El Alamo Park

Bear with me, I'm going somewhere with this.

It's the classic causality dilemma that has stumped philosophers for centuries, confounded scientific communities and regularly crops up in pub discussions, recurring in rotation alongside 'which local team is doing best at whatever locally-popular sport' and 'dude, we should totally open our own bar'.

I've sorted it.

Obviously the egg came first. There were dinosaur eggs FFS. Nick FTW. STFU H8rs.

But this is a facetious answer. Obviously when people ask 'what came first, the chicken or the egg?", they are referring specifically to a 'chicken-egg'. Well, 'people', even with these parameters properly defined, the 'paradox' is still easily resolveable.

It was the chicken. Eggs are classified according to whatever laid them; this truth evident each time you slice the top off a boiled chicken-egg and DON'T find a baby-chick-foetus inside. Aside, of course, for that one traumatic childhood experience which is why Woody doesn't eat eggs.

Ergo, whatever laid the egg that the first actual chicken emerged from wasn't a chicken, but rather a mutated mess that had it away with an equally genetically-distorted fustercluck. Their passionate bonding into what was likely a particularly hideous beast with two backs resulting in the formation of the very first 'chicken', which later laid the first 'chicken-egg' and, thus, breakfast history was made.

So, why write all the above? Two reasons: firstly, there's very little to write about 'Day 4' of our trip and I had space to fill. But secondly, the reason WHY there's very little to write is because, much like the 'chicken egg', Day 4 was very much defined by what spawned it. Day 4 was the definitive 'day after the night before', with every move we made and every breath and step we took suffering from the 'sting' (didya see wot i did there!) of the copious drinking undertaken on Day 3.

We woke late, only a few hours after falling asleep, but just-about managed to get out of our motel rooms on the stroke of the 11am check-out time. We then went for an unenthusiastic breakfast at IHOP. Given this acronym breaks-out to 'International House of Pancakes' I've always been somewhat perturbed that they don't seem to exist outside of the USA (you know, 'internationally'), and after tasting their wares this frustration will be only exacerbated.

Today's plan was to reach Amirillo, Texas. It was Mark's turn to drive and, both objectively and in context, he did well. We stopped only once at a McDonald's for some food. I had a Sausage/Egg McMuffin, since McDonald's here has an all-day breakfast menu. Woody had chicken nuggets, made from chickens that were descendents of the very first chicken born from the non-chicken egg, but couldn't finish them so Luke and I helped out. I think Mark had chicken nuggets too and I don't remember what Luke had, but I'm sure he does so there's something to ask about when we get home, since this blog does to an extent negate the need for the standard 'how was your holiday' line of questioning.

After McDonald's, the drive continued. Mark decided at one point to deviate from the interstate to travel down a section of Historic Route 66, as we have been doing sporadically over the last few journeys. After a while this 'road' became seriously historic, devolving from tarmac through potholes to become a rough dirt-track. A car passed us in the other direction and whipped-up a rock that struck our windscreen, causing a small crack. In our zombie-like state we barely reacted, but probably need to do something about it.

We eventually made it to Amirillo. We tried to find a motel in the downtown area but, despite much tedious searching, didn't. Feeling we'd had our fill of the Amirillo 'experience', we drove out to the town outskirts and found a cluster of hotels near the interstate. Ordinarily we'd have compared the meerkat to find the best price, but in our exhausted and hungover condition we opted to stay at the first place we found.

We checked-in and then collectively (though separately) lay on our beds in silence for a while. We later decided we should have some dinner but also that we couldn't be arsed going anywhere so ordered-in Chinese food. We ate in the hotel's 'breakfast room', encountering spoilers for the following morning. I had sweet and sour chicken, which annoyingly came in the battered-balls form instead of the Cantonese 'with-veggies' style, so did nothing for my developing scurvy. Everyone else had a stir-fry, some of them finished it. I made a great joke involving a fortune cookie, but you had to be there.

Luke announced that he would like to write a blog entry, but Luke says a lot of things. Still, by transcribing this intent he might feel compelled to follow-through. Peer pressure might work too; come on Luke, all the cool kids are doing it!Read more