Carlsbad - Austin, Including the Bloody Woman Incident

When the headlights quit working at 4am in the out-outskirts of Austin, Jack knew just what to do: he pulled the home over for a two-hour rest, resuming with the rising sun. When the bloody woman crawling on the side of the road flagged us down, Jack again knew just what to do.

No stranger to horror movies, he knew the hiding attacker would jump us from the rear, trapping us between himself and the bloody woman. Therefore Jack swung the home around in a way that placed the crawling figure behind us. With our escape route clear, he directed her to our side entrance door. She was coherent enough to follow basic orders, but not coordinated enough to make the doorstep on her first try. She was shaking and moving slowly -- probably in shock. Even before Ed had a chance to offer her his comforter, Jack sped us back onto the highway and began his gentle line of questioning: “Who did this to you?” “Why are you lying to me?” “Holy God, if you don’t start telling me the truth, woman.”

Up to this point, I had been asleep on my back bed, confident in my travel companions’ situation-handling abilities.

Groggily making my way to the front, I witnessed some more of what Ed later correctly dubbed the “good rescuer, bad rescuer” routine. Her story had her in a single car wreck on a highway several miles from where we found her, sometime within the past six hours. The not-small twig hanging from her swollen lip attested that she had, ahem, covered some ground.

Ed coaxed her husband's info out of her and politely called him with her whereabouts (in a moving RV with three dudes somewhere in Texas) and condition (not stellar). Husband said something about her skipping her anti-depression meds and going for a head-clearing 3 a.m. drive, which was confirmed by our call to the hospital a few hours later. Meanwhile, Jack worked on getting to the heart of the matter as we drove about fifteen miles to the next town. After waking up the local EMT we handed her off, snapped a photo of the ambulance, and collectively shook the heebie-jeebies out of our systems.

In the outskirts of Austin, we got the headlights fixed, which for some reason meant replacing the starter solenoid. Upon learning the gist of our travels, the mechanics decided that the Airstream needed a nickname, and provided us with a name as they applied a sticker with said name on the front of the RV. The winning moniker: The Power Probe. They were really excited about it, so we left it on until we hit the next gas station.

The State Capitol Building in Austin is bigger than the U.S. Capitol Building. Ed Ratledge and I found this out on the tour the next day, after spliting training matches against the Chinese FIVB team. Jack was resting from all the previous day's excitement -- probably not sleeping well on account of the murderous attacker still following us. Ed and I also found out that Texas can NOT secede from the U.S. if it desires, and that the Texas flag is no different from any other concerning its positioning relative to the U.S. flag. These are rumours that are actually believed by many Texans. Another true thing about Texas is that a young female attorney who somehow defends the state is really attractive -- she shared an elevator with me and Ed.

Once in Austin, we managed to make two separate new groups of friends who each took us boating on Lake Austin. We were jumping from a giant rope swing one day, and hopping from our boat to a pontoon boat serving margaritas the next. This rope-swinging / margarita drinking was only made possible by the kindness of the Austin populace, and by the volleyball playing of Jack and Dave in the qualifier, where we uno'd out. If life hands you rope swings and margaritas...