Thursday November 13th 2003, Day 61/273 - San Antonio to San Angelo, Texas

Whilst there are obvious advantages to staying in a hotel (and I think you need to every couple of weeks), I think in general they suck when you are travelling. You don't get to meet anyone and yesterdays boredom was caused by that.

Anyway today isn't about yesterday, today is about going to meet our forum buddy, Andy H and his family. We caught the 8am bus to San Angelo and Andy met us at the terminal at 14.45 and took us to his house to meet his wife Jane and their 2 daughters, the very lovely Louise and Rosie.

We were made very welcome and treated to shepherd's pie and cold beer. It was nice to be able to kick back in the comfy reclining chairs and watch 'Coupling' and 'Faking it' on BBC America. Equally nice was to have some decent, sane, english conversation.

It's bizarre how you can feel so comfortable in a complete strangers house. The family made every effort to make us feel at home, but for all intents and purposes Mx and I are total strangers. I did go to school with Andy for 1 year, 17 years ago. He was a 6th former and I a mere fruity first former. I would guess the only time that we've spoken, in real life, is when he gave me a school fatigue, although we still need to prove that. To cut a long story short, we both turned up on the forum and I, seeing that Andy was living in Texas, put on some cheeky remark (as I'm prone to do) about how I would be travelling through Texas and could really do with using his washing machine. So from this small acorn conversations started and now here we are in their front lounge, drinking their beer and eating their food, with the washing machine whirring away in the background.

The Dukie factor, as a common bond, no doubt helps and plays a big part in us feeling comfortable, but the biggest factor is that Andy, Jane, Louise and Rosie are all so bloody nice. That and the chocolate biscuits we're troughing.