Welcome to my Travelogue!

It is my intention to share with you, dear viewer, impressions of my first trip through Mexico. I left my home near Washington DC on December 23rd, 2000, drove through the devastating ice storm which hit many central Southern states, and arrived in Texas on the 28th of December. I met Allen and Jo Reichler; my friend Stuarts parents, and headed south into Mexico for 10 days. The return trip to DC was uneventful, and I arrived home on January 16th, 2001.

Unlike previous attempts to share my travel experiences with family and friends on the web, I will simply include the highlights from my journal, rather than attempt to transcribe my entire travel journal. I think this will prove more satisfying for everyone, as this approach stands a good chance of actually being completed. In the interest of quick load times, all pages will have a maximum of 3 or 4 photos and their descriptive text. Someday, if I'm feeling really ambitious, I may burn a CD that would include all the photos as well as this HTML document.

Ready? Let's go!

Getting to Texas

I had planned on leaving on the 22nd, but I had a nasty bout with a stomach bug that had me laid up for a whole day, and traveling was out of the question because I couldn't venture far from a bathroom. I really hoped that this didn't predict any portion of my vacation. The weather was unusually cold -- we had snow and when I awoke the morning of the 23rd, the thermometer said 11 degrees.



After a dreary day of bleak gray weather, I was rewarded with a magnificent sunset. I made decent time to Abbington VA, where I spent the night.



On Christmas Day, I managed to cross Tennessee all in one day, which felt like quite an accomplishment. Crossing the Missippi River at dinnertime, I called my family on my cell phone to wish everyone well, and tell them that I missed them. I had Christmas dinner in a truck stop. It was perhaps the worst food I've ever had the misfortune of putting in my mouth.

The following day is when things got interesting. Zipping along through central Arkansas, East of Little Rock on I-40, in a light rain, I got the uneasy feeling that something was not quite right. As a motorcycle roadracer, I am pretty sensitive to what my wheels are doing, traction wise. My car was feeling a little squirmy, so I slowed down a fair bit, and discovered that the rain was freezing as it hit the ground, creating glaze ice. Some other motorists -- those not particularly in tune with their traction, skated off the road -- some at full speed. At the leading edge of the ice storm, there were as many as half a dozen cars off the road per mile.



Traffic slowed to a crawl, and people still slid off the road in droves. It was so slick that you could barely stand upright on the pavement.

All contents copyright Alan Lapp, 2001.