Today was a weird day. I'm in Texas, and have been photographing some cars. When I travel to the US, I come in on a visa, and my camera equipment comes in on an ATA Carnet. I'm due to leave from Austin tomorrow, and because I'm on a very early flight, the customs office there won't be open to sign the carnet paperwork as I leave.
I was staying near San Antonio, so in order to get around this issue, I took my camera gear to the airport there and try to explain the situation. Despite having done this at other airports several times before, the lady wouldn't sign the paperwork. She tells me to go to Austin before it closes at 4pm, which I do because you don't argue with customs people since they often deal with idiots and therefore assume you are one too.
1.5 hours caning the Lexus V8 Megalith up the freeway, I'm at Austin, and... there's no one there because they've gone home early. A cop shouts at me for knocking on the customs office door.
1.5 hours blasting back to San Antonio for another go. I think there had been a shift change - a different customs officer takes one look at my boxes of knackered old crap and signs the carnet without a single question.
I love the US and, with the exception of this total bloody waste of time and fuel, I've really enjoyed Texas. It's mega. Absolutely tonnes of this, everywhere, too:
And, of course, the world-famous Texas Andalusian stallions:
Anyway, the upshot of this tiresome tale is that, after putting an ad on Pelican a few days ago, a nice guy called Steve got in touch with a replacement for my snapped throttle crank. We met in a parking lot near San Antonio airport. Steve gave me the crank, so I gave him a cheap polystyrene cooler of weird American beer that my work colleagues had kindly discarded in the back of the Lexus. Steve also gave me a beer bottle sleeve - a traditional ethnic product of Texas, or probably China.
I'm going to sneak the throttle crank out of the US without declaring it's enormous value. Hell yeah I will.
.........
