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You ever been asked this question before? I get it all the time. I’ve said a lot of different answers too. Not because I have that many different answers, more that I can’t really answer that kind of question very fast and unless you’ve got yourself some context you’d think I’m just telling you different stories. That’s one neat thing so far I’ve figured out in Texas – you never really meet the same Texan twice. It does feel like I’ve lived here almost a decade even though I’ve only been coming and staying here for just a year. Anyways, that’s a different story full of stories.

One thing that brought me to Texas was the heat. I don’t much care for the humid weather I was dealing with in the southeast United States, and I don’t much care for the winter weather on the north part of the USA. That really narrowed it down to me. I had spent about two years in Oklahoma finishing college, and the climate there was about the favorite to date. So that’s one thing that brought me to Texas. The dry, hot heat, unrelenting. Back in Oklahoma when I was living there I was driving a 1970 Lincoln Continental (hereafter: hoopty). Anyways me and my hoopty could easily be found on the side of the highway cooling down, both myself and the car. The car had a brand new radiator and even that beast couldn’t keep itself cool enough when it came to bumper to bumper traffic on the highway in the midwest. It also didn’t have A/C. And the drivers window wouldn’t work so great. It was a good time. It was a hot time, too, but it was also a good time. I have a 2017 GMC Sierra 6.2L Denali now and the roads are much .. cooler .. to drive on, anyways.

Another thing that brought me to Texas was that I was looking to live in a large city. San Antonio is a city made up of smaller cities, and certainly checks this box off. The city is massive, and still incredibly affordable and has a lot to offer for being a city of this size. I lived about 40 minutes north of Manhattan as well but I’m not really looking to go back to New York. Taxes there are a bit too much for my tastes and I just don’t really want to live near another New Yorker at this time. I also really like that San Antonio is as close to Mexico as it is, as at one point I was seriously considering a long stay in South America and this spot is at least closer. I’ve been told by some folks here that San Antonio’s a lot like Mexico without all the problems – so it’s like Mexico would be then under different circumstances. This was told to me by a Mexican that moved here and lives nearby the same gym I go to. He even told me it looked a lot like it. Sure, outside of all the signs written in spanish and beautiful arched facades, I really only can take his word on this. It certainly looks different from other places I’ve lived at and I’ve certainly lived in quite a few cities. It’s a good look, this.

Something else that brought me to Texas was that I noticed a lot of folks were moving out this way. At one point I was watching a lot of different people play video games on a site called Twitch, and it seemed like just north of here in Austin there is some kind of serious development with regards to a lot of folks moving from California to there, and also New York to there too. So, I get a lot of the benefits of living in Austin without having to deal with the people from Austin, here in San Antonio. For one, an apartment is still quite affordable, comparably. I did look there in Austin, but the prices were a good 25% higher on average going from my memory. Also I don’t like tolls so much.

Texas also seems to have its own version of everything, too. Theres Whataburger to replace McDonalds, and HEB to replace Walmart and Wegmans. Texas editions of vehicles .. you get my point. If you don’t, then that’s fine go ahead and skip the paragraph, or not. But, are you starting to see the picture yet?

I’m living in a city of cities, so I can take a vacation while I’m on vacation, in a state where I’ll never meet the same person twice, where there’s a state brand of everything! I came here for the variety! My whole life I’ve only known the East Coast, except for the two years in Tulsa I spent largely studying my ass off trying to get that 3.96 I graduated with, only for it all to have gone away quicker than I could have graduated. I actually left to go back to the East Coast less than an hour after they handed me my diploma, and I guess I just wasn’t done here is all.

I wanted to go back, actually I never really wanted to leave. Family had fallen on some tough financial times about half way through my education in Tulsa, so I spent the next decade helping out where I could – close by. They are very far away from that situation now, but that’s just what you do for folks who now live in their own home with a retirement that’s well planned for them and not having any outrageous struggles that they’d’ve been in before that.

So another thing that brought me to San Antonio instead of another city in Texas besides the lower rent was that I did have a friend here. Note the past tense, not all things work out for everyone. Really, the idea of moving to a Texas city was a lot in itself to me and the thought of being able to make new friends easier by knowing at least one person in the area before going there was initially something that I was thinking was a good thing. This is a poor mindset for moving to a place though! I didn’t really know that moving here – I’ve met more folks just by looking for a job.

Speaking of jobs, one thing that also brought me here was that there seems to be a large culture centered around wrestling. I’ve always had an inclination to the sport, only it just never really was the only thing I was doing. Mostly this was because I was in the 300 – 340 lb range for over the last ten years. I didn’t even watch the stuff. Even more interesting about being so close to the border here is that you get a lot of crossover between American wrestlers and Mexican luchas and the whole thing is pretty cool. I even managed to join a gym here for a few months, feeling the risk was reasonable after having lost over 80 lbs in 2022. Training was going pretty good. I learned a lot from a few good people there. Then I got kicked out of there, no specific reason given to me, just kicked out, no contact. Guess I’ll never know, and that’s fine. There are other places out there but at this time the place I was training at moved to the other place I was considering training at. For the time being, I just go to the regular gym and work for money. Some day I might go back and train but for now I’m just fine not having to deal with that. One thing I did learn – a fella could pick this stuff up in his fifties if he wanted to.

Another thing that brought me to Texas is the expanding manufacturing industry here, specifically automobile and semiconductor manufacturing. Usually I just tell folks that computer chips brought me here, for lots of reasons. Mostly it’s the facial expressions, the look on the woman’s face at Scarlet’s by the airport here was priceless when I told her “computer chips brought me here”, I guess people have a lot to think about this. I mean sure, about these days computer chips bring people about everywhere so it doesn’t seem at first glance a great reason to move to San Antonio. Apparently, there’s about ten or so manufacturing plants for Samsung about to spring up in ten years just north of Austin. Or maybe it was a ten billion dollar plant. I don’t know, ten something. Point is that the kind of work I’m used to – manufacturing – is expanding and growing in the area. Electric cars are also being manufactured here. Tesla is making the Cybertruck here in their Gigafactory in Texas. It’s a very beautiful and stunning plant, by the way, I highly recommend the plant tour they give during mass interviews if they’re still doing those.

One other thing that brought me to Texas what that I always heard they drive fast here. I can certainly confirm that not only do they drive fast – there are generally more lanes in the highways and thruways than there are stupid drivers nearby. That was one thing that caused me lots of issues in North Carolina. Folks drive around like the outside of their car is made of bubble wrap and they can’t pop a single bubble. It’s nuts and it drove me nuts. Every single turn was made at less than 5 miles per hour. Every single time you tried to turn into oncoming traffic the cars had spaced themselves so critically apart from each other that it was too close to jump in line without potentially cutting the person off, but just at the point where they were not too far apart to then potentially cut the next driver off – it was maddening. It was just some of the slowest, poor driving I’ve ever seen. Like they all drive around living in a dreamlike trance state. I’ve never been one to be subject to road rage, instead choosing to quietly dwell on the poor driving skills of the folks around me in that state. Not saying I’m much better but if you haven’t experienced North Carolina driving I’d recommend it as much as i’d recommend a rusty saw removing your head from your neck. Highway driving was awful too, the entire state merged a mile or two back rather than zipper merging, and when they weren’t doing that they were consistently 15 mph below the speed limit on the highway in predominantly the left lane and there certainly were not enough lanes in the roads there. They also had a strange inclination to go the exact speed limit at all times for no apparent reason. Then they would get mad when they got passed on state highways and speed up and tailgate the fuck out of you after the passing zone. I just don’t get it! I’ve driven in a looooot of states and North Carolina is worse than Massachussetts. I think Mass. is a little more dangerous driving sure, what with folks dead-stopping to let someone into the road in a 45 mph zone, but damn if North Carolina didn’t have them beat everywhere else. So anyways, it’s just not like that here in San Antonio. Sure there’s normal congestion traffic occasionally, and the paint really doesn’t stay on the roads, but the flow of trafic is pretty good and comfortable here.

Sure I guess I could also say things like “the people are nice”, but I never liked hearing this myself. Let me rephrase that – it’s a good thing to hear! But, in general I think it’s a poor way to reinforce ones decision when used in conversation. We live in a high trust society, about every single person you’re going to meet is going to come off as nice, in general. Also as a general rule, if you’re looking for nice people, you’re probably going to find nice people. There’s a pretty good tendency to find what you’re looking for – wherever you happen to be! Anyways, that’s a bit of a separate story too. So, another good reason to pick the middle of Texas to live in is that it’s really only 2-4 hours to get anywhere you want to go in this state. The gulf is 2 hours away, Houston is 4 hours away, Mexico is 2 hours away, Austin is 45 minutes away. While 4 hours is kind of stretching it for a day trip – the point is that it’s a good location to make unplanned day trips and while most things are a 2 hour away flight, it’s substantially easier to make a 2-4 hour unplanned drive than it is to make any flight any time here in the US.

Another reason toward the timing to get over to Texas was that after over two years of insanity and restrictions I was just done. Done dealing with pharmaceuticals, done working, done doing just about anything. The main reason I left the first place I was working at was because they mandated their workers to be injected with what had been re-classified that year as a vaccine, despite it very much being a therapeutic level weak genetic modification. Had I stayed, and a lot of people did, I would have either gotten fired or alternatively I would have been roped into fucking absolute insanity. Not that I have a problem with the drug delivery system itself, but I’d rather see it get put to use in humans for useful things other than what it was introduced for. Like weight loss. Or Alzheimers prevention. Even just calling it what it actually is would be reasonable to me. Tons of other shit besides what it was. So, I let them know that as soon as they remove that requirement from their job postings then I might consider working there again. In the intervening two years, the requirement’s been removed, despite being told at the time it never would be. Anyways, I then went to a place that only required people be tested. But that didn’t necessarily fix anything. Restrictions were still in place and I was just hopping into someone else’s insanity. So it was great to me when I first started visiting here and everywhere was like downtown Raleigh, and nobody seemed to be talking openly about the bullshit that drove me the hell out of there.

This isn’t even a complete list, so far. It’s just the details of what I remembered in an off day here in Texas. A couple of other reasons I can’t even remember right now are something for business, and something for land, and something for the politics, but I don’t even remember those details right now. There were a shit ton of things that weren’t getting sorted through by sitting at a desk in North Carolina, I sure figured that out. I’ve got a good three years of logs going back to about September 2020 where I was writing something about moving to Texas though, so I was definitely planning this for a while. Probably even longer, I started logging things around early 2019 or late 2018 but I don’t feel like digging those archives out and checking out what I was planning there. Such is how things go though!

I wanted to keep a reminder to me somewhere about the best tasting beans I have had to date. Not saying it’s the tastiest recipe for beans ever made, just for me specifically, top five easily beans I’ve ever had. This includes beans served at the Tex-Mex places I’ve gone to here in Texas so that’s saying something at least. I have not really kept good track of the amount of places I’ve had beans at, overall either. If I had to guess it’s about a dozen or two places over the years. So anyways, being in the top 5, the recipe lets me have these things easily at home. The recipe is:

1.5 Lb Bacon

1.0 Lb Kidney Beans

0.5 Lb Black Beans

1-2 Tbsp Harissa or Berbere

3 Chicken Breast

I’m pretty sure the recipe can do without the chicken breast, but I was mostly looking for a way to make both beans and chicken breast taste good for me. I did! So, all I did was take the dried bags of beans, add it in a slow cooker, then lay the slab of bacon on top and stuff the chicken in on the sides. Then I poured in about a cup of water or so. Then I covered the meat with the Harissa seasoning (I used it from a brand called Spicewalla). After that I just let it cook for a few hours on high, then more on low, then I got tired of the strong smell of the stuff cooking while i was trying to sleep so I took it out and popped it in the fridge overnight.

Next morning I took it back out and set the cooker back on high, then moved it back and forth between medium and warm through the day. I stored the stuff in the fridge for the 2nd night too, because the great smell disturbed me when I was trying to sleep. So the third day, I noticed it didnt really smell any more. I also saw that the water was gone and there was basically just liquid bacon fat left.

So I let it cook all day on low, and then overnight on warm, and then the fourth day I put it back up to medium. It was starting to show that it was going to burn from basically frying in bacon grease at this point, the water was gone a while ago and the remaining fat was going into the beans.

By the end of the 4th day there was no liquid left, and the beans were amazing. The bacon and chicken had completely broken down at this point too, the entire meal was incredible to me. I paired it with some broccoli and chicken legs. I can say I’ll be cooking this again as soon as I can, the meal continued to get better day by day, I had been taking a cup or two away per day to eat at.

A modification here could be that if you wanted to cook the beans without adding much water, you could just take away the chicken breast and then cook down the bacon for a bit until the liquid part separates and then add the beans to that! I also think I might have used harissa seasoning instead of berbere, but either one makes a good pot of beans. One thing that is important is to make sure the bacon is not spiced itself! This will change the flavor quite a bit. Cured or uncured bacon is just fine, I had a little more luck getting the fat to break down completely with cured bacon.

In the end it kind of looks like this:

In a few weeks I’m going to start traveling pretty often. First on my list is Green Bay, Wisconsin. The location was picked for me quite randomly and I’ve made an educated guess or two. I have spent a lot of time traveling over the last year since leaving my last place of work in North Carolina. Initially I did quite a bit of flying in and out of San Antonio & Austin, TX areas due to there being a large airport in both those cities. This would have started in about June or July and ended when I finally decided to move here in August 2022.

Since then I have made a road trip out to Denver, Colorado for about a week. While there I had stayed at an airbnb location. On the way there I stopped in Missouri to see some family that I’d been planning on seeing for about a decade. After returning from Colorado I stayed here in Texas for a few weeks. There was a number of places I stopped at along the way, all logged elsewhere around that time, offline. While staying in Texas, I had spent a good three weeks in early October checking out San Antonio a bit more in depth. It’s essentially a city that’s made up of quite a few other cities, and I often describe it as much when talking to folks here.

At this time San Antonio is celebrating in what is called Fiesta San Antonio. I don’t much know where the tradition came from, this is quite a new experience to me. Essentially folks just throw parades, events, carnivals, fair’s all across the different cities in San Antonio and they have this thing where the people that go to it look for and wear Fiesta Badges reminiscent of something they took part in, or for performing some task, or sometimes just from having traded or paid for one – whatever the reason folks just cover themselves in these things as a way to hype up the festival. One of the more lively events here at this time was a parade on the riverwalk. I didn’t get a chance to see the parade directly this year but did spend some time on the riverwalk last week and found there to be quite a number of folded up plastic chairs for onlookers to see the parade floats that were being stored along the riverwalk under a building i had passed by at one point.

Anyways, my other part of traveling last year was going and traveling to New York through driving there in my truck. The sights were alright and I didn’t hit any snow. I do enjoy the driving so it was nice. I had also logged the bulk of this traveling offline and am only gonna summarize it here this time. So in New York I re-visited the southern Hudson Valley area, where I grew up, and visited a few estranged friends and stayed with family. It was a wonderful time.

After visitng New York on this long car trip I drove south to North Carolina, to re-visit the place I had spent the previous 6 years at. I stayed with family during this time and celebrated christmas here as I stayed for quite a few weeks this time. Since about January I have mostly just vacationing locally – a thing you can do when you live in a city of cities so you can travel while you’re traveling! I’ve also been logging most of this offline since then, too! I meant for this blog to be a place for me to write out the places I get to check out when I’m traveling away from San Antonio, at least at this time and so I would expect that come another week and a half that I’ve got some things to say about the Green Bay area!

So I’ve decided that the best way for me to learn the city is by going to random gyms inside of it. Learn the city means a lot of different things to different people. For me, I’m quite literally just talking about the roads. Simple. So yesterday I went to two different gyms: A Planet Fitness at 4400 Fredericksburg Rd and a Gold’s Gym at 255 E. Basse Rd Ste 310.

I first got to the Planet Fitness, walked in, got to the lockers and went to change and realized that I had forgotten my shorts and shirt. I’d taken the weekend to rest and for some reason had assumed that I had put these back in the bag earlier in the weekend. Anyways I drove back home, got two sets and put one as a backup in the truck. Then I drove back and worked out for 2 hours. 1 hour on the bike, and 1 hour on the treadmill. Both machines were in good condition and not bad. I then went and got a tan. I didn’t realize the tanner was on a timer, so I came out and accused the machine of being broken to the woman at the front desk. She told me they were on a 4 minute timer (not 3 or 5!) and so I said, “Okay thanks, I’ll head back now” and did.

After the tan I came back out and the 3 folks at the front desk were engaged with an angry old white dude complaining about not getting his moneys worth for something surely too much to ask for to begin with. I got the attention of one of the three visibly frustrated employees and asked for a hydromassage, during this short conversation the dude seemed to have calmed down and left. After the massage I went back, changed and then left. Overall not a bad gym, none of the folks there seemed overly creepy. The new years crowd is still rolling through. The parking lot was a small shopping center, not the greatest neighborhood but the facade of the building itself looked okay. I recall seeing an empty beer bottle standing up on what would appear to be the drivers side of an empty parking lot on my way out. No complaints here. The next stop was Gold’s Gym.

The whole place is located in a wonderful part of town, I think it’s called The Quarry. If not, it should be as a lot of places there indicated “so and so” at The Quarry. The upscale stores in the area along with the nicer restaurants indicated that the area was designed for a more luxurious living pace. The gym itself was next to a cinema inside a parking lot that rivaled the size of a mall parking lot. There were even a few parking lot security guards roaming around on bikes and what not. I couldn’t say it was the highest of the high end, like I didn’t see a Gucci store there, but definitely for the more bougie folks. Anyways I walk in theres a woman at the front desk, who tells me to have a good workout, so I say “thanks” while I scan the card and walk over to the locker room.

The one thing I can say about the entire gym is that there appeared to be very little concern overall for cleanliness, but it seemed to go with this specific gym. Like one could imagine the kinds of people that frequent it are the kinds of folks that don’t generally concern themselves with the messes they make, often as if they don’t make a mess at all. While I’m okay with that, it’s more of an observation than a stance and anyways the thing I noticed immediately was that there was only a sauna in the mens room. I was a little aggrivated by this because the place was advertised as having a steam room and steam rooms are my much preferred choice when dealing with these things. Anyways, I went and changed, noticed the floor was quite filthy, wet in a few spots. There was a guy that was frustrated a few lockers down from me, I overheard him muttering “god-damn i cant believe it” or something as he was fumbling with his drink bottle. So, I put my bag on the bench and he apologizes for taking up so much space, because he was also taking up the little alcove off to the side as well I guess. I said it was no problem I’d just take up the other half the bench, there being only two of us present at the time there and I needed a place to put my bag to ruffle through the contents and get my stuff out. So I changed, checked out the showers which were huge and nicely tiled, then went to the 2nd floor where all the working out is to be done apparently.

Up there there were free weights on one side and machines on the other. I went to the side with the machines, and sat on the recumbent bike and exercised for an hour. During this hour there was a dude on the bike in front of me who was one of the new years crew .. these folks stand out readily because they try a little harder than most folks and take more pictures. Anyways it was entertaining to watch him go while I sat there mostly just listening to music. He was pushing 140 rpm at times on that bike, for reference I burn more calories at about 40-45 rpm on a recumbent bike with a little more resistance in an hour, to the tune of 20% more per hour. Anyways, he wasn’t overweight, but had a pair of man tits that he covered up with a loose fitting jacket and it was really funny to watch his entire upper body flop around as he exercised as hard as he could on the bike, man-tits sloshing to and fro at the 100 rpm right along with him. Unfortunately it was one of those sights that was hard to avoid as the bike I was on was directly behind him and to the side.

Outside of the fella, there was some stretching mats off to my right a few folks would come to, and the bike also had a great view of the parking lot with a partially visible San Antonio skyline in the distance and it was nice to see this. I finished with the bike, and got some water, and then went to a treadmill, on the way there I got checked out by a pretty good looking pale brunette shortish irish chick on a treadmill further down. For reference, I’m a 6 foot flat, 255 pound blonde Western & Eastern European mix with a muscular build and heavily built legs and a decent tan, also adorable, and I can’t say I can blame her as folks doing aerobics seem to have an inclination for checking out people a bit more often. Anyways I got on the treadmill for about half an hour and was done exercising for the day .. totaling about 2000 calories according to the machines this day. So I got some more water and then when back to the locker rooms. I took a shower and then went into the sauna, which was my first mistake of the day apparently.

So I get in there and immediately I notice it’s just an electric heater dressed up with rock adornments that probably weren’t actually rocks at all. The rooms wood, so at least they got that right. There was not nearly enough space to sit down, only seating on half the rectangular room. Theres a wall with no seats, a dudes there just exercising and panting heavily and seemingly inappropriately in the corner with no seats. In the other corner a dudes just chilling in full clothes including shoes, they both were wearing shoes. The room wasn’t nearly hot enough to be considered a sauna and the floor was filthy. So I walk in in a bathing suit and covered in water and just sit down. In the fifteen minutes I spent in there, 4 or 5 other dudes walked in, all in fucking full clothing, nobody even took a shower. There was only one other dude that broke a sweat besides me in there during this time and it was the dude that was doing pushups who was the only one to leave during that time.

Anyways we all cram ourselves in there like sardines, strangely so because the room was certainly large enough to hold more than double the 7 of us in there or so, everyone wearing full ass clothing and not sweating besides me. The sauna is largely not just about going into the sauna, for reference. Sure the hot air is comforting, but the whole experience of the sauna is that you are to open up your sweat glands with hot water before going into it, this allows you to sweat for the duration in which you are inside of it, you do this with hot water from a shower or the like. Then you sit there for no less than ten minutes, sweating your ass off, then you exit and take a cold ass shower to immediately close your sweat glands. I did this. Everyone else during this short moment just wandered in wearing full ass clothing like off the street and I guess it’s, for me, about the most bizarre sauna experience I’ve ever had. Like they wanted to experience what a sauna would be, rather than go into the sauna.

Anyways, I got a shower on my way out of there and went to my car in the parking lot and left. I probably won’t be returning to this gym, mostly because it’s needing a steam room. The lower end recumbent bike I was on was in good condition, at least, and the medium end treadmill was in decent condition. If I do go back, it will be to check out the very nice area as it seems to be a place where one could come across some quality people rather easily.