Day 2. Boudin. Batteries. Houston. Air Conditioning. San Antonio!

Today has been a long day. The plan was to get up, drive to Houston (3.5hrs) get lunch with friends, drive to San Antonio (3 hrs) and hang out with friends for the rest of the afternoon/evening... but we ran into our first sign of car trouble.

This picture is my favorite from today.

We left LaFayette around 8:45 am, which would have put us in Houston, perfect for lunch time. On the way out we saw a crop dusting plane and lots of rice paddies. We stopped for gas and got some boudin,  a very tasty sausage.

Boudin

But the, the car wouldn't start. When I turned the key, absolutely nothing happened. I recently [three weeks ago] got a new battery and had it put in. The battery in this car is impossible to get to and the valvoline guys did it for 10$.  

[Not my actual car]

Anyone want to play "Spot the Battery"?  Hint: it's not the thing with the red terminal, that's the fuse box.

So I really didn't think it was the battery but I kinda hoped it was. We were still at the gas station so I flagged down a guy to get a jump, and this guy was amazingly helpful. We tried to jump it for awhile and got nothing. The guy starts poking around and we discover the battery cables are just loose. With him putting pressure on them, I could start the car, and we were on our way.

Houston

We had lunch with the Stablers and their new baby Colt 

We had lunch with Chris and Meredith. Chris had some tools back at his apartment so we decided to go ahead and tighten down the battery cables.

This turned out to be a huge blessing. We tightened down the cables, but in the process we noticed that the battery wasn't actually fixed in place, it could just slide about in its space. It looks like when the battery was replaced, someone broke the housing and the battery is just loose in there now. If we had hit a major bump or swerved or something, the battery would have slid and hit the drive belt. Had this happened while driving it would have severely disabled the car quickly. 

So Chris and I rigged up a bunch of zip ties to prevent that from happening. Picture coming soon.

All it all, it turned out to be a huge blessing that my car didn't start in Louisiana, because that led us to look at the battery, which led us to prevent what could have been a huge disaster.

Anyway,  now to leave Houston.

Everything's bigger in Texas.

Although, after we left Houston, our air conditioner started fading. We made it to San Antonio and we're with friends now.  I charged the car with freon and I've been running the car for an hour. It seems to be holding pressure, so we'll see what happens tomorrow before we leave the city and head into desert.

Good night folks,

Tomorrow, we head to Carlsbad, NM.