Railroad Tracks & Other Urgent Matters

Over the weekend I went out into the wild west to work on a chapter for my next book. You would think a girl could rest on her laurels and just be done with it after “Food Heroes,” but alas… someone’s got to put food on the table around here.

(If you want to see the first of many ranch tours I’ll be putting on this site, check out the Photos page!)

There was a lot of this. Beautiful, beautiful this:

Which was soon rudely interrupted by this:

U.S. Border Patrol.

And then I had a bit of a panic attack. There were dogs running around the cars wildly. And a lot of men in official looking clothing.

“Calm down,” my pesky brother said.

“But I have a rifle in the back seat!” I said.

“It’s in a locked case. We just came from the airport. What do you think, we’re the first people in Texas to have a gun in our car?”

And so we rolled up and I rolled down the window and the officer said, “Wedudoxb iincalie aduboe syoehgo?”

And I said, “W-w-ha-a-t?”

And he said, “Whaf sogo duypfy sifpyis?”

And then I launched into a monologue about how we’d just come from the airport but we had come from different states and we were just driving down, and my brother was from New York and I was coming from Berkeley but I was originally from New York and just live in Berkeley some of the time for various reasons which are hard to explain but I was just driving through from the airport and why was the dog jumping on the hood of my car and I’m really sorry…

And then my brother cut me off and said, “First time in Texas!”

And the officer said, “Oh yeah? Great! Well welcome. Have a nice day!”

And then I stared straight ahead and pressed the gas pedal and my brother shook his head and we drove in silence for twenty minutes.

And then we came upon this:

Beautiful twinkling railroad tracks. As far as the eye can see.

I know because I got down on the ground to see how far the eye can see, and it goes for as far as the eye can see. My eyes at least. Especially my left one which is weaker than my right.

And then my brother walked away down the railroad tracks because he needed some space.

And I said, “well I need some space too!” so I walked in the other direction.

And then I got scared cause it was getting dark so we got back in the car and drove in silence again. But it was pretty so it didn’t matter.

Meanwhile, I have a poll that requires your urgent attention. I have a step by step guide on how to butcher a Javelina since I think it will be useful to you, should you ever want to learn how to butcher a whole animal. So depending on how you feel about raw meat, you may or may not want to check back in, in a few days.

But my question is, do you want to learn how to skin it too? What about field dress it (this involves guts)?

It isn’t an inspiring site to see for everyone so I thought I’d ask first. But it may be useful when you’re sent out onto the frontier and have to fend for yourself.

You’ll thank me then, you’ll see.

Take the poll!

[poll id=”3″]