Alpine, Texas

I'm starting this blog to keep our friends and family in the loop while we live in Alpine, Texas. Hopefully Wes will contribute, but as he told me, he's trying to hang on to what's left of his solitude, which according to him was stripped away when I moved into town. Thus, for some reason this means he is going to keep everything a secret, or something of that bizarre nature. But for those of you who know him, I don't think this comes as shocking news. In the mean time, I'll try to give you an objective view on Wes and on our life here in West Texas. And for those of you who are not family I realize the above might be a little more confusing, but I shall explain: I (Sheila Molina) moved with my cousin, Wesley McCann, to Alpine, Texas in the spur of the moment and decided to enroll in the MBA program here at Sul Ross State University. Wesley moved here because he wanted to live in the middle of nowhere in the hopes to build an adobe house someday. This little town of Alpine is located just over 400 miles west of Austin and has a population of just over 6,000 people. You can find more on this little town here at wiki: Alpine stats etc.

Monday, December 8, 2008
The drive to West Texas from Austin is a long one. The speed limit is 80mph and the trip should take about 7 hours in any "normal" vehicle, but Wesley drives just under 70 because his truck "is too old and can't handle it, so just shut it!" And although his Toyota runs well (if you're not including the fact that it burns a quart of oil every 1000 miles), I believe him, quite frankly, that he shouldn't speed along I-10 because his pick-up feels too fragile. After about three hours into the trip, we reached the desert. Passing us going the other direction were enormous strange alien objects on massive truck beds. They appeared to be monster antennas, fat on the bottom and very skinny at the top, I'd say about 10 stories tall, but we still had no idea what these foreign objects were. I took a gander and pointed out that they were shaped just like antennas and must be for the tops of buildings, Wesley believed they were headed to NASA. Reaching 4 hours down the road we were wide eyed at the giant wind turbines lined across the hilly horizon. We weren't close to them, but even from far away we could feel their massive statures as though they were bigger than city skyscrapers. We concluded that the previous "alien antennas" we had seen earlier must be fins to the wind turbines.
For those of you who don't know what west Texas looks like, well...er, there isn't much to see but sand, cactus, tumbleweeds, and a shack every once in a while. However, the views are beautiful, especially if you enjoy a long view with a few small mountain-like hills, and the above description of course. We laughed our way through the first four hours and enjoyed the landscape, but little did we know what desert weather would bring us. Rainclouds looked as though they were forming ahead of us, with gray clouds gathering low to the road in front of us. I pointed out that it looked as though it was going to rain, or that perhaps it was already pouring in front of us. As we grew nearer, the clouds appeared more "sand-like" in nature. I asked Wesley, "What in the heck is that? Is that rain!?" Wesley was a little confused because it didn't look like rain, but then again we both knew that is didn't look like sunshine either. Wesley being a little more familiar with the climate quickly realized what we were approaching and gasped, "Oh my gosh...it's a sand storm!" Yes, we went through a sand storm. We were also right about the rain, however, we didn't get torrential downpours like the desert usually sees. I've never felt stronger cross winds and Wesley didn't attempt to drive the truck over 45mph. It pushed us all over the road and looking back on it I think to myself now, "Why didn't we just stop the car?" But we had to keep going, and besides, it's much more exciting to live on the dangerous side of life, right?
We arrived in Alpine just at 7pm. I could see the university as we approached the city, the academic building roofs are outlined in white twinkling lights. Wes drove slowly through the two main streets of the town so I could get a feel for the place. We drove up to the house, dropped off our bags and took back down into town, expect for this time we were on foot. (I should point out that everything in Alpine is not but a 5-10 minute walk.) We grabbed a pint of beer at the local pub, owned by a German man, named Harry's Tinaja. There we met the local electrician, "Moon Dog," who was also enjoying himself a cold one on this Monday night. And no, I am not joking about his name, it really is...Moon Dog.
So enough said, we made it through, and now we are here in Alpine. More pictures to come. I'll blog more later on our first week and I'll also put up some of Wesley's quotes that I'd think you'd enjoy. Here's one in the meantime, or as I'd like to call it, "Your Moment of Zen."

Wesley: "I like to dig and shovel dirt, it's male therapy."