It's not always easy being CultureMap's resident alien (i.e., non-native Houstonian). Yes, it's true: I hail from the north. North Texas, that is, more specifically from the suburbs of Dallas-Ft. Worth. And while this gets me ribbing from friends and co-workers (especially during football season—see you in the playoffs, Texans! Oh wait...) generally I adore having the best of both worlds. With one notable exception: I hate, loathe and despise the boring, ugly, and resolutely awful stretch of highway that connects the two cities.

It was radio personality Charles Kurault who said, “Thanks to the Interstate Highway System, it is now possible to travel across the country from coast to coast without seeing anything.” Nowhere is this truer than along rural IH-45, a long, straight, flat road with nothing to see but open land, trees and the occasional cow. The highlight of my trip is spotting someone riding a horse on the service road (I've seen two), and at night, recklessly trying to make out the movies playing on the drive-in theater in Ennis.

The towns (and I use the word loosely) along the freeway are glorified truck stops, with the requisite Dairy Queen, Best Western and a gas station the extent of the offerings. When the Buc-ees convenience store is the marquee destination on a trip of over 250 miles, you are in a land that God forgot. I avoid exiting the freeway lest a wrong turn lead me to the children of the corn.

Boredom is actually the best of all possible outcomes on this trip. Excitement generally means something very bad and very expensive has happened. In the fall, I head through Huntsville white-knuckled, religiously scanning the road for wildlife ever since a Thanksgiving trip when my car was hit by a deer. (The deer would probably say I hit him, but I clearly had the right of way.) He managed to mangle the front corner of my ride so badly that it was in the shop for almost two weeks. Twice on I-45 my windshield has been cracked by rocks hurled by 18-wheelers. One time I had to swerve suddenly into the shoulder to avoid a ladder that had come unattached from the back of a pick-up truck in front of me and careened across the freeway. Either I'm cursed or this road is.

Every speeding ticket I have ever received was along 45, helping to pay for a squadron of shiny new police cruisers that every town with a population of 971 sorely needs. With no natural scenery to hide behind, after one police car pulls over a speeder, a second sits behind it, also with its lights on, ready to nab the first delinquent going 78 mph who assumed the cop was busy with some other poor unfortunate soul. I call it 'gang-ticketing.'

The drive is pocked with speedtraps so frequent and so blatant that it takes an hour driving south from Dallas before the speed limit sign finally says 70, despite the widened thoroughfare with three lanes in either direction. Who said speed limits need to be based on the logical road conditions? No one in Ferris, Texas.

Of course, every time I fill up my car with gas, my dog and my luggage and head north, it's a hell of my own choosing. It could be worse: I could be stuck at the airport.