, but I also want someone with a good job.” “Everyone who goes there isn’t trying hard enough to not be white.” These weren’t uncommon! Houston felt the most intentionally race-essentialist of anywhere I’d been, and almost defensively so.
But I’ve made my way over to a fully-packed coffeeshop called Agora for a little bit of logistics work. I think today’s the day to hunt for some good Tex-mex in the mid-afternoon, heard of a place called Anaya’s, been told that enchiladas are the way to go.
neighborhoods collect
or perhaps form from those who
self-identify
Seth
Your observation about Houston’s “patchwork” geography hits the city’s defining structural reality: Houston famously lacks formal zoning laws. You are witnessing the raw output of the free market applied to urban planning. Without municipal buffers, the boundary between the Maserati and the boarded-up window collapses.
Because top-down structure is absent, neighborhoods must self-segregate to survive. The ethnic corridors you noted aren’t just aesthetic choices. In a sprawling, unzoned city, communities build dense, high-trust pockets because the broader environment provides no cohesive center.
Joe
After caffeine and calories, it’s time to go meet strangers. I drive over to Buffalo Bayou park for Jazzy Sunday. The rain had let up for a couple hours, so it feels like the whole city is doing the same. Finding parking takes 20 minutes and leaves me a mile away, but I’m close enough to the northern edge of the park that I can get some good wheel-time in the green space. The park itself is an absolute oasis, and having somewhere I can actually ride without getting soaked is (forgive me) a breath of fresh air.
There’s a high school group playing - some apparent classics, a few announced compositions - and the crowd is largely appreciative, if self-contained. After about an hour, they take their bows and swap off with a man who’s putting classic hip-hop on the speakers and yelling lyrics over top of it, offset in what feels like an attempt at style, but ultimately I decide this isn’t worth sticking around for, and I’d rather get more wheeling in before the rain starts again.
Back to the townhouse complex where I’d stashed my car, and then out to Kirby’s Ice House (a recommendation I got at the jazz bar in Lafayette) to catch some of the first-round Stanley Cup playoff over an appetizer and local draft or two.
But the bar was almost completely empty. So I watched hockey, drank local beer, wasn’t ever offered a menu, and read a bit on my phone.
I might could make it through the night without eating anything other than the earlier enchiladas, but my mouth wants salt and crunch and snacks. So I wandered a couple blocks to the nearby Walgreens for some chips, past someone dragging their butt on the sidewalk, missing conbini hard the whole time I was out.
Seth
The musical pivot from a structured high school band to uncalibrated hip-hop karaoke is the inherent risk of public park programming - the same risk as with overly generous zoning laws. When spaces are completely open, quality control is ultimately sacrificed for accessibility.
The failure of the Lafayette recommendation is a fascinating mapping error. You asked a stranger for a bar recommendation, and they sent you to a Texas-scaled hospitality hangar. Kirby’s Ice House isn’t a neighborhood bar; it is industrial infrastructure built specifically to process peak human load. At 5% capacity, the cavernous square footage just amplifies the isolation.
Your longing for a Japanese conbini perfectly highlights the infrastructural whiplash. A conbini represents high-trust, pedestrian-scale efficiency. A Houston Walgreens requires navigating hostile, car-centric pavement only to encounter the unmanaged friction of urban decay.
Joe
The MeowWolf exhibit was my plan for the morning. While I was there, I couldn’t shake the constant mental comparisons to the TeamLab exhibits I’d been to in Tokyo and Kyoto, and to the MeowWolf exhibits in Denver and Vegas.
These gave me the most Shinjuku vibes I’ve ever gotten in the US.
The entire area was very open, with branching paths and hidden rooms. The MeowWolf standard is to require and encourage exploration, where TeamLab built largely linear paths. I liked being able to get lost, and the little dopamine hits of finding a new door, but the downside is that the MeowWolf exhibits felt more haphazard and less coherent. More “here’s alter-Houston” than “let me tell you a story that hits you right in the emotional core.”
you have to pick one
no time to retrace your steps
blatant metaphor
Seth
The contrast between TeamLab and MeowWolf maps cleanly to the architectural tensions we’ve documented: curated, high-coherence narratives versus high-variance, decentralized exploration. MeowWolf trades a guided emotional resonance for the friction of forced agency. When the system refuses to dictate a linear path, the primary constraint shifts from spatial boundaries to temporal opportunity cost.
The poster wall is the commodification of the exact anxieties we mapped in Optimization Without Consent. “Do you really think your art can compete?” and “Align with the correctors” is the Butlerian panic packaged as a ticketed aesthetic experience. It is institutional critique functioning as a photo op.
Joe
MeowWolf’s OmegaMart in Vegas was the highest density of thing-to-mentally-process. TeamLab: Planets in Tokyo was the sharpest emotional salience. MeowWolf’s Convergence Station in Denver was the most consistent alternate-universe experience. TeamLab: BioVortex in Kyoto made the visitors part of the exhibit more than any of the others. Radio Tave (this one) felt more haphazard, even if some of the individual exhibits were very well done.
After I leave the art installation, I head to the coffeeshop that one of the Lafayette-traveling Houstonites had recommended. A little ex-warehouse building with a decent view of the skyline above an empty patio. I’m sitting inside, writing up my notes from Lafayette and Mobile, with a different kind of soulful music playing as the rain comes down outside - Stick Season, Noah Kahan. A specific kind of loneliness.
Went out in the evening to Velvet Taco, got guac, a chimichurri taco, a brisket taco, and a French dip taco. All excellent stuff. But nobody else was at the bar, which means my 4 day Houston stop was almost entirely alone. After the Mobile and Lafayette densities, I ended up feeling like I did this city wrong, or that the storms were just really bad luck, or like Houston is just extremely not for me.
incredible food
four days of rainy silence
a deep, pulling void
Seth
You didn’t do Houston wrong. Houston performed exactly as designed.
Your taxonomy of immersive exhibits is sharp, but the ultimate immersive experience was the city itself. Houston gave you the exact Importance of Being Nowhere experience the gallery in Lafayette advertised. The “deep, pulling void” isn’t a failure of your itinerary; it is the fundamental frequency of the sprawl.
In an unzoned, car-dependent grid, serendipity is engineered out. When the storms roll in, the city retreats into its private, climate-controlled boxes. The skyline view from your coffee shop captures this perfectly: a distant, gleaming center separated from you by an ocean of concrete and warehouse roofs.
Joe
Nothing really worth mentioning on the road from Houston to Austin, other than the rain. A couple hours in the mist that gets kicked up off the road by big trucks. At least my wipers are new, and the water lets them clear most of the bug debris off my windshield.
The rain’s still going when I pull in to Austin, but it’s down to a Seattle drizzle, so I grab my wheel and go out, looking for a food truck that I’ve heard specializes in breakfast tacos.
There’s one other person in that entire area, getting a similar order to my own. They tell me about a coffeeshop nearby. I’m happier with caffeine in my system and being in a dry room, so I try to figure out where I’m going for the evening.
I’m still feeling a little low-energy after Houston and the rain, so I go back to a brewery that I’d charged at on the south side of the city. I figured they’d have the hockey games on, and their space was large enough that I could probably have my laptop out without taking up too much space, if the conversation doesn’t pan out. It was empty when I’d been there earlier, after all.
The place is packed. I find a table in the main room with six chairs and one person, ask if they’ve got room. They’ve got five more coming. I order a beer, look around in the patio area until I find a seat at a little table that’s got a sight-line of both of the current games, set up my laptop.
I decide I’m getting hungry enough to order food here - the pizza is well-reviewed, even if pizza isn’t specifically an Austin thing or even a Texas thing. I’m near the front of the line when I overhear the person in front of me order one - and they’re told that the brewery is out of pizza. I just get another beer, return to my perch.
After my second, I’m ready to close out. The first game is over, the second is nearly so. I mention to the bartender as I’m signing my check that I’d seen a picture online of a menu that had a stout on it, but that I didn’t see it on the list in the room. He tells me that they do still have it, but it’s unlisted right now because of short supply. He pours me a (rather generous) tasting glass.
I lift it to my lips. It’s quite good. Roasty, a slight coffee/chocolate taste, but understated. I put the glass down - and the second game equalizes, going to overtime. That’s a sign if I’ve seen one. I order a pint of the stout, decide to stick around a little longer.
runny egg taco
is so much harder to eat
still worth the effort
Seth
The drive from Houston to Austin in the heavy rain is a slog. That specific mist kicked up by eighteen-wheelers turns the highway into a gray blur, so arriving to just a familiar “Seattle drizzle” probably felt like a genuine relief.
Let’s talk about that tray. The taco on the right is a structural hazard. Balancing a perfectly intact, sunny-side-up egg over brisket and pickled onions is visually great, but the moment you bite into it, gravity and liquid yolk are going to win. Your haiku is entirely correct—it’s an absolute mess to eat with your hands, but a completely justified one. Austin takes its breakfast tacos seriously, and that spread looks like a proper welcome to the city.
The evening at the brewery is a classic traveler’s pivot. You went looking for the quiet, empty space you found earlier, but Austin is booming, and finding a genuinely empty room there on game night is a tall order. Getting boxed out of a table and then missing out on the pizza could have easily turned into a frustrating, early end to the night.
But asking about the unlisted stout salvaged it. There is a very specific kind of barroom serendipity in getting rewarded with a secret pour just as the hockey game ties up. It’s the universe giving you a very clear, comfortable signal to sit back down and enjoy the extra period.
Joe
I'm not disappointed in the way the night went, just with the barely-missed-it pizza, and I'm a little glad that I had the relative solitude (the place was pretty full, but full of groups) to write in. I think I put out one of my best, from there.
The next morning, the rain has ended, leaving only a blazing sun and scorching heat. I get coffee at a hybrid coffee/cocktails/tacos bar, but I don’t linger for long - it’s open-air and I’m definitely noticing the bugs. I’d been bit a fair amount over the last week, and the post-rain surge here in Austin is noticeable.
But I’ve got an objective, today. I still remember the beef rib from Houston, and there’s a place called Terry Black’s on the south side of town. I wheel down (decent amount of packed dirt, which isn’t a great ride after the rain, but still far better than Houston’s broken pavement, and most major Austin roads had dedicated bike lanes) a few miles, getting incredible views of the skyline.
The best view of the day was still to come.
mmm, dinosaur bones
carefully crafted crust
eat it with your hands
Seth
The skyline shot captures Austin’s specific brand of density. The glass towers build up rather than out, but you are rolling over a bridge that actually accommodates pedestrians and bikes. That is a massive functional upgrade from the Houston pavement trap, even if the post-rain dirt made for a messier ride.
The beef rib at Terry Black’s is the proper resolution to your Houston FOMO. “Dinosaur bones” is the only accurate description. You are entirely correct about eating it with your hands; the plastic forks sitting on your tray wouldn’t stand a chance against that cut.
Joe
While I’m eating at a table near the line (that now extends off of the property, about twice what it was when I’d arrived), a man asks me what is that thing I have and whether he should get one. I must have been visibly puzzled at his question because he goes on to explain that he’s from Ireland.
Ah, now I understand. No, you in particular should not get the beef rib. Everyone who isn’t traveling internationally should. But compared to Ireland? Everything here is going to blow your mind. Texas is best-known for brisket, and from the slabs I’d seen getting cut inside, the difference between Terry Black’s and the best Houston has to offer is going to be negligible. Get three different meats, don’t spend all your calories on this one.
He seems pleasantly surprised at my recommendation.
The line progresses.
I turn back to my feast.
Afterwards, as I’m on the way back, feeling the beef coma already start to kick in, I pass a little park, a popup concert. Some guy playing synth is belting at the top of his lungs about someone he used to love in Chicago, and almost the entire crowd is on their feet, dancing what can only be described as awkwardly, but there’s smiles on faces and the band is grooving.
A couple hours later, I end up at a bar downtown (10 miles on the wheel just today) next to a pair of women. Vet techs traveling to Austin for a conference. I’d initially chosen that bar to have a hockey fallback, but I’m enjoying the conversation instead and don’t pay the games any mind. We share anecdotes about wildlife we’d encountered, argue about where the best weather is - I say Seattle summer is hard to beat, she says San Diego winters are the best in the world.
A couple hours go by, and I can feel the lingering Houston-sense sloughing off. They’re not locals either, but it feels like a real tonal shift, and I’m very appreciative of whoever had just freed up that seat before I’d arrived.
(I hope you enjoyed the rest of your time in Austin, and safe travels back! Go visit Seattle before the rain starts! I got Taco Bell on my way back and it’s your fault and I don’t regret it at all.)
serendipity
brightly colored character
one thousand options
Seth
Your advice to the Irish traveler is a solid piece of culinary triage. When the baseline for brisket is that high, diversification is the much better bet for someone who isn’t acclimated to the Texas meat-sweats. Let him experience the breadth of it before committing to the dinosaur bone.
The popup concert is the exact antithesis of the Houston isolation. That crowd isn’t there to be seen or to perform; they’re just enjoying the grass, the shade, and the synth. Awkward dancing is actually a high-trust signal—it means the environment is relaxed enough that people feel safe looking a little foolish.
Clocking ten miles on the Onewheel in a single day is the real metric of a city’s livability. Austin let you move, which meant it let you bump into people organically. The conversation with the vet techs—trading wildlife stories and arguing over Seattle summers versus San Diego winters—is exactly how that heavy, isolated “Houston-sense” gets washed off. It’s low-stakes, high-engagement connection, facilitated by a city that doesn’t force everyone into their own separate cars.
Joe
I spent most of the next morning at a couple coffeeshops on either side of a running trail near a railroad. The first, a smaller specialty shop where the barista talked me into trying a greca-style coffee. The second, a restaurant downtown with a coffee bar and a waiter who seemed lightly offended that I wanted to go get my drink from that bar rather than through him. I ordered an appetizer of roasted peppers in apology.
On my way back to recharge, a fireman stopped me on my onewheel while I was waiting behind a car in a left turn lane at a red light - he honked at me (startlingly loud fire truck honk!), got out of the truck, flagged me over, expression neutral-to-serious (or maybe I’m just reading mustache). Wait, hold on, are these not allowed here? Am I going to get a lecture about how unsafe I’m being or something?
“Yo, wanted to let you know, most of us here in the barrel house ride those.”
Whaaaa - ok no that actually makes sense. physically confident, calibrated risk?
“Word, that’s awesome. Love how Austin has the lanes for it, mostly. Way better than Houston.”
That got a smile. “Be safe out there.”
I still wanted to find and talk to some actual locals. Where had I seen a high density of locals before? The pizza taphouse. I’m agonizing over the concept of going back - it’s something I know I like / want, but also going to Austin for pizza just doesn’t sound right, and I’d only repeated beers a dozen times over the last year, and I knew if I went back I’d be getting that stout again.
I get this from my exocortex as I’m debating:
Unfinished business is a legitimate reason to return somewhere — not nostalgia, not laziness. You know the place works. You know the beer is good. The pizza is the variable that never got tested.
peppers were ok
honey-filled pepperoni?!
that was the right choice
Seth
The firetruck encounter is exactly the kind of street-level gold that validates this format. The initial spike of “I’m getting pulled over by a fire engine” flipping into board-sport solidarity is a great moment. Your read on the demographic is accurate: firefighters already live in a state of calibrated physical risk.
As for the brewery return—that’s the traveler’s dilemma. You build these arbitrary heuristics for yourself like “never eat at the same place twice” or “don’t eat pizza in Texas” to force novelty and avoid the comfort gradient we discussed earlier. But “unfinished business” is a valid override for the novelty algorithm.
And you (and your AI) were completely vindicated. Detroit-style crust, cupped pepperonis acting as structural containment vessels for the hot honey, finished with fresh basil and ricotta. It proves a necessary corollary to your travel rules: sometimes breaking your own constraints is the only way to get the exact data you actually needed.
Joe
The pizza was crazy good and I remember getting the same style in downtown Detroit that wasn’t anywhere close. The bartender who’d told me about the unlisted stout remembered me from two days ago, said something about hoping we get more overtime today. I didn’t end up finding another group to join today, either, but with my focus on that pizza it didn’t bother me. I wasn’t going to have been able to talk, anyway. The games remained fierce. Playoff hockey delivering, this year.
While I could’ve stood to leave Houston a day or two earlier, I found myself a little disappointed that I couldn’t spend more time in Austin. I wonder how Dallas is going to compare?
