770 miles, 12hrs including stops. Almost exactly 1000 miles from Simon's house in Oceanside. The average isn't very accurate though: I was driving pretty slow at the very beginning, when it was storming, and again once it got dark and I was having to drive through construction zones. Calling it a night in a little town by the name of Balmorhea. The time zone shifts are helping me maximize daylight hours, which is nice. And tomorrow should be relatively short, I'm hoping to get to Austin while its still light out so that I can have a look around, although I'll actually be driving about an hour past that to get to Kyle's place. He and his wife are putting me up for a few days while I look for my own place.

Thankfully, today has been nowhere near as exciting as yesterday, although it was amusing racing the clouds for the first hour or two. When I was younger, I used to fantasize about finding the edge of the clouds, and standing on the other side of a wall of rain, watching it without getting wet, or maybe sticking a hand in and out. I've given that one up now that I better understand the tapering and cloud motion, but with the technology of the car, and the right relative speed, once can get fairly close to that effect :) Once I got past the wind and rain, I was able to see clear sunny skies ahead of me, and nothing but dark grey in my rear view for quite some time. A thin tendril of clouds caught up to me when I stopped to eat, sprinkling just a few drops on my car, but just when they thought they had me, I gunned it out of there, leaving them to weep on the poor souls with lighter feet.