Wow, I’ve never had the “pleasure” of spending any time in Houston outside of an airport. The only place in Texas I’ve ever been is Midland. Let me tell you about Midland.

It’s Permian Basin oil country. The landscape is barren desert with endless oil derricks and methane fires stretching out to the horizon. Methane is natural gas. While the rest of the world worries about global warming and is trying to use it as a transitional fuel until renewables catch up with demand, in the PB it’s just burned off because it’s a nuisance gas.

There’s also a sting of sulfur in the air. So it’s a literal Hell in the fire and brimstone sense. I did rent a car on that trip. A tiny little Kia Soul. Everything else on the road was a pickup truck or some kind of industrial vehicle. Halfway through my stay there, a flash flood came out of nowhere and I had to move the Kia to higher ground before it got carried away. I have no desire to see that place ever again in my life, and am still traumatized at the thought it actually exists.