I found the middle of nowhere

Today I spent the day in the thriving city of Monahans, Texas. It's really just a dot on the map 45 minutes west of Midland-Odessa, struggling to stay alive after I-20 looped around the town and took away all the traffic that once streamed past the gas stations and businesses along the main drag. Obviously I didn't do this by choice and was sent their by my employer. One thing about working on railway projects all the time is that you are sure to visit some of the most out of the way places. This excursion came coutesy of TXU, who has retained the firm I work for to study the feasibility of adding some rail facilities to its Permian Basin power plant on the outskirts of Monahans.

To get to Monahans, I flew Southwest from Love Field to the airport in Midland-Odessa (or rather in the no-mans land between Midland and Odessa). Coming into the airport, one could plainly see the reason for the existance of this urban area on the nearly perfectly flat plains of West Texas: the landscape of mesquite, sagebrush and circular fields nourished by center-point irrigation systems was covered with a perfect grid of greyish-beige squares, each one containing an oil well at it's center. The flat plain of the great Permian Basin which was once the floor of an acient seabed is now one of the larger petroleum producing areas of the United States.

After meeting with the plant managers and others from TXU, and inspecting the plant on foot in the near 100-degree heat it was time for a late lunch at one of three restaurants in town. The choices were Mexican, Mexican and barbecue we were advised that the barbecue place wasn't very good. So Mexican it was. Just what you want after being scorched out in the heat and need to get back on a plane to Dallas later that afternoon. The food was actually pretty good and sat surprisingly well for the flight back to Love Field. Interestingly, during out time with the rental car from the Midland-Odessa airport, the price of gas had dropped 15 cents from morning to late afternoon.