Mom and I are meeting in the largest city of Texas, today. We are here to apply for travel visas for an upcoming trip in June, to Moscow and Saint Petersburg, Russia.

Originally, we were going to fly and meet up at the airport, then go to our AirBNB before hitting the consulate to apply for the visa.

A slight snag was found, we would arrive around 9am, but couldn’t check in until 3pm. Also, I found that an Uber from the airport into town was about $30, each way. Ah, a solution, I can rent a car. Then we have somewhere to stow our stuff while we’re at the consulate and give us a bit more freedom traveling around the city. So, I placed an order for a rental car, $140 for the three days we’d be here.

A few days ago, I was thinking (a dangerous thing, I know). I was going to be paying $30 to park my car at Orlando airport, plus the rental. It would only cost me about $100 in gas to drive to Houston and back. I really didn’t want to put that many miles on the car nor drive that many hours, but I just spent more than a week laying in bed sick. So I needed to reduce my spending a bit, plus I had over 30 hours of podcasts accumulated since I wasn’t in the car listening.

I canceled the rental car, but my flight was non-refundable, so I just had to eat that.

I left out from home on Sunday evening and turned on the Uber app with a destination of Pensacola. That served multiple points; I would only get requests going in the right direction, any trips were extra money, and I had plenty of time and distance so pickups would help break up the trip. I am only able to Uber in Florida, so Pensacola is the furthest destination I could do anyway.

Driving up US19, I saw an orange light up ahead. My thought was “that’s weird, it looks like fire.” As I got nearer, I could tell it was a fire, a decent sized one too, but why would someone have a fire that close to the road? As I approached, I could see that it was a truck on fire. The back end was almost on the ground, either the axle melted or it was lost somehow, causing the fire. Passing, I could feel the heat all the way across 4 lanes and a wide median.

There were already plenty of people there, so I didn’t bother reporting it. I’m sure someone already had. Still, I didn’t see any police officers until I was past Tallahassee, then I saw a lot. They are rampant on that part of I-10.

I had a plan to jump up and travel through Alabama a little, capturing a few counties I haven’t visited before, I did have plenty of time after all. But just as I was contemplating that, I did get an Uber request. I saw that it was a 78-minute trip south west. What? That would put us into the Gulf.

Nevertheless, I proceeded to the exit, and pulled into the parking lot of a small combo Burger King and convenience store. Strangely, I had been to this store before. I had previously picked up a man in Panama City Beach and taken him to the Merritt Island area and he had wanted to stop to get a drink or snack, I just picked that exit because it was the next one after he asked to stop somewhere. Out of all the exits on I-10, that just happened to be the one I picked.

The passengers, a truck driver and wife, got in and I saw the route was going south west down some back roads, but not into the Gulf, thankfully.

I took about an hour and 20 minutes to drop them off. I headed back towards the interstate, that took a while to go through the small roads back the the highway. I did a quick google map and saw that I was about 10 hours until I would arrive at Houston airport, where I needed to pick up Mom at 9am.

But my diversion cost me a bit of time and now I had to haul ass to get there.

I was pulling into Houston just as the sky was getting light, meaning I left in the daylight and now it was daylight again. I literally drove all night.

My plan was to get to the airport then crash out for an hour or so, but I had not accounted for morning traffic. I arrived at the airport at 7:40. I checked my flight tracking app, her flight was early, now scheduled for 8:30. Oh well, no nap for me. I went ahead and parked and went in to wait for her.

I found her and we went to find food. It was still early so many places were not open yet, but we found a Whataburger and ate in. Pretty good food, but also I was hungry.

We then headed to the Russian consulate. It was in an office building. The security guard took our information and printed out passes for us and instructed us on the elevator. We had to select the floor we wanted from the panel that then told us which elevator to use, there was no control inside, it would only got to the floor already selected.

The consulate office had a few people in it, but not too many. The agent informed us that we since didn’t have an appointment, we had to go to a different branch, but he went over our applications first, Mom needed another previous job to be listed, already had 20 years, but that wasn’t enough. I had my computer so I could have made the changes he wanted, but I had no internet yet and certainly had no printer, so we would have to pay extra for the visa agent to make the changes.

The other office was only down the street a bit, so no big deal. We went in and were able to see the agent right away. She took our applications and re-entered them into her system, asking a few questions along the way.

Total was $608, for both of us. That’s as much as 3 weeks of AirBNB in Moscow and St. Petersburg. There was a $28.83 charge for photocopy. We didn’t need a photocopy and she only copied my passport, not Mom’s.

Unfortunately, the approval process would take about a week, so we opted for the return by mail. I was not going to drive all the way back just to pick them up.

Since we were not getting them while we are here, we really don’t need to stay 2 more days, but Mom’s flight home can’t be changed and I’m too tired to drive home anyway, so we are going to stay.

The visa application took a while, so it was almost time for us to check into the AirBNB, but the app was giving me problems, I couldn’t load the check-in instructions. I was able to send a text to our hostess, and we got in and we both crashed out for a couple hours.

Originally, I had hoped the approval would only take a day or two, then we could book our flights to Russia, but we don’t want to buy a ticket if we can’t go, we have to wait.

It is a bit strange, we are having to do things in the wrong order. We have our rooms booked and now our visas applied for, but still have no flights. Normally, you’d book the flight and then rooms and then any visa you might need. Most country’s visas are not this difficult to get.