Houston, we have lift off.

Don't Mess with Texas.

it says on a sticker on the door as I stumble into the hostel reception past a veranda with "Live and Let Die" piped over a Tannoy. It's all big and hot and as a result seems quite empty for America's fourth largest city. The cardboard cutout downtown skyline on the hazy horizon I glimpsed as we touched down took an age to enter the third dimension and stop resembling a Truman Show backdrop as we chugged through rush hour traffic on a bus calling itself the Bush Express. I have little more to say as since arriving I have just slept.