I hope you’ve had the chance to have a friend that makes everything an adventure, who is keen to get off the beaten path to see what’s out there, who still laughs at every ridiculous thing that ever happened.

My friend Carlos is that kind of friend. We’ve known each other forever, approximately, and have had more than our share of good times. We’ve laughed together until we had tears in our eyes, and we’ve shared hard times, too, that also brought tears.

And, so this day: we were driving around outside of Austin, pretty much lost, taking skinnier and skinnier roads just to see what we could find. And we found an abandoned house. An abandoned house, without a No Trespassing sign, which was even better. And, there beside what used to be a window was this hulk that used to be a chair.

Later, that same afternoon, we stopped in at a roadside beer hall, where a chatty man struck up a conversation with us. “Say, where are you folks from?” he asked us. Over and over, he asked us. I played it straight (I know: that wasn’t like me at all. It must have been the heat.) but Carlos gave him a different answer every time. Old guy never seemed to notice. Later, a couple of beers (for us; way more than a couple for him), he tried to sell us the bar and the town it was located in. We declined. Then, even later, he confided that it was a nice enough place to drink, until night when the “cockroaches” showed up. Once we realized that was a racial slur and not an observation from the field of entomology, it seemed like a good time to leave.

Hays County, Texas
photographed 8.8.2009

PS – If you want to see Carlos almost pass out from laughing, ask him about the time I rented a van….