Missing Stuff - Alabama to Texas

I just reinstalled the Wifi driver on my laptop and magically I connected to the motel next door.
After the big arsed battleship in Alabama I headed along Interstate 10 with all intentions of at least going through New Orleans but it was close too sunset and I didn't want to leave myself too much of a drive the next day to Fort Worth - about 900km's. So I went on the north side of Lake Pontchartrain through Baton Rouge and onto the I49. Almost falling asleep at the wheel I saw a sign to Bunkie, Louisiana that had accommodation on it. the interstates change in character from state to state. It seems every 5 miles there's at least 5 fast food outlets, 3 gas stations and 3 hotels along the gulf coast but when you get off that you could be on the Federal highway driving past Lake George at 3am. Now MattB gave me some great advise as I left, which I won't repeat here - at least until I leave the country :)  but is true. I was in the wrong neighborhood on the wrong side of the tracks at 12am, I headed to the other side into a much nicer place and came across a 120 year old heritage listed hotel which also had a pumping nightclub/party in it. That from a 40 gallon drum on fire in the street only a few blocks away. At this stage the plan was executing nicely.

The next day I found out the hotel was mostly booked by a clan that dates back to the 1600's in the US but goes back further than that in Europe. I read some of the speech and background info over breakfast. The names of some of the luminaries where quite startling including a former president. Really interesting stuff.

After around an hour of passing through some really nice country, Louisiana was unexpectedly beautiful, this happened:

That's the front right and back right tyres respectively. I thought I must have hit something on the road as they both occurred simultaneously and scared the shit out me. This was roughly just before off  ramps at Derry. With only one spare I decided not to  swap one out and headed along highway 119 (the bridge was out on highway 1 ) into the deep south. Asking directions I found out Natchitoches was the best bet for a tyre on a Saturday so limped there at 25mph although the front tyre went flat with 10 miles to go. One and a half hours later I was back on the road. My navigation software said I could make it with 20 minutes to spare to The speedway in Fort Worth. I pushed the car to between 70 and 80 mph for about 4 hours. The I20 is the busiest Interstate I have been on so I was weaving around a bit. Then this happened:

In the second shot that's a good view of one of my new sandals and the POS tyre brand that almost killed me twice. Luckily I had put the new rubber on the front and moved the old tyres to the back. When I say "old" they were brand new supplied by the dealer in Iowa and looked great. I don't think I amazingly hit 2 bits of road litter on the same day that stripped chunks of rubber off the tyres - and they are not retreads, and that type of incident has never occurred before in my driving history. That's 3 out of 4 tyres and it was now right on 5:45pm and the race started at 6pm. So I still had most of the greater Dallas and Fort Worth area to negotiate with a ticket burning a hole in my soul. Dallas is insane. There are freeways everywhere. I would almost begin to suspect that some oil baron had got into power and pushed the state and city into an end game that profited his family business ... oh wait...
3 wrong turns and probably an hour later I got to the top of the stairs with a corn dog in one hand and a beer in the other intime to see the cars come past in a slightly staggered order indicating I was a few laps after a restart. Wow. I had pins and needles for 3 laps as the sound and spectacle is really amazing. I Am not the biggest race fan but can appreciate a spectacle.