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Travelogue:
Cruise and Texas,
September 2011
By Roger
W. Reini
By date:
Prologue
This is the story of a trip to Florida and Texas
in September 2011, a partial repeat of a trip from a
year earlier. That trip was enjoyable, but it was
not as enjoyable as it could have been or should have
been because I had a cold and was recovering from
it. Some parts of this trip were be the same as
before: planned visits to Weeki Wachee Springs (time
permitting) and a cruise to the Bahamas on the Disney
Cruise Line. Other parts were different: the ship
was the new Disney Dream instead of last year’s Disney
Wonder; and I didn’t visit Key West or the rest of the
Florida Keys. They’re quite a distance away, and
they’re worthy of a trip all on their own. Also
different was the Texas trip, which involved not one but
two class reunions.
The seeds of this trip were planted last year, shortly
after I returned from my first cruise. Even with
the remnants of the cold, I enjoyed my experience, and I
wanted a repeat. In October, I booked a cruise for
the week of July 4 and put down a deposit. After a
few months, though, I decided that I didn’t want to
cruise during that time and rescheduled it to
September. I planned my trip as a 2-week stay in
Florida, with the cruise in the second week. But
then came word of plans for a high school class reunion
in the fall, in September or October, timed to coincide
with home football games. It turned out that the
September date was better for me, and I advised the
organizer accordingly. And when the September date
was chosen, I knew I had to alter my plans. The
week of vacation before the cruise would now become a
week and a half of vacation after the cruise.
Reservations on the Auto Train based on the original
plans were cancelled.
In the weeks and days prior to the trip, I became rather
concerned about tropical weather and what it would do to
the cruise or the reunion. Hurricane Irene went
through the Bahamas and up the East Coast, cancelling
the Auto Train service for several days, and I didn’t
want a repeat during my trip. It also disrupted
the Disney Dream’s cruise that week; the trip to Nassau
was really rough, I would hear, and the trip to Castaway
Cay was cancelled. Fears that it would be off
limits for several weeks proved unfounded, though, as it
was in operation again starting with the following
cruise. And plans for my high school reunion were
finalized. And now, I pick up the travelogue
starting the Sunday before I left....
(Jump to the first day of the trip, September
9, if you wish)
September 4
A week from
now, I will be in Florida, awaiting my chance to board
the Disney Dream, then boarding her, then setting sail
on her. The packing has begun, at least for the
carryon bag. The serious packing of the clothes
will probably begin later in the week. Two days
earlier, I’d bought some small trial/travel size items
for the trip: toothpaste, sunscreen, hand sanitizer,
etc. I also got a long-handled lotion applicator,
allowing me to apply sunscreen to my back (I
remembered the sunburn from last year’s snorkeling and
didn’t want a repeat) and some sunglasses that also
had reading glasses built in; a rather ingenious idea,
I thought. And now I continue to watch the
progress of hurricane Katia. Will it pose a
threat to the East Coast? Models suggest that it
will curve out to sea and not threaten the mainland.
For now, I still plan to take the Auto Train on
Saturday.
September 5
Today is Labor Day, a day off from work for
me. Fortunately for me, but perhaps unfortunately
for those involved, it was not a day off for workers at
Best Buy. A camera I had intended to take on the
trip had developed a malfunction and could no longer be
trusted to operate properly. It was the Olympus
underwater camera I got last year in anticipation of
last year’s cruise, and when I tried it again recently,
it leaked. The problems it was now experiencing
may be related to that leak. Add to that its
annoying tendency to take the occasional picture that
ends up corrupted and irretrievable, and I figured it
was time for a new camera. And so up to Best Buy I went,
looking for a new model. A Fuji model seemed
interesting, but its replacement battery was not
available. Olympus had newer models than mine,
some not quite as capable, but capable enough for what I
would be doing. What’s more, all of the
accessories I had from before would work with this
camera. Several minutes later, I was home charging
the new camera and hoping I wouldn’t regret the
purchase. I wasn’t too happy about having to get a
new camera, but I would have been much less happy had I
discovered this on board the ship.
And speaking of the ship, hurricane Katia is forecast to
curve out to sea and not threaten the Bahamas or
mainland at all; the only thing they’ll see will be
choppy seas, which will be past by the time I’m down
there. But there’s a new tropical wave off of the
coast of Africa that bears watching.
Back to the camera: it will have to go back to the store
for exchange. A camera capable of operating
underwater did the one thing such a camera should never
do: it leaked. It leaked in a sink. It
didn’t leak a lot, but bubbles were coming from places
they shouldn’t have been coming. I returned it and
got another; it also bubbles from the same place, a
place where there isn’t an actual seal. Places
inside the actual seal (away from the edge of the
cover), meaning the battery and memory card, remained
dry in both cameras. Maybe I didn’t need to return
the first one. I should still keep close watch on
it, though.
Wednesday September 7
Two days before departure, and I’m still
monitoring the tropical weather. Tropical storm
Maria has formed in the Atlantic, and it has the
potential to be near the Bahamas during the
cruise. Impact? Too soon to tell. Best case,
nothing will happen at all. Perhaps seas will be a
bit too rough to allow some expeditions to take
place. Worst case, there will be a direct hit
where we are prevented from pulling into ports and/or
have really rough seas.
Yesterday, I decided to get an inexpensive watertight
bag to serve as an underwater camera housing for the
Olympus camera. I thought it best to go with the
belt-and-suspenders approach, two levels of
protection. Those bubbles from the edge of the
cover still concern me.
In the evening, I packed my main suitcase, and then I
lowered the back seat backs in my Mariner to get more
room for everything. Only one bag remains to be
packed, the carryon bag, and that is halfway packed now.
Thursday September 8
There has been constant light rain in Detroit
since yesterday afternoon. The forecast calls for
rain the entire way down to DC this weekend. It
looks like I’ll be driving through some of the remnants
of tropical storm Lee, which hit Louisiana and sparked
brush fires in Texas. This part of the country
doesn’t need the rain; it’s Texas that really needs it!
I’ll still need to monitor the path of Maria, for it
could very well affect the cruise. Fortunately, it
did not appear to be strengthening; it might even be
weakening. And my departure to Texas could be affected
by whatever Nate does. If it hits Louisiana or
anywhere on the upper Gulf coast as a major hurricane,
I’d be driving through the aftermath -- or I’d have to
make a major detour north to avoid the aftermath.
Top
Friday
September 9
Miles today: 232.2
Miles so far: 232.2
I had awakened in the middle of the night, around 3 AM,
to use the restroom. But for some reason, I
decided to check my e-mail, which led to a check of
Facebook, and I ended up awake for some 45
minutes. That may have been a mistake, for I
attempted to get some sleep but had a hard time nodding
back off. I know I eventually did go back to
sleep, for when I awoke again, the clock said
6:15. I had to scramble to get ready for
work. There wasn’t time to finish packing my last
bag; I’d have to return home after work to take care of
that and retrieve other important items, such as the
Auto Train reservation confirmation, the cruise
contract, my medicine, etc.
At the office, I mailed two bills (ugh) that would come
due during the cruise. I checked e-mail that I had
not had time to check before leaving for work. One
message was from the Detroit
News, a regular mailing telling what was in
that day’s paper. Today, I learned, the paper
included a special section on the 10th anniversary of
the 9/11 attacks. I had been interviewed for this
section about the VCR tape I had unintentionally made of
the attacks as they happened (I had been recording the Today
show that morning because Tracey Ullman was appearing -
I got her appearance as well as a lot more than I
bargained for). I’d been led to believe the
section would appear on Saturday, but it appeared
today.
Work proceeded more or less normally, a fairly light
day, which was all right by me. I had a meeting
with my boss and another co-worker where we described
future training plans as well as who would fill in on
some of my duties. I didn’t bother taking lunch
today, using some of that time to look at the results of
tests done on warranty part returns. After backing
up my data as I usually do at the end of every week, I
went over to another building and brought two warranty
return parts, one for my supplier to review and the
other to the person who should have received it in the
first place; it had come my way by mistake. With
my working through lunch and with time put in yesterday,
I had effectively put in my time for the week.
Time to head home for final packing.
When I got home, I retrieved my medicine and finished
packing my carryon bag. Did I have my passport
(yes)? Did I have the train ticket confirmation and my
signed contract (yes and yes)? Did I set up what I
needed to record on TV (yes, I hope)? After calling to
activate a replacement credit card, and after switching
to a key ring with fewer keys on it, I set off from the
house around 2:45. I stopped at a truck stop near
Willow Metropark for some snacks and a final check that
I did indeed have my passport and my good camera (yes to
both). The drive down I-275 and I-75 through
Monroe and Toledo was uneventful; I spent much of that
time listening to the Underground Garage on
SiriusXM. Then I got onto I-280, went over that
fancy new bridge near downtown Toledo, and made my way
to the Ohio Turnpike for the drive to Youngstown.
I stopped for an early supper (remember, I’d not had
lunch) and gas (for the car) at a turnpike service
plaza, and then I continued eastward. There were
occasional rain showers, but nothing lasted very
long. Soon I was passing through Lorain and Elyria
and the southern part of Cleveland.
Around 7:20, I exited the Turnpike at the last exit in
Ohio, paid my toll ($10) and looked for my hotel.
But it wasn’t where I had expected it to be, close to
the turnpike. I drove further north; still no sign
of it. I finally pulled over, hooked up the TomTom
GPS, and searched for the hotel. It was a few
miles away, not where I’d expected it to be at
all. It guided me there, and then I checked
in. Up in my room, I hooked up the computer and
took out a few things I needed for the night. It
was then I realized that I’d forgotten something at
home: a refill for my checkbook, which had only three
checks left in it. And I had more than three
upcoming bills to pay during the trip. There would
be no way to realistically get the checks to me, even if
someone could go over and find them in my house.
I’d have to stop at a post office on the road and get
some money orders.
Would tropical storm Maria be a threat to the cruise?
The latest forecast had it heading well east of the
Bahamas, so a direct hit seemed unlikely. But
nothing is ever certain with tropical storms. I
would be monitoring the forecast tomorrow and on Sunday
morning, for sure! And what did I do
tonight? Nibbled on some snacks from the hotel
vending machine; took a shower; worked on the
travelogue; read the PDF version of today’s Detroit
News; watched a college football game on ESPN;
and started to read the e-edition of the New
Scientist magazine on my iPad.
Top
Saturday
September 10
Miles today: 331.3
Miles so far: 563.5
I fell asleep during the second football game on ESPN,
then popped awake during the night. Thanks to the
clock in the room being some 10-15 minutes fast, it was
only 3:30 when I awoke, not 3:45. I couldn’t get
back to sleep, so I checked e-mail and Facebook, then
logged into one of my Macs back home to see if the
programs that were supposed to record last night
did. They appeared to record properly. Now
one of them was the final episode of Torchwood:
Miracle Day. I converted it with an eye
to retrieving it on the road and watching it later
on. The conversion went quickly, the copying to my
iDisk less so. The copying FROM my iDisk to my
laptop went very slowly, so slowly that it would not
complete before I had to hit the road, so I cancelled
the copy. I wouldn’t be able to watch it until
after the cruise.
When the breakfast area opened at 6, I went down and got
my meal, which included a waffle. The area was so
busy, all of the tables were filled; I had to take my
meal back to my room to eat. A little after 6:30,
I was on the road. Waking up so early this morning
made it a bit difficult to stay awake at times, but I
managed. It wasn’t as bad as last year on the way
back from Florida, but I did stop at the rest
area/service plazas along the way. I passed the
Somerset exit on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, the exit
closest to the Flight 93 Memorial site, the site where
many good people gave their lives to stop some bad
people from killing many more good people in Washington,
DC that Tuesday morning 10 years ago tomorrow. I
had visited the site in 2007, when the temporary
memorial was in place. I wouldn’t have time to
visit the site today; it was probably just as well,
because today was the formal dedication ceremony of the
first part of the permanent memorial. Former presidents
Bush the younger and Clinton were to speak there today,
and the required security presence was not compatible
with a casual visit while passing through.
My route from Breezewood on was identical to last
year’s: down I-70 to US 522 through West Virginia and
into Virginia, then Highway 37 to I-81 and then
I-66. When the Michigan State football game
started at noon, I tuned that in (via Sirius, not WJR)
and enjoyed the first half, a bit of a Spartan romp on
Florida Atlantic. When I got closer to DC, I
recognized the turnoff for the Fairfax County Parkway
and took that down to Highway 123, at which point I
relied on a GPS to guide me in the rest of the way to
the Auto Train station.
After getting checked in, I went to the small
convenience store to get some lunch, which ended up
being a turkey panini sandwich. It was pretty
good, but some of the cheese ran and fell on my pants,
leaving a stain that Perrier wouldn’t take out.
The store had some seats where people could eat their
meal, but they were all taken when I got there. I
started my lunch standing up but was able to sit down
later when one man finished with his meal. Then I
visited the restroom and found a seat in the waiting
area. Last year, there was a college football game
on the monitors in the station; today, they showed CNN,
which was showing Bush 43’s speech at the Flight 93
memorial ceremony. The station seemed little
changed from last year; I didn’t bother taking any
pictures as a result. The train ride might be
different, as I was traveling by coach this year.
I checked for the latest forecast on Maria, and it was
good news. Maria was becoming very disorganized and
probably wouldn’t much of a threat during the
cruise. It was also taking a path well to the east
of the Bahamas, which also meant the East Coast would be
spared.
At 2:30, I went out to board the train. My car was
2312, my seat 59. Initially, I had a seat to
myself, but later someone came down and sat next to
me. Our car was not full, though, so he found a
seat to himself later on, and I got my seat to myself
again. Around 3:40, we pulled out of the station
to await the connection of the car cars, and we were
under way before 4. I recall passing through
Quantico and Fredericksburg, Ashland and Richmond.
I read the Washington Post, checked e-mail and Facebook
during the ride.
I had selected the second seating for dinner, the 7 PM
seating. My dining companions were from Vero
Beach, returning from their summer home in Ashtabula,
Ohio. On the table were flasks of water and what I
thought was apple juice. Only after pouring a
glass and taking a sip of that apple juice did I
discover it was actually white wine. Oops! Now I no
longer drink alcohol because I’m a Bahá’í, and
Bahá’u’lláh forbade the consumption of alcohol.
This was the first time I’d drank some alcohol since
becoming a Bahá’í in 1994, although this was inadvertent
and unintentional. After that sip, I didn’t touch
it again. It was interesting that my instinct was
to identify it as apple juice rather than wine; perhaps
I should develop a new instinct, to smell it before
assuming anything. I did enjoy the salisbury steak,
mashed potatoes and mixed vegetables, though, as well as
the ice cream for dessert. Then it was back to my
seat. Rango
was playing in the lounge, but I didn’t feel like going
there to watch it. I read from the eBooks on my
iPad before attempting to go to sleep for the night.
Top
Sunday
September 11
Miles today: 70 (est.)
Miles so far: 633.5 (est.)
On train rides in the past, I have complained about
difficulties getting a good sleep in the sleeper
car. Well, I got better sleep those times than I
did overnight in coach. I couldn’t find a
consistently comfortable position in those seats.
I did get some sleep, for I do distinctly remember
dreaming about our house in Texas and how it would shake
every so often. In reality, it was the train that
was doing the shaking. By 5:46, I was up for good,
and I paid a visit to the restroom, after which I went
up to the dining car for breakfast. Tonight’s
light breakfast was Special K, a bagel, a banana, and
orange juice. This was indeed orange juice, not a
screwdriver or Harvey Wallbanger.
Our train had made very good time overnight -- too good,
in fact; we arrived at the station at 7:30, before the
station opened. We could not leave the train until
the car portion had been separated from the passenger
portion, and that wouldn’t happen until the station crew
came on duty. And so we sat for more than a
half-hour before we could exit. It was over an hour, in
fact; not until 8:35 were we able to leave. As I
went inside the new terminal, I made my way to the
restroom, and then I found a seat. The TV’s inside
were carrying CNN and Fox News coverage of the 9/11
remembrance ceremony in New York, where both President
Obama and former president Bush the younger were
present. While I waited for my Mariner to be
unloaded, I saw a spooky sight: while Fox news was
showing footage of the South Tower being struck by the
plane, I saw a real plane outside on approach to
Orlando. The perspective made it appear that the
real plane was heading toward the towers -- very eerie.
AN ASIDE: Clearly, I and every adult here knew the
significance of this day in US and world history. I’m
sure many were aware of and could remember quite clearly
what they were doing 10 years ago this day. This
morning, I was on a train and had just arrived at my
destination; back then, I was at work in Dearborn,
having just come back from a trip to the ATM, when I
heard the first radio reports. I was back at my
desk, trying to learn more, and the network and the news
websites had bogged down with heavy traffic from
everyone wanting to know what was happening. But
soon we learned about the second plane and then the
Pentagon. Work continued for a while, but then it
came to a halt as the news worsened. People
gathered in the halls to watch CNN on monitors. I
went home to get a portable TV thinking I’d return to
the office, but once I was home I got word not to bother
coming back that day. There was no way any work
could realistically be done, not after what
happened. And I’d unintentionally recorded the
whole thing on my VCR. That evening, I attended a
special devotional and prayer gathering called by the
Bahá’ís of Canton Township. This evening, though,
I’d be on board the Disney Dream. END OF ASIDE.
The terminal area emptied as vehicles were delivered and
claimed. So far, mine was not among them. To
be honest, I was not in urgent need of my vehicle.
If this had been noon instead of 9 AM, I would have felt
much differently; hurry up and deliver my car, I would
have been thinking. But my number was called
around 9:15, and I had plenty of time to make it to Port
Canaveral. I left the station and found my way to
Highway 46 where I turned east, but I got confused by
the signage in downtown Sanford and had to make a
U-turn. Later, I had to hook up my GPS when I grew
concerned I’d missed a turn. Fortunately, I
hadn’t; in fact, I was just about to come up on the turn
when I stopped. I was not lost.
The drive to I-95 was uneventful, and once again, I got
the feeling that I was back home in Texas. The
types of trees and bushes, as well as the occasional
armadillo that became roadkill, reinforced that
connection for me. Also reinforcing it was the
number for the freeway to Port Canaveral, Highway 528;
the presence of a “Clearlake Road” off of 528; and the
temperature and humidity. Once I reached I-95, I drove
down until I reached the turnoff for Highway 528, which
I then took east to the port and to Cocoa Beach.
As I drove this morning, I was bouncing around between
three programs: A repeat of American
Top 40 from September 1971, a special edition
of Breakfast with the
Beatles that had a peace theme and an American
theme, and Fox News coverage of the ceremonies from New
York, including Paul Simon’s performance of "The Sounds
of Silence."
When I reached the port area, it was too early for me to
check in; I couldn’t check in until noon. So I
spent the next 45 minutes at the Ron Jon Surf Shop in
Cocoa Beach, getting ideas for birthday presents (or
Christmas presents) I could give. In fact, I
picked up two items for relatives of mine, and I wasn’t
sure if I would give them as Christmas presents or
birthday presents (I eventually decided they would be
Christmas presents). When I was finished there, I
drove up to the port, where I noticed several sheriff’s
deputies along the road, probably because of what today
was. It was busy at the entrance to the parking
area, but I had no problem finding a spot in the
garage. I didn’t have much difficulty checking in,
and I made sure I checked my suitcase out front rather
than force it through the security screening like last
year.
There was a short line at the security screening, but it
moved quickly. I’d taken my shoes off and laptop
out and put them through, although I was told I didn’t
have to, but by then it was too late. One of the
guards asked if I had a knife in my bag, for some
reason; no, I replied. I wondered why they would
ask that, then later on, it hit me: the long handled
applicator I brought to apply sunscreen to my back might
have looked like a knife when x-rayed. Once
through, I took the escalator up to the main level and
found the line for Castaway Club members.
Check-in wasn’t difficult, and I learned about a new
feature or quirk of my stateroom: my key card must be
used to turn on and keep on the room lights and TV. That
might take some getting used to. As soon as I was
done, I could board the ship, for my number had been
called, but I took a few pictures inside the terminal
and out on the observation deck before I boarded.
I didn’t bother getting my picture taken as I boarded,
but I did receive a greeting from Pluto and saw Goofy
from one deck up (didn’t get their pictures,
though). I made my way to Cabanas on deck 11 for
lunch, which was good. I remembered the difficulties I
had last year on the Wonder eating at its buffet
restaurant while trying to handle a large piece of
luggage, and I was glad I didn’t have to contend with
that today. Then I went down to deck 4 and the 687
lounge, which was showing 3 different football games:
Pittsburgh at Baltimore, Indianapolis at Houston, and
Philadelphia at St. Louis. I was hoping Detroit at
Tampa Bay would have been one of the games, but it
wasn’t. The Texans were leading early, but the
Lions were losing. It would turn out that both the
Texans and Lions would win.
I went back to my stateroom (#5538), finished unpacking
my carryon bag, and met my stateroom attendant Goodluck,
who was from St. Vincent. He also shared a name
with an African president, Goodluck Jonathan (of
Nigeria, I think). There was a bag waiting for me
full of goodies. The bag was given to all Castaway
Club members, meaning those who had made at least one
Disney Cruise before. Inside my bag were two water
bottles, two pens, two crispy rice treats, a keychain,
and possibly something else. The bag would come in
handy on Castaway Cay to hold all of my stuff while on
my excursions. I would take pictures of my
stateroom and the view from my verandah, and then I’d go
to the topmost decks and wander around, taking some more
pictures of the ship and its surroundings. Those
surroundings included the Kennedy Space Center, the
other launch pads on Cape Canaveral, and two other
cruise vessels, Carnival’s Sensation and Royal
Caribbean’s Freedom of the Seas. The RCL ship was
closer, and I could see the people on board milling
around, getting settled in.
I was in my stateroom when the alarm sounded for the
mandatory emergency drill at 4. I knew what to do,
thanks to reading the information on the back of my
door, and so I headed down to the Walt Disney Theater on
deck 3, the designated lifeboat muster station for my
cabin. The drill went reasonably well, and we were
dismissed by 4:15. Unlike last time, there was no
need to wear the lifejacket during the drill. I
had practiced putting it on in the stateroom, for we’d
been advised to do so. Back in my room, I saw that my
suitcase had finally arrived. I brought it in with
Goodluck’s help and started to unpack, and then I headed
up to deck 12 for the Sailing Away party. It was a
sendoff celebration very similar to the one on last
year’s cruise. The captain put in an appearance
from the bridge, and of course the Disney characters
were there in force. At 5 on the dot, we started
to move; we were under way! As I shot some movie
footage, the low-battery indicator flashed. Time
to swap to a fresh battery, so I went back to my
stateroom, swapped out the battery, put the drained
battery charging, and took pictures of our departure
from my verandah. Unlike last year, we were the
last ship of the three in port to depart. Both the
Royal Caribbean and Carnival vessels were out on the
ocean before us. I took a number of pictures,
though perhaps not as many as last year, for I was just
taking them from one side of the ship this time, the
starboard side. As we set out into open seas, I looked
down and could see the occasional jellyfish not far
below the surface.
Because my dinner time was the second seating, I would
be catching the early performances of the shows at the
Walt Disney Theater. Tonight’s show was “The Golden
Mickeys,” a mock awards program, which kicked off with a
mock red carpet welcoming ceremony. On stage, just
before the performance began, the senior crew was
introduced, including Captain Henry and cruise director
Rachel Quinn, a rather attractive blonde from somewhere
in England. I found her name to be very “Glee”-ful
(two of the main characters on Glee
are named Rachel and Quinn). She said we could
call her Julie and told the kids in the audience to ask
their parents about that. Yes, that was her
obligatory Love Boat
joke. And then the show got under way!
The show wasn’t that long; it was over by 7:20, which
gave me enough time to return to my stateroom two decks
up, grab my camera, and get some sunset pictures from my
verandah. I tried looking for the green flash that
sometimes appears just as the sun sinks below the
horizon, and I thought I’d seen it. But I was
looking in the camera viewfinder at the time, so it
could have been an artifact from the display and not a
true green flash. The picture I took showed no
sign of it, so I don’t know. What I did know was
that I could still see the Carnival and RCL vessels in
the distance; the RCL ship was well ahead of us, but the
Carnival ship had fallen back.
Earlier, as I was wandering around the upper decks, I
had an opportunity to order some bottled water for
myself -- specifically, a case of Evian. That
water had now arrived, and I loaded it into the
stateroom’s refrigerator. What didn’t fit went
into the closet -- and there was a lot that didn’t fit,
for a case contained 24 bottles.
Dinner time was approaching. Like everyone else, I
had been assigned a specific rotation pattern for my
dinners. On the first night, I would go to the
Animator’s Palate. On the second night, I would
dine in the Enchanted Garden. And on the third and
fourth nights, I would be eating at the Royal
Palace. My table number was 70. I would be
dining with people I did not know and would not meet
until this evening.
Shortly after 8, I went down to the Animator’s Palate
restaurant and was taken to table 70. On my
previous cruise, I sat with another solo traveler.
This time, I would sit with five other people: Jeff and
Laurie, a married couple from Minneapolis who were on
their first cruise, and a mother, daughter, and
boyfriend or good friend (I wasn’t quite sure which)
from Indianapolis, all of whom had cruised before;
unfortunately, I’ve forgotten their names. The
theme of the restaurant, given the name of the
restaurant, was animation and the animator’s
table. There was another theme in play, Finding
Nemo. It turned out that many of the drawings on the
wall were actually screens where characters from Finding
Nemo would appear. Crush the turtle was a major
attraction; he would even interact with the diners (he
got Jeff to profess his love for his wife in the most
romantic language of the sea, whale!). The school
of fish would also form shapes that we’d have to
guess. The Animator’s Palate on the Disney Wonder
wasn’t like this! And how was the food? Very good. I had
wild mushroom risotto for my appetizer, baked potato
soup, and a shrimp penne pasta as a main course, with
lemon mousse for dessert. Once again, I got a
great meal on board a Disney ship.
After dinner, I paid my first visit to the onboard
shops. Would there be anything I was interested
in? Of course there would, and there was.
But I wasn’t going to get anything tonight; I was just
getting ideas for purchases later in the cruise.
Undoubtedly there would be something I could have the
captain sign on the last day of the cruise. Would
it be a model of the ship, something to go along with
the model of the Disney Wonder I acquired on my previous
cruise? After seeing the size of the model of the
Dream, I crossed it off my list; it was too big for my
liking. There was still plenty of time to decide
on something. Then I went up one deck and took a
walk on the promenade, the track that ran the full
length of the ship. In the distance, I could see
the lights of at least one other cruise vessel and
possibly a second. The full moon was out, and so were a
few stars.
When I went back to my stateroom, I turned on ESPN
International to catch the Sunday Night Football
broadcast. I also fired up my Macbook Pro for my
first e-mail check at sea. Of course, my MiFi was
useless so far offshore, so I had to buy some time for
the shipboard satellite Internet connection. I
figured I would get the maximum possible, 250 minutes
for $75; I was pretty sure I could use it all. When I
was on, I focused on retrieving and responding to e-mail
and checking Facebook. I made sure to sign out
properly, and then I turned my attention back to the
game -- until I fell asleep, that is.
Top
Monday
September 12
Compared to last night, I had a very sound sleep.
I had fallen asleep during the football game; when I
woke up around 5:40, the game was being repeated, and so
I got to see the end of it, where the Jets came back to
win it. But since I was on vacation, shouldn’t I
have awakened later than 5:40 AM? It was still
dark outside, but the full moon was still out, and it
provided some illumination. According to the info
channel, the vessel was still a good distance off from
Nassau. I used the time to check e-mail and to
load most of yesterday’s pictures into iPhoto, “most”
meaning the pictures I had taken with the Canon.
Those turned out well, for the most part, especially the
sunset ones.
When I got up this morning, the left side of my nose was
clogged. It wasn’t a cold; I do tend to get this
on occasion. I took an allergy pill as a defensive
measure. I also took a shower, for I had last
showered on Friday night in Ohio. The shower was a
bit constrained in terms of height; if I had made an
effort to stand up straight, I would have hit the
ceiling. As it was, I just missed hitting
it. I didn’t need to slouch more than usual, but I
had to be careful. Although the stateroom height was
fine, the bathroom was elevated by a couple of inches,
and the bathtub a couple of inches more. The same
H20+ products that were on last year’s cruise were
present this morning, which was just fine by me.
They did a good job.
I went up to Cabanas for breakfast and had quite a mix
this morning: scrambled eggs, smoked salmon, three
strips of bacon (I was definitely not having a kosher
breakfast today), grilled potatoes, a chocolate pancake
without syrup, and a toasted bagel. Topping it all
off were two glasses of orange juice! Not a bad
meal at all. When I finished and was leaving the
restaurant, I saw that we were in the process of
arriving at Nassau and pulling into our berth. We
were turning around in the harbor and backing in.
As we pulled in, I saw that we were not alone at the
port today. The Carnival Fantasy (not the ship
that was in Port Canaveral) was docked, as was a
freighter. The weather was mostly sunny and warm,
a far cry from last year’s cloudy and wet. The
Carnival passengers were debarking for their shore
expeditions; we’d do so once we were fully
berthed. I wouldn’t be going anywhere; I did not
sign up for any shore excursions in Nassau and had no
real desire to exit the ship.
Instead of leaving the vessel, I walked around for a
while, sat down on deck 13 underneath the radar dome for
a while (it’s designed to be sat under), had a croissant
at a cafe on deck 4, clipped some toenails on my left
foot that were bothering me, submitted a card for a
quote on a future cruise (there are financial incentives
to booking during a cruise), etc. I wanted to walk
around the promenade deck’s jogging track, but part of
it was closed off for swabbing, so that was out.
When noon came around, I saw an interesting presentation
on the Disney Dream and how it was built. There
were maybe 10 to 15 attendees, most of whom were
experienced cruisers. Then it was time for lunch
at Cabana’s again.
After lunch, I went back to my stateroom to rest up for
a bit and work on the travelogue, as well as sit out on
the verandah for a while. What did I think about?
I’ll keep those to myself. Then I figured I’d go
for a swim in the Quiet Cove pool, but when I got
up there, it was rather busy. The hot tub wasn’t
busy at all, though, so I used that instead. As I
removed most of my clothing, I noticed that there was a
window in the deck visible all the way down to the
ground or sea. It was small, nowhere near as large
as one in the CN Tower in Chicago. After I got
into the hot tub (which was indeed pretty hot), I
thought I saw another window in the bottom of the
tub. I had some swim goggles with me, so I put
them on and took an underwater look. Yes, there
was a window in the bottom! One of the sides was
also a window, it turned out. These were worthy of
pictures, I said to myself. After I finished, I
dried off and listened to a guitarist playing in the
area, then got a burger and fries as a pre-dinner snack
(dinner was late, remember).
Playing in the Buena Vista Theater at 6 this evening was
the recent Winnie the
Pooh movie. This was done in the classic
2D animation style and was very evocative of the
original Pooh shorts that were made for theaters but
that I saw on TV as a young boy (NBC, I want to
say). The opening live-action sequence was
similar, as was the use of a British narrator (John
Cleese filling in for the late Sebastian Cabot).
All of the character voices were successors to the
originals, although some of them had been doing the
voices for quite some time. The classic Pooh theme
was sung by Zooey Deschanel, who was reasonably faithful
to the original (she also did the closing theme, rather
cutely, I might add). For the most part, this was indeed
your father’s Pooh Bear, and there was nothing wrong
with that. There weren’t that many people in the
theater for the movie, although Goofy paid a brief visit
(I’d encountered him on the way to the theater, as
well).
Back in my cabin, I turned on the tail end of the
Villains Tonight show. It almost looked like it
had been filmed instead of being videoed. It was an
interesting show, not so interesting that I regretted
not going in person instead of seeing the Pooh
movie. Outside, it was clouding up; I figured it
was too cloudy to make for a good sunset, and so I
didn’t bother seeking it out this evening. Time
for another e-mail check; the connection seemed to be
faster than this afternoon. With that one
exception, the connections seemed be faster overall than
on the Wonder, which was just fine with me.
Tonight was dress-up night on board; I had my jacket, of
course, but I discovered that I’d forgotten to pack a
tie. It wasn’t mandatory, and so I dispensed with
it this evening as I proceeded to the Enchanted Garden
on deck 2 to meet up with my tablemates. The
restaurant had a bit of a French feel to the
decor. Tonight’s meal consisted of a lobster
ravioli appetizer, cream of asparagus soup with
asparagus tips (I only got a single tip, though), and
prime rib with twice-baked potato. I ordered my
prime rib medium-well, but no red was visible; that was
just fine with me. There was lots of fat, though, but
that’s the nature of prime rib. I think everyone
at the table had ordered the prime rib tonight, though
not to the same done-ness; I recall one being ordered
medium-rare. My mom would have freaked over that.
For dessert, I had the no-sugar-added chocolate mousse.
After dinner, I went out to the upper decks for a
walk. It was warm outside with a bit of a
breeze. The Carnival ship had departed, so we were
the only vessel in port and would be remaining here
until 2 AM. Why so late? I didn’t know for
sure, but during the talk about the Dream today, the
cast member who gave it suggested that other cast
members would be going ashore this evening for some
break time. Back at the room, there was a card
waiting for me: my quotes had come through. I had
expressed interest on a 7-night eastern Caribbean cruise
on either the Magic or the Fantasy for next fall.
The Fantasy would be the only ship making that
particular cruise at that particular time, I learned;
the Magic would be doing western Caribbean cruises out
of Galveston then.
AN ASIDE: The onboard TV selection was similar to that
on the Wonder, but there were a few differences.
The main information channels were the same: a channel
for shipboard announcements; the view from the bridge;
the infodump channel giving the ship’s position and
heading, the weather, etc.; channels for port
adventures, shopping opportunities, the Disney Vacation
Club, the advantages of booking your next cruise during
this cruise; several channels from the Disney family -
ABC, ESPN, ESPN2, ESPN International, the Disney
Channel, ABC Family, and a classic cartoon channel; CNN,
CNN International, and Headline News; a music video
channel; and the channel for the Walt Disney
Theater. But some channels on the Wonder were not
available on the Dream, such as the channels for Disney
live-action films, the animated films, the Pixar films,
etc. Actually, they were available via On Demand.
END OF ASIDE
Top
Tuesday
September 13
I had fallen asleep during the second Monday Night
Football game; when I awoke during the night,
SportsCenter was on. I didn’t bother turning off
the TV and fell asleep again, only to awaken for good
around 4:30. I lay there for a while, but no, I
couldn’t get back to sleep. I rested, but I didn’t
really sleep again. When I decided to get up, I checked
e-mail and Facebook. Later, as it became light
outside, it became clear to me that I would be able to
see the sunrise from my stateroom. There were some
clouds on the horizon, but they wouldn’t interfere too
much with the sunrise. And so, there I was on my
verandah, looking to the east, waiting for the first
glimpse of the sun. I had to contend with
condensation on the camera lens, which I wiped off using
my lens care “pen”; that vanished once the camera warmed
up. And there it was! I took a lot of
pictures of the rising sun, eventually posting one of
those to Facebook.
There was an island ahead, and it was gradually getting
larger. That was Castaway Cay, which we were
approaching from the south. The ship had to
position itself properly to back into its slip on the
island; and it did so with no perceived
difficulties. I went to Cabana’s and had a lighter
breakfast than yesterday, possibly not wanting to feel
too full. In retrospect, this was probably a
mistake; more on that later. After I finished
eating, I went back to my room to gather my things,
including my Olympus camera. I went back up to
deck 11 to get pictures of the window in the deck,
through which one could see whatever was below, be it
land or sea. I also put the camera in the
underwater housing bag and put it into the hot tub for a
picture of the windows in its floor. Did the
pictures turn out? I had no way to know, not until
I offloaded them. Then I went down to deck 1 and
off the gangway. I was on Castaway Cay!
It was very sunny outside, and it was already starting
to get warm. I picked up a towel and wandered
around briefly, taking a few pictures. Then I
checked in at Marge’s Barges for the snorkeling
expedition. The waiting area was quite crowded,
but I found a seat in the shade. Not everyone was
there for snorkeling, as it turned out; some were there
for offshore fishing, while others were there for
kayaking. Those of us there for snorkeling didn’t
board the catamaran until 9:45. We pulled out from
the slip, and as we did, I took a few pictures of the
ship. Then we noticed one of the lifeboats from
the Dream on the water. No, it wasn’t an
emergency; it was most likely a required test cruise or
part of standard maintenance. The lifeboat seemed
to be working properly, which was reassuring. We
exited the lagoon and made our way to the west of the
island, which is where the reef we would be visiting was
located. Another boat was already in the area of
the reef. At first, I wasn’t sure what it was
doing there, but it became clear that it was a
glass-bottom boat.
After some maneuvering around to find the prime spot,
the boat dropped anchor. We put on our gear and
exited off the ladders at the rear of the boat.
The water was fairly warm as I entered. I had the
camera with me, attached to my wrist by a large orange
strap. As I swam around, I tried taking some
pictures. Well, I took pictures, but I had no way
to know how they’d turn out. I couldn’t see the
camera display through the bag. Also, I didn’t
know precisely where the bag surface was compared to the
camera lens, and this made (as I would learn later) for
some distorted pictures. But I did see quite a bit
of coral and fish on the reef, which lay between 4 and 9
feet deep. There was a school of yellow fish
hanging around at one point, and I tried to get a
picture of it.
It wasn’t long before I started feeling hungry.
After that, I became rather low on energy, as though I
hadn’t eaten enough or was experiencing low blood
sugar. I ended up leaving the water after 40
minutes of our 60-minute excursion, but I was still
satisfied with what I’d seen. I really had to blow
my nose after taking off my gear, but all I could find
was the toilet paper in the restroom to use. I had
a drink of water and then a regular Sprite, once
everyone was on board. That Sprite helped perk me
up. As we headed back to the dock, I took the
camera out of its bag and took some more pictures of the
ship as we approached. Off in the distance, I
could see some parasailing taking place. Soon, we
were back ashore. One activity down, two to go.
My next stop: the restroom. Following that, I had
lunch at Cookie’s Barbecue, where one could choose from
various grilled dishes. I had a cheeseburger and a
hot dog, along with a bag of chips and a Sprite Zero
(still labeled as Diet Sprite on the machines
here). The food was good, and I was ready for
activity number two: an hour of bike riding. The
bikes were just as I remembered them: Schwinn
single-speed cruisers with coaster brakes. I
claimed a helmet, asked how long the bike path was (4
1/2 miles all the way around, the clerk said), and then
set off. There were a number of water stations
along the path, which was a very good thing, given how
hot it was. The path made use of the abandoned air
strip, circled past the observation tower, and went up
the western side of the island. I had to contend
with head winds heading west, but I overcame them with
little difficulty. I ended up riding some 11 miles
(estimated), or two times around the full trail, then up
to the observation tower and back. Two activities
down, one remaining.
After the bike ride, I looked for the place near
Cookie’s that dispensed ice cream, and I got a small
dish of banana-strawberry swirl. That ice cream
was cold, and it gave me a minor case of brain
freeze. Now I was ready for activity three,
snorkeling in the lagoon. I went to the rental
area, got my gear and a clean towel, then found a spot
for my stuff. I walked to the water’s edge, put on
my fins, then walked in as best as I could. It
took a while to get out past the cloudiness near the
shore, but there I was, in the lagoon, marveling at the
fish hanging around and some of the items that had been
sank. At one point, I noticed a commotion in one
area. I swam over there to see what was going
on. It turned out that it was a sunken Mickey
Mouse, a very popular attraction in the lagoon.
I’d wanted to see it last year but missed out on it, and
here I’d found it! Mission accomplished! I took a
number of pictures of Mickey, some by himself, some
accompanied by fish, and a couple with a Disney cast
member who had swam down to grab Mickey. I tried
to swim down, and I did touch Mickey, barely, but I had
too much buoyancy to get very far.
Unfortunately, I started to develop cramps in my legs;
that was not good. If I controlled how I moved
them, I didn’t experience any pain, but I did have to be
careful. I took that as a sign for me to head back
to shore. Perhaps I’d overworked them with the two
snorkel sessions and the bike ride. Fortunately, I
didn’t have any problems making it to shore. Three
activities down, and I was done! I found where I’d
stashed my clothes, dried off and put them on, returned
my snorkeling gear, and returned to the ship. It
had been a long and active day, and I was tired.
Back in my cabin, I took a shower to get the salt off of
me. The water felt very hot on me, although the
temperature wasn’t that high. The sunscreen must
have worn off or washed off, and I knew I was going to
hurt later. I rinsed off the camera housing, took
out the camera and downloaded the pictures, and then I
saw how my pictures had turned out: not as well as I’d
hoped. The housing bag had done its job of keeping
the camera dry, and it had done so perfectly.
Unfortunately, its other shortcomings made it of
questionable value. I was wishing I would have
more opportunity to try to use the housing, or better
yet, to have the camera work properly without the
housing. I could see the potential in the camera,
how it could take some pretty good pictures. For
some of the pictures did turn out pretty well.
As I dried off, the room began to feel chilly to
me. I turned up the temperature, but it still felt
chilly. Was it a sign I was coming down with
something? I hoped not! I was motivated to go down
to the shops, once they opened after we’d pulled out of
port, and get a sweatshirt. I felt more
comfortable in the shops, so the chill I felt wasn’t so
much me as the temperature of my room. I wouldn’t
need to put on the sweatshirt for overnight, I was
sure. Then I made my way over to the Future Cruise
Booking desk, intending to ask for an appointment to
discuss the request for quote I’d placed. The desk
was manned, and it turned out that right then was a
great time to discuss things. I had asked for
prices on a 7-day eastern Caribbean cruise in the fall
of 2012. I noticed that San Juan, Puerto Rico, was
to be added as a port with the cruise of November 3;
that intrigued me. The longer cruise duration and
different destinations intrigued me. And so, I
found myself booking a cruise on the new Fantasy for
next November. The dates meant I would be out of
the country during the presidential election, so I’d
have to cast an absentee ballot. My cabin would be
on deck 5, toward the stern, in an oceanview cabin, no
verandah next time.
It was time for tonight’s show in the Walt Disney
Theater: Taylor Mason, ventriloquist and comedian.
This was an all-ages show, and there were quite a few
moments of audience interaction and participation.
He had a number of dummies with him, including the pigs
Paco and Paquito, a sumo wrestler, and Romeo the
punk. I thoroughly enjoyed the show, and I made a
note to myself to attend his adult show Wednesday night.
Back in the room, I saw that I had been given a bandanna
for Pirates IN the Caribbean. Everyone was encouraged to
wear it, but when I tried putting it on, I found it was
too small for me. I ended up using it as a pocket
square in my shirt pocket. And since this was
Pirate Night, I was wearing my Hawaiian shirt, planning
to repeat my Key West Pirate look from last year with
the Jack Sparrow headgear and eyepatch. And what
was my meal for this evening? Pot stickers for the
appetizer, jerk chicken salad, and Treasure of the Sea
(shrimp, scallops, pasta) for the main course. I
passed on dessert tonight, for I didn’t feel like
anything, not even the angel food cake. To be
honest, I was feeling a little worn out after everything
today. I went back to the room, where I was
greeted by a towel monkey wearing my sunglasses. I
turned on the TV and flipped through the channels; ESPN
International was showing a baseball game -- it might
have been regular ESPN. I lay down, and that was
it. I was out!
Top
Wednesday
September 14
I had conked out last night; I was tired! I missed
all of the fireworks! The fireworks during last
year’s cruise were pretty good. When I awoke, it
was 1:15 and all of the lights were still on. I
got up and put an end to that. However, I did keep
ESPN International turned on with the sound down; they
were airing a game from the Rugby World Cup live, Tonga
versus Canada. Canada was winning.
When I awoke for good, it was around 6:30. That
was a reasonable time to get up. Sleep overnight
had not helped my sunburns; they were still quite sore,
especially the ones on the back of my legs. And
after looking in the mirror, I could tell I had gotten a
slight burn on my scalp; it wasn’t painful,
though. I got online, retrieved my e-mail and
checked Facebook, then watched CNN International for a
bit followed by some classic Disney cartoons (the
channel was working again). Once again, I went to
Cabana’s for breakfast, this time bringing my
iPad. I also decided to have a breakfast more like
Monday (very filling) than Tuesday (not so filling, and
likely insufficient for the day). I didn’t see
asparagus on the buffet line, nor did I see the
chocolate pancakes (they did have Mickey Waffles,
though), but that didn’t keep me from having a breakfast
very similar in content to Monday’s. It was just
as good, I thought. And whom could I blame if it
weren’t? Only me.
I went back to my room to brush my teeth and to swap my
iPad for the Kindle. It was the first time I used
the Kindle during the voyage. Up on deck 11, the
Quiet Cove was very quiet early in the morning, and
that’s where I went to lounge on one of the deck chairs
and read a recent e-book by Penn Jillette of Penn and
Teller fame on why he’s an atheist. The sunglasses with
the built-in reading glasses proved very useful with
those. I stayed up there until 10 or so, when I
got up to use the restroom and to visit the shops on
deck 3. Now I still had thoughts of getting
something for the captain to sign during the
signing. Would it be the model of the ship?
No, it was too large for my liking. Would it be a
piece of art? Yes, it would be a model of the
statue of Donald Duck in the atrium. But it
wouldn’t be signed until 12:15 or so; I still had more
time to wait. So I went out onto deck 4, the
promenade deck, found a deck chair and continued
reading. Bumping against the chair hurt due to the
sunburns. I continued reading Penn’s book and
taking the occasional picture of the scenes at sea,
which included what looked like a cruise vessel tendered
at its private island. There were other people
sitting in deck chairs, playing shuffleboard, walking
past, etc. There were also two or three joggers,
all women; I definitely noticed when they passed by.
While I read, I heard a commotion from down the
deck. It was Mickey Mouse dressed in his captain’s
blue blazer making an appearance! He came up this
way, stopping for the occasional picture; I got one of
those pictures. There was a bit of a crowd right
in front of me as the kids saw that Mickey was there; he
couldn’t stay long, though.
At noon, I went down to deck 3 to await the start of the
captain’s autograph session. I was not the first
in line for the session, unlike last year; perhaps
having the session start around noon rather than 7 had
something to do with it. I wasn’t too far from the
front, though, maybe 10-15 or so, and by 12:30 I had
received an autograph on the back of the base of Admiral
Donald. I was in no mood to carry it around the
rest of the day, so I brought it back to my room, which
had been made up. The customs declaration form was
waiting for me, as were luggage tags for my suitcase and
information about debarking tomorrow. Yes, it was
time to start packing; the cruise was almost at an
end. That would wait until later, though; first,
lunch. Back to Cabana’s I went for another filling
meal: grilled chicken, one pasta, one gnocchi dish, a
bit of macaroni and cheese, some prosciutto, some
cheese, a rice dish, and maybe three fries, all washed
down with Sprite Zero. Although I didn’t have any,
I saw duck on the serving line. My goodness!
What would Donald Duck say about that? If he’d
been in the restaurant, it would have been ugly! I
never saw Donald there, but I did see Captain Henry
briefly.
After lunch, I went up to deck 13 and wandered around up
there and on deck 12, taking a few more pictures.
Back at the room, I encountered room host Goodluck doing
his work in the hall; I also saw an envelope on the clip
for my room. The envelope contained the tip
receipts, which I was to place in specially marked
envelopes for presentation to my stateroom host, my
server, assistant server and head server. I
prepared the envelope for Goodluck and presented it to
him; he’d done a great job with my room, and I liked his
usage of the goggles and glasses on the towel
animals. I stayed in the stateroom to start
packing, to take some pictures of ships and offshore
facilities that were visible from my verandah, and to
watch the matinee of Disney’s Believe via the theater
channel on the TV. I thought I’d seen the show
before, but I hadn’t; what I’d seen last year was Disney
Dreams, which was very similar but focused on a young
girl, while Believe focused on a father. I also
took care of something that had been bugging me for
quite some time: the final removal of a skin tag on my
right shoulder that I’d used Compound W on last
week. It had shriveled some but was getting
irritated by being underneath lots of bag straps.
The Personal Navigator didn’t list any programs for the
afternoon that interested me, although I did go to the
atrium to see See Ya Real Soon, an extended
meet-and-greet session with Mickey, Minnie, Pluto,
Donald, Daisy, Chip and Dale, and Goofy. I didn’t
participate except by watching from afar and imagining
how young friends and relatives of mine would have
reacted. Some of them are past the age where
they’d get really excited by such an event. Back
in my cabin, I worked on the travelogue, transferred and
identified pictures, watched a Rugby World Cup game (it
was on in the background, at least) and continued
packing. I wouldn’t be able to take all of my
water I’d paid for; there was just no room in my luggage
for a 12-pack. I did need to finish packing my
suitcase and put it outside before leaving for dinner;
it would be collected for claiming at Customs tomorrow
morning. The wind had picked up and was whistling
outside. A few more clouds had appeared, as well.
Would I be able to see the moon rise?
Dinner this evening was back in the Royal Palace, and
this evening, we all ordered the same beef tenderloin
meal, although we ordered it prepared differently.
After the meal, I went to the shopping area, took
another look at that book on the making of the Dream,
and decided to get it. I then walked a little bit
on the promenade on deck 4, where I noticed that the
moon was up. Jupiter was pretty close to it, too,
and a few other stars were visible. That inspired
me to attempt to take a picture of the night scene from
my verandah; the essence came through, even if the focus
was a little soft.
And how did I cap off the evening and my cruise?
With a visit to Evolution, that’s how. I had two
things I wanted to see, the cruise staff skit of what
they would be doing “If I Were Not Upon The Sea”.
It was definitely not for the young ones, although it
was more in the nudge-nudge, wink-wink vein. That
was followed by Taylor Mason, the ventriloquist, who
also performed a more adult-oriented show. The
room was full; I had to stand, as did many others.
Back in the room, I found one last towel animal on my
bed; this time, it was a dinosaur. After taking a
picture of it, I put it on my dresser and went to bed.
Top
Thursday
September 15
Miles since leaving the Auto Train: 412.9
Miles to date: 976.4
Unfortunately, I didn’t get the world’s greatest sleep
this evening. During the time when I couldn’t
sleep, I watched the USA take on Russia in the Rugby
World Cup, live from New Zealand. Rugby looks like
football, but all the players are wearing uniforms that
are more like soccer uniforms, and the game play
is “off” in a number of ways. The play was
interesting, and that’s how I’ll leave it.
The ship pulled into port around 6 in the morning, well
before sunrise. There would be a long period of
offloading the luggage and getting the ship cleared by
Customs before passengers could debark. That
didn’t happen until 7:45 or so. I used up my
satellite Internet minutes, all but a few minutes, and
then I switched to MiFi. That didn’t work well,
though; the MiFi spontaneously turned off on several
occasions. Perhaps that was due to poor
reception. The plan called for passengers to have
breakfast at the restaurant they had visited last night,
then immediately leave the ship. I was going to do
that, but after I saw the line in front of the Royal
Palace, I decided to immediately leave the ship. I
had my carryon bag with me, and so I debarked, went down
to the lower level, and searched for my bag in the
Mickey zone. I had to go through most of the
aisles in the zone, but I found my bag and cleared
Customs. Soon, I was wheeling my luggage over to
the parking garage, where I loaded the luggage into the
car, transferred my computer back into its own bag, then
left. After paying for four days of parking, I was
on Highway 528 on my way to Orlando.
But I wasn’t stopping at Orlando. Well, I did stop
at a service plaza west of Orlando on Florida’s
Turnpike, but that was not my main destination.
After visiting the restroom and getting some munchies
that would serve as breakfast (I’d eaten some of my
second crispy rice treat earlier), I set up the GPS for
my main destination: Weeki Wachee Springs. I
enjoyed my two visits there last year, and I wanted to
go back. The GPS took me through some Florida back
roads to get to Highway 50, which went across to Weeki
Wachee. Some of the sights and businesses looked
familiar to me from last year as I drove. And
shortly after 11, I was pulling into the parking lot of
Weeki Wachee Springs. This being a weekday, it was
much less busy than the two previous times I’d visited,
a Sunday and a Saturday last year. I paid my
admission fee, got the park map, and went inside.
Now I had arrived too late to see the first mermaid show
of the day, which had started at 11. What to
do? I went over to the spring overlook, which
overlooked the spring (naturally). It turned out
that I could actually see some of the mermaids swimming
about from the surface. I could also see some of
the behind-the-scenes actions of the performance, such
as the prince diving into the spring to represent his
falling overboard. It gave a different perspective
on the show, which I remembered from last year.
I didn’t stay to watch the entire show from above; there
really wasn’t that much to see, and I wanted to be sure
of boarding the first river boat ride of the day, which
was at 11:45. Since everyone else was probably at
the mermaid show, I was the first person waiting for the
boat. I wasn’t the first person to board the boat,
though. I found a seat toward the bow on the
starboard side. There were a few Germans on board;
perhaps they were part of a tour group. The tour
had us go downstream a few miles, admiring the natural
sights such as a turtle sunning himself on a log and an
eagle’s nest high up in a tree. The eagles were
nowhere to be seen, though, but we did see some
vultures, as well as a few kayakers. After some 25
minutes, the ride was over; I wish it had been a little
longer and had gone a little farther downstream.
It was now after noon, and I had not had a proper
breakfast; in other words, I was hungry. I got a
burger and fries at the park grill, and then I walked
around for a while, waiting for the second show of the
day. Where were the peacocks, I wondered.
There had been several peacocks on the grounds last
year. They were still here, I just encountered
them in different areas of the park than last
year. They made great subjects for photographs,
especially with a long lens that didn’t require me to
approach too closely. One peacock was playing with
a twig -- no, I saw the twig move under its own power;
it was some sort of insect, and it was about to become
that peacock’s lunch. Not long thereafter, the
theater opened up for the second show of the day, and I
got a front row seat. I prepared my camera for the
show, setting it up to continuously take pictures as
long as I held the shutter down; I’d get more pictures
in focus that way, and some of them might turn out to be
interesting. At 1:30, the show began. Fish Tales
gave a historical overview of the attraction and the
mermaid shows, with the mermaids demonstrating how you
eat and drink underwater, how you control your buoyancy,
and how you dive 175 feet to the bottom of the spring
(although the true bottom goes much deeper).
After the show finished, I wandered around for a while,
taking some time to visit the gift shop (didn’t see
anything I wanted to buy there). The peacocks had gone
into hiding during the heat of the day; I sat on a
picnic table underneath a tree in order to keep cool
until the third and final show of the day, which was a
repeat of the first show, The Little Mermaid. Once
again, I found a front row seat. When the show
began, I noticed that the show was not identical to the
morning show in terms of the cast. The Little
Mermaid I saw when I arrived in the morning was a
brunette, but in the afternoon show, she was a
blonde. Blonde, brunette, redhead, it didn’t
matter to me; I’d have still enjoyed the show. Now I
might have had a problem if she were bald....
By 3:30, the show was over, and it was time to hit the
road. I programmed the GPS in the car to take me
to Tallahassee, and I set off on US 19 heading
north. I stopped for gas, and later on I stopped
for supper at Burger King when I felt myself getting
tired. It was a long drive up to Tallahassee, and
as I got closer, I encountered a brief, heavy rainstorm
that had ended by the time I reached the hotel.
After checking in, I downloaded the photos I’d taken
today and charged one of my batteries that had run out
on me during one of the shows. The pictures and
video I’d taken turned out pretty well, I thought.
No, they weren’t perfect, but some of them were pretty
good. And then, at the end of a long day, I decided to
turn in.
Top
Friday
September 16
Miles today: 496.6
Miles to date: 1473.0
After my difficult sleep last night, I was glad to have
had a good night’s sleep tonight. I woke up around
5 and made my usual checks in the morning. I was
in no real hurry to get up and get going, for I didn’t
have to be anywhere today. League City was 709
miles away; that distance could be covered in a day of
hard driving, but I wasn’t inclined to push that
hard. Besides, my reservation started tomorrow,
not this evening. And so I would end up staying
somewhere in Louisiana overnight; where, I did not yet
know.
The Microtel had a small breakfast bar; I had a banana,
some cereal, a toasted bagel, and a glass of orange
juice, a good and filling start to the day. The TV
in the lobby was airing ESPNU; that may not have been
surprising in the home of Florida State University on a
home football weekend. By 7:45, I had checked out
and was attempting to get on the road outside of the
hotel to head to I-10; it was Tallahassee’s rush
hour. I-10 wasn’t far away, though, so after one
well-timed traffic light to stop upstream traffic, I was
on the road and on the freeway. A few miles down
the road, I became concerned that I had not packed my
checkbook away after using it to pay bills that were
becoming due. A quick stop at the next exit and a
check of my bag told me I had packed it away
again. Relieved, I got back on the freeway and
continued westward towards Pensacola, Alabama and
Mississippi. I listened to my usual combination of
radio stations: lots of Underground Garage, more of 60’s
and 70’s, the occasional Old Time Radio and news
channels, and so on. Satellite radio has been a
godsend on long cross-country trips. Today, it
even allowed me to hear “If She Knew What She Wants” by
the Bangles, which I hadn’t heard in quite a while; I
hadn’t heard it for years on any form of radio.
Now before the trip, I had entertained some thoughts of
attempting to find and drive the Old Spanish Trail
across the south. This was one of the
cross-country road trails popular in the 1910s and ‘20s
before the numbering of roads took hold, and the OST was
a major east-west trail for the south, running from
Florida to California. It passed through Houston;
how else would it have a major street named Old Spanish
Trail? But given the mileage I had to cover, I
decided not to attempt to follow the old road
segments. That was a worthy goal, but for another
time. Today, I wanted to make time.
Somewhere in Mississippi, I stopped for lunch at Wendy’s
and had what proved to be a messy burger. I’d
brought my laptop in to check e-mail, and it also proved
to be a good opportunity to make a hotel reservation for
the night. Given my pace, I figured that
Lafayette, Louisiana, would be a good place to stop for
the night. I checked the Hampton Inn reservation
page, only to discover that the Hilton in Lafayette had
rates that were the same as the Hampton’s. Why not
go for the Hilton, I thought, and that’s what I
did. And so I drove onward, onto I-12 to bypass
New Orleans, through Hammond, through rush hour in Baton
Rouge, and along the Atchafalaya River Bridge before
reaching Lafayette.
The Hilton was not near the freeway; neither was it in a
recognizable downtown area. I had to drive a few miles
through town to reach it, and its Cajun heritage was
visible in some of the street signs that were bilingual
French and English. It wasn’t done as consistently
as, say, in Ontario and its bilingual communities.
And it certainly wasn’t anything like Quebec, where the
signs are French-only by law. But there was enough
to know you were in a different area. Soon, I
found the Hilton and checked in. It turned out
that my room had been upgraded to one on the executive
and concierge floors; I had to use my room key to select
that floor in the elevator. The room was indeed
nice; on the 14th floor, it had better be! I had a
good view of some of Lafayette, including the brown
Vermilion Bayou below. The room had a flat-screen
TV that had HD programming on it; I’d use it later in
watching Boise State take on Toledo on one of the ESPN
channels. Before then, I went up one floor to the
executive lounge for their nightly service of snacks and
drinks. With what they had there, one could not
bother with supper. Indeed, the chicken fingers,
jalapeño poppers, tortilla chips and salsa, cheese and
crackers, etc., became my supper that night; I really
wasn’t in the mood for anything else, nor did I want to
drive anyplace else.
Back in the room, I watched the Boise State-Toledo game,
but I also read that week’s edition of New Scientist on
my iPad. I also sucked on a Ricola lozenge, for I was
feeling a sore spot on the underside of my tongue.
I have noticed that in certain cases, those sore spots
were preludes to colds starting two or three weeks
later. I didn’t want that at all.
Top
Saturday September 17
Miles today (to Laredo’s in Seabrook): 209.7
Miles to date: 1682.7
Once again, I had fallen asleep with the TV still
on. The last I remembered, there was a football
game on. When I awoke, it was baseball.
But this was no ordinary game; it was the Tigers
facing the A’s, and Detroit was on the verge of
clinching the AL Central title. Thanks to ESPN,
I got to see the last few minutes of the Fox Sports
Detroit broadcast and got to see the final outs and
the start of the celebration. The Tigers were in
the playoffs again after five years! And this
time, it wasn’t as a wild card team, it was as a
division winner! I remembered their last division
title in 1987; that was just a few days before my
sister got married. I turned off the TV at this
point and went back to sleep, but I awoke again a few
hours later and couldn’t get back to sleep. I’d
developed a crick in my neck, too, which didn’t help.
Later on, I showered, then went downstairs for the
breakfast buffet in the hotel restaurant. The Hilton
was a nice hotel, one I definitely wouldn’t mind
staying in again in the future. But my stay
today ended at 9:08, when I started the car and found
my way to I-10. I passed by the stadium for the
University of Louisiana at Lafayette, where the
tailgaters were already setting up for that
afternoon’s game. I drove past the Microtel
where I recalled staying on a previous trip to Texas,
and then I got on I-10 westbound. The drive
across Louisiana was uneventful; I tuned around on the
radio dial and listened to some Cajun music on AM 960
out of Lafayette. They did play one non-Cajun
song while I was listening: “A Hard Day’s Night” by
the Beatles.
I made it through Lake Charles and over that tall
bridge and made it to the Sabine River. I was in
Texas again! After a stop at the welcome center
and rest area, I continued westward. Did I want
to be different and take US 90 out of Beaumont,
thereby going through Liberty, Dayton and
Crosby? No, not really; I stuck to I-10.
As I reached Chambers County, I had a decision to
make: where would I go for lunch? I wanted
Mexican food, but should I go to the new Chuy’s in
Webster, or should I go to my old favorite, Laredo’s
in Seabrook? The decision would influence the
route I took. Laredo’s won out, and so I took
Highway 146 down through Baytown and La Porte.
There was a lot of construction between La Porte and
Seabrook; those partial freeway sections were finally
being completed. Before long, I was in the
Laredo’s parking lot, getting ready to enjoy
lunch. I considered that my official arrival
down home.
Now the last time I had eaten at Laredo’s, I had
expressed some disappointment. Still, I ordered
the Deluxe Dinner again. The dishes I remembered
as being good were still good, and although the taste
of the beans and the enchiladas was still different
from what I remembered, I thought it tasted better
this time. Maybe I was just hungrier this
time. Two TV’s were in operation; one behind me
was showing a college football game, while the one I
could see was showing the Astro game. The Astros
were having a terrible year, their worst in franchise
history. They were about to lose their 100th
game, a milestone they never reached in their early
years as an expansion club. And just six years
earlier, they were in the World Series. Was I
glad that the Tigers were doing well!
It was still too early for me to check in at the
hotel, so I drove around for a while. I
eventually made my way to the Best Buy in League City,
where a copy of the Star
Wars saga on Blu-Ray was waiting for me (not
officially). While going through the store, I
ended up playing unintentional salesperson to a couple
looking for a way to download pictures from their
camera to their iPad. I told them about the iPad
Camera Connection adapters, which I had and which I
knew were in the store. By this time, it was
after 3. I figured I could check in at that point, and
so I headed over to the hotel. It turned out
that nominal check-in time was 4, but I was able to
check in once my room was verified as being
ready. There were other people checking in for
that evening’s reunion, which was the Baytown Lee
class of ’66’s 45th reunion.
My room was on the 10th floor, room 1025. I had stayed
here once before, ten years ago for my 20th
reunion. My room then was on the 9th floor and
had a balcony (and I wouldn’t have remembered that
without my travelogue). This time, my room on
the penthouse floor (not the penthouse itself, just on
the same floor) did not have a balcony, but it still
had the great view of Clear Lake and points
east. I took my time getting unpacked, but I set
up my laptop right away. Now the hotel promoted
free wireless Internet access, but there was a catch:
literature in the room suggested that the free access
was fairly slow. Premium access was available
for $12.95 a day. Given that I had my MiFi, I
saw no need to use the hotel’s service (nor had I
yesterday at the Hilton). I turned on the TV to
watch the Michigan State-Notre Dame game, which I had
been listening to in the car. Things were not
going well for the Spartans today; they were behind
and would never lead, suffering their first loss of
the season.
Now that the game was over, what would I do for
supper? Well, one place I did not visit when I was
here in March was Joe’s Barbecue in Alvin. That
made the choice very simple. And so I drove out
to Alvin, driving through League City, past the
freeway, past Newport and Ross Elementary, past the
new high school and Countryside, past Sunmeadow, past
the remains of the TV studios for channel 16, past the
TV tower for who knows what now (it was channel 8’s,
and before that channel 11’s), past all of the Ron
Carter dealerships and finally to Joe’s. It
wasn’t terribly busy on a Saturday night.
Naturally, I got a barbecue baked potato, just as big
as they always were, and just as good. I was
pretty hungry; even so, I couldn’t finish it all,
although I came close.
Back at the hotel, I started reading the book on the
Disney Dream while watching the Oklahoma football game
on channel 13 (ABC). With that game in hand, I
flipped over to Fox Sports to see what the late game
would be: Oklahome State vs. Tulsa, but it was delayed
by bad weather. Soon, I must have fallen asleep.
Top
Sunday September 18
Yes indeed, I had fallen asleep to the TV
again. When I woke up, the Oklahoma State-Tulsa
game had started and was past halftime. It was
also past 1 in the morning! There had to be some
diehard fans in the stands who stayed for the
game! I didn’t stay up until the end; I turned
it off and went back to sleep, waking up for good
around 7:30. After doing my regular e-mail and
web checks, I went downstairs for breakfast in the
Paradise Reef restaurant. I had coupons for a
complimentary breakfast buffet for every day I would
be staying there, and I used the first one
today. The buffet had a good selection: cold
cereal, several fruits and cheeses, scrambled eggs,
sausage links, sausage patties, bacon, biscuit gravy,
grilled potatoes (a.k.a. home fries), assorted breads
and assorted pastries. The buffet was nowhere
near as elaborate as the breakfast buffet at the Dan
Panorama hotel in Haifa, Israel, but it was certainly
a step up from, say, the Hampton Inn or Holiday
Inn Express breakfast bar.
That buffet was very filling and very good. To
repent of any dietary sins, I picked up a day pass to
the South Shore Harbour Fitness Center, which was
separate from the hotel. I wasn’t going to use
it right away, but I thought I would later in the
day. First, though, I would go out for a
drive. I would stop at the Starbucks in downtown
League City, not to get a coffee, but to take a
picture. No, I wasn’t taking a picture of the
Starbucks; I was doing a modern rendition of a picture
of the main intersection in town taken in 1956 or
thereabouts. I placed myself next to the
entrance of the Mexican restaurant next door, La
Centinela; I had known it as Willis Drug Store. I
pointed my camera towards the intersection of Main
Street and Highway 3, and I took two versions of the
picture. Even though it was raining lightly, I
still got an acceptable picture.
Next, I drove over to Newport and drove by our old
house. An area in the front yard was all dug up
and had tape around it; a water main break, perhaps?
But the house still appeared to be in good
shape. Some of the other houses were starting to
show some signs of their age, I thought; they could
have stood a bit of work. My next destination:
Fry’s in Webster. I could always spend time
there just walking up and down the aisles, seeing what
they had. And I saw quite a bit. But I
only got one thing this morning, and that was a 16 GB
memory card for my camera. I had a feeling I’d
be taking a lot of pictures this upcoming weekend at
the reunions, I figured I could use the extra
capacity, and the price seemed right.
I saw the Rudy’s next door; it was a new outpost of
the chain of barbecue-serving gas stations, or should
that be fuel-dispensing barbecue joints? I went over
there not to eat (I’d eaten at Joe’s last night,
remember) but to pick up the Sunday paper. But
they didn’t have any Sunday papers. They did
have a long line of folks waiting for their lunch,
however. I knew they had good stuff; the Rudy’s
close to Steiner Ranch in Austin had good stuff, for
sure. Perhaps I’d eat here another time, but not
today. I drove up to the Barnes and Noble on Bay
Area; surely they would have the paper. They did
indeed have the paper, both Houston and Galveston (I
got both). They also had a few more things that
caught my attention, including a new version of a book
on the Disney Cruise Line (it should be useful for my
next cruise), one of those Arcadia Publishing history
books on Foley’s department store, the latest Doctor
Who magazine and a photography magazine. Yes,
Barnes and Noble did well by me today.
Now it was nearly lunchtime. What did I want to
do? Where did I want to go? I felt like going to
Souper Salad in Pasadena, and so I made my way there,
which involved taking Bay Area Boulevard to Space
Center Boulevard and taking that all the way to
Pasadena. As I drove, I was listening to the
Detroit Lions play the Kansas City Chiefs. It
was a home game for Detroit, and I would have been at
that game as the guest of an automotive tape supplier
had I not been out of town on vacation. But I was here
in Texas, and I was heading to lunch. The Souper
Salad experience wasn’t much different from how I had
remembered it: a salad bar with all sorts of toppings,
with soups, breads, and baked potatoes available as
side dishes. However, today’s visit represented
a milestone for me: I received my first senior
discount. I didn’t ask for one, but the young
lady at the register had rung one up for me. No,
I didn’t protest and call for it to be reversed.
I’m sure I wasn’t entitled to it. But the moment
passed, and I sat down to eat my salad. It was a
good enough salad, to be sure, but I thought that
other chains did a better job with the salad bar
concept, notably Souplantation or Sweet Tomatoes, as
well as Fresh Choice in the San Francisco area.
After a brief visit to the Pasadena Barnes & Noble
(where I didn’t get anything else), I returned back to
the hotel, listening to the Lions beat up on the
Chiefs. By the time I had returned to the hotel,
they seemed to have the game well in hand (they would
eventually win). The game wasn’t on TV locally;
the Bears-Saints game was, though, and the Saints had
that game under control, too. The Texans game
would start later on. In fact, it started while
I was over at the Fitness Center. This was my
first time there, and they had some rather elaborate
facilities. The first floor had the weight room
and other strength/resistance training
equipment. The second floor had an indoor
walking/running track and the cardio balcony
(treadmills, bicycles, Stairmasters, ellipticals,
etc.). I put in some time on the bike and then
walked around on the outdoor track for a bit before
heading back to the hotel. That was a good
distance away, so you could get a little more of a
cardio workout on your way over and back. The
walk took me past the marina.
Back at the hotel, I turned on the Texans-Dolphins
game and sat down to read the paper, starting with the
Galveston paper. I noticed that one of the
columns was from my old friend and next-door neighbor
Chris Mallios. It was a column on various
aspects of League City history; this week, it covered
the history of Floyd Road on the west side of town.
Rather interesting reading, I thought. The
football game ended up being interesting viewing,
especially since the Texans were winning. They
ended up winning the game.
Now it was time for supper. What would I
do? As I thought about my options, one sprang to
mind: Genghis Grill. It was a Mongolian barbecue
restaurant that had a location on Bay Area in
Webster. I’d been a fan of Mongolian barbecue
ever since BD’s opened in Dearborn in 1998, and I was
keen to check out Genghis Grill and compare the
two. And here was my opportunity to do so.
First, I had to make my way there. When I got my
table, I looked over the menu, ordered my drink, and
then set off to prepare my meal. The first major
difference with BD’s: no soup and salad bar at Genghis
Grill. The second major difference: no
tortillas, and you ordered your rice or other starch
at grill time. The third big difference: no
standing around the grill while your order is cooked.
You were given a number, which you then put in a
little stand at your table, and then a server would
come and drop off your order. I noticed a few
minor differences, such as the types of sauces and
spices, some differences in the vegetables and meats,
and so forth. As for the end result? There
wasn’t much difference in that at all. Both
places delivered good food. Thanks to not having
a soup/salad bar, I felt like going back for another
serving. Both times, I got the Dr Pepper
marinated chicken; that was one flavor I was sure I’d
never see at BD’s! To be honest, I really
couldn’t notice a Dr Pepper taste. Now while I
ate, one of the waitresses noticed a significant
rainbow outside, one that went across the sky. I
went up to the door, and I saw the two halves of it,
but I didn’t see them meet in the middle. As I left
after my enjoyable meal, I was sure I’d be returning
to Genghis Grill in the future -- probably not on this
trip, but on my next trip for sure. Would I want
to see them in Michigan? Well, they’d have to contend
with BD’s.
I stopped at Randall’s grocery store in League City to
pick up some peanut butter cookies for snacking in the
hotel room, and once I got back to the room, I turned
on Sunday Night Football. This was a good way to
end my first full day in Texas for this trip.
Top
Monday September 19
I had been mostly on the go for several days
in a row, and that meant I was due for a down day or
half-day. This morning would be that
half-day. It didn’t seem that way when I popped
awake this morning around 4 o’clock and couldn’t get
back to sleep. I checked e-mail and worked on
the travelogue for a while. Around 5, I noticed
that the wind had really picked up outside; storms
were coming through. And yes, it started to
rain. Later on, after 7, I went down to the
restaurant for the breakfast buffet. The
restaurant was much less crowded than yesterday; there
were fewer items on the buffet, as well. It was
still a good spread, though, and I had a good meal.
Once I returned to the room, I put out the Do Not
Disturb sign and took it easy. I worked on the
travelogue in bursts and read over the Passporter
cruise guide in bursts. I also took a few more
pictures from my window; thanks to the improved
weather, these turned out better than the ones I’d
taken Saturday. The benefits of the real long
zoom were very apparent with these pics; I could zoom
in real tightly on the Baytown bridge or on the San
Jacinto Monument. Around noon, I figured I had
taken it easy for long enough; it was time to go out
somewhere. I turned around the Do Not Disturb
sign so that it now read Maid Service Requested, and I
went down to the car. The camera and computer
went with me. First stop of the day: the Dudney
Nature Center off of FM 270. It consisted of
paved and unpaved paths through various habitats near
Clear Creek, with bird blinds set up to allow for
watching birds without frightening them. At this
time of day, I didn’t see much wildlife at all, but
the walk was a good one, even if I did get a bit
sweaty. I then drove over to Chuy’s in Webster,
a new outpost of the Mexican restaurant chain.
One of their slogans: “If you’ve seen one Chuy’s,
you’ve seen one Chuy’s,” meaning that no two
restaurants are the same. I had the Comida
Deluxe today, and it tasted very good. It might
have tasted better had I waited another day or so,
since I had had Mexican on Saturday afternoon.
My next stop was the Target store in the Victory Lakes
area of League City (I-45 and FM 646), where my main
goal was to get a pad or notebook for taking notes for
tomorrow’s Tech Club meeting. Yes, I was
planning to interrupt my vacation for a half-day to
conduct this bi-weekly meeting, and I needed something
to record the extensive notes I normally take, which I
then use to create the meeting minutes. I found
a spiral notebook for that purpose. I also got a
pair of dedicated exercise shorts, which I would put
to use later on at the Fitness Center. I went to
the Fitness Center upon my return to the hotel and put
on 5 miles on the exercise bike. As I walked
back to the hotel, I passed through the marina, and I
happened to see a live fish swimming close to the
surface in one of the boat slips.
Back in the room, I watched the channel 11 news and
the CBS news, transferred my pictures from the camera
into iPhoto, and worked on the travelogue for a
bit. I lay down for a while, and I’m not sure if
I fell asleep or not. When I awoke, it was 7:15,
and I didn’t feel like going anywhere. The hotel
restaurant was closed, but the lounge served a few
food items. And that was where I ended up going
this evening, to the lounge. The remnants of the
sunset were visible in the large windows, while The
Sing-Off and Monday Night Football were visible
in the room’s other large “windows”, meaning the
TV’s. I got a burger for supper, which turned
out to be pretty good. Back in the room, I
continued to watch Monday NIght Football while doing
some more work on the travelogue. Later, I’d
glance through the latest issue of the Doctor Who
magazine before finally calling it a night.
Top
Tuesday September 20
At times, it seems like my body does not
want to believe that it’s on vacation. I woke up
today around 4 in the morning, which was 5 AM Eastern
time and thus the time I’d normally be waking
up. I did an e-mail and Facebook check, but then
I went back to bed and fell asleep again, waking up
for good around 7:15. I went down for breakfast
around 8:30 and was back in the room by 9.
Now a few days ago, I had received a notice from
Amazon that the Bangles were releasing a new CD next
week. I checked iTunes, but there was no
indication that they were carrying it, or at least
offering it for pre-order. So I decided to order
it from Amazon, along with a CD set of the BBC audio
drama I, Claudius. I remembered the TV series of
it very well and was interested in hearing a new
interpretation of it. Then I pondered my bill
situation: I had two bills that were coming due, but I
didn’t have enough checks to use for those bills (my
refill was back home in Michigan). My first
thought was, I had to go get money orders from the
post office to use for my bills, and for one of them
(Comcast cable), I didn’t have the billing
address. When I used the web to search for the
proper billing address, I saw an option to pay your
bill via the web. I had my account information
handy, so that’s exactly what I did. The need
for one money order vanished. As for the other
bill (Consumers Energy for natural gas), it too
offered an option to pay your bills via the web.
However, this option was very constrained; no option
was available to make a one-time payment via the
web. You had to commit to having all your future
bills paid automatically via the means you select
(direct transfer, credit card, debit card,
etc.). I wasn’t ready to commit to this, not
yet. And so, I used my final check for the gas
bill.
After dropping off the bill in the mail drop slot in
the lobby, I set off for Galveston. First, I
drove down Lighthouse Drive to see the South Shore
Harbour lighthouse up close (what else?). The
lighthouse is not a working lighthouse, but it has
been a fixture on the scene for at least 25 years, so
I wanted to see it more closely. The lighthouse
was at the end of the drive; also there was a proposed
new gated community. There were no houses there
at the moment, just streets and vacant lots. The
gates were set up, but one was open for people to go
in (I did see some joggers). I drove in and up
to the lighthouse, where I got a few pics. The
lighthouse is meant just for show; it’s not possible
for the public to go up in it. Besides, I would
have just as good a view from the top floors of the
South Shore hotel. And now that I’d seen the
lighthouse up close, I drove off.
I decided to go down to Galveston via Highway 3, the
old way down. Some 60 years ago, that was the
only way down from League City; the freeway was still
being built. Many sights were recognizable from
when I lived here and when I visited; a few were less
familiar because I didn’t normally travel that way,
but I didn’t see anything particularly
surprising. And so, a half-hour to 45 minutes
later, I was crossing over the causeway and onto the
island, turning down 61st Street to reach the
seawall. My first stop: the Wal-Mart. I
had to use the bathroom. I walked around the
Wal-Mart for a time but didn’t see anything I needed
to get. The Bridesmaids DVD or Blu-Ray tempted
me for a time, but I set it aside and left
empty-handed.
Back under way, I drove westward, past the end of the
seawall and onto the West End of the island.
Before long, I saw street names that were familiar to
me, but in drastically different contexts: 7 1/2 Mile,
8 Mile, 11 Mile, 13 Mile. With the exception of
7 1/2 Mile, all of these are major east-west arteries
in the Detroit area. Here, though, they were
small side roads. It turned out that there was
access to the beach at the end of 13 Mile; what’s
more, this access was free to the public, unlike most
of the other access points between there and the
seawall (and unlike the Galveston Island State Park
that was adjacent to it going the other way). I
turned off here and drove down to the beach, where
there weren’t many people around; there were a few
fishermen, but that was all. I got out my camera
and looked for ideas for photos. The seagulls
and other birds proved very inspirational; one seagull
seemed to pose for me in a modeling session, perched
as he or she was on a fence post that marked the
boundary of the state park. Thanks to my zoom
lens, I was able to get some very good closeups
without scaring it away. I walked around to
change the background from the beach to the sea; it
didn’t move. A different seagull was perched
farther back from the beach, but when I zoomed in on
it, it flew off. I think I spent a half-hour to
45 minutes at the beach.
After driving off, I turned down 8 Mile and headed
towards the mainland side of the island, where I was
able to get a view of the causeway and of the Moody
Gardens pyramids in the distance. The water was
much quieter here than on the gulf side (no wave
action). So was the street; the only time that
Detroit’s 8 Mile would ever be quieter than
Galveston’s is during the middle of the night in a
snowstorm, and I’m not even positive about that.
Back on the seawall I went. Now I was getting
hungry, but what to have for lunch? How about
Fish Tales? That seemed like a good local
establishment. It was located at 25th Street,
and it was also right across the street from the
former site of the Flagship Hotel. When I was
here in March, it was being demolished. Now, no
trace of it remained except for the pier. The
pier predated the hotel, as it was the home of
Pleasure Pier. Now it would once again become
the home of a new Pleasure Pier. I had a good
view of the pier as I sat inside, enjoying the clam
chowder and the chef’s special of the day, two tilapia
filets with shrimp, rice, avocado and zucchini.
It was a very satisfying and filling meal; in fact, I
couldn’t quite finish it. There weren’t too many
people dining inside, but the fullness of the parking
lot suggested that some were dining outside,
upstairs. A few days later, I would learn that I
just missed seeing a former high school classmate
there. Carrie Pearson Duffy said that she and
her family were there at 1:30, but I had left some 10
minutes earlier.
Back in the car, I drove to the far eastern end of the
seawall, then turned around and drove back to Broadway
for the trip back across to the mainland. My day
in Galveston was done. But as I drove across the
causeway, I did something I’d never done before: I
exited at the first exit on the mainland. This
took you to a boat ramp and a saloon at the foot of
the causeway, near Virginia Point. This also
allowed me to see two historical markers I’d never
seen before (one for Campbell’s Bayou and one
detailing Civil War fortifications at Virginia Point)
as well as dedication plaques for the various motor
vehicle causeways that had been built (not counting
the one used for the railroad today; it also carried
car and truck traffic in the past). I drove down
to the end of the road; there was a saloon there as
well as a public boat ramp. Having seen all
there was to see, I got back on the freeway, but I
wouldn’t stay on it long. I exited at the Texas
City Wye for Loop 197, which used to be Highway 146 a
long time ago. This took me right down the
middle of the petrochemical facilities, into downtown
Texas City, and out again up to current Highway 146,
which I took back up to the hotel.
Back at the hotel, I download today’s pictures into
iPhoto and identified them; some of them had turned
out pretty darn good, in my opinion. Then I
rested for a while, I don’t recall how long.
After my rest, I felt like going over to the Fitness
Center, and so I got day passes for today and
tomorrow, got changed, then proceeded over
there. I put in five more miles on the exercise
bike as well as some walking time on the indoor track,
four laps’ worth. Of course, in getting to and
from the Fitness Center, I put in a bit of walking
time, too, including a bit of stair climbing to get
from marina level to the lobby level of the
hotel. When I got back, there was an e-mail
waiting for me from a co-worker at Ford. The
meeting I was supposed to run tomorrow had been
cancelled; there hadn’t been enough items on the
agenda to support a meeting. The notebook I’d
bought yesterday was now unnecessary. And I
didn’t need to get up early and have breakfast early,
either. I was a little disappointed, but it
would have been difficult to switch back into work
mode for a few hours.
After identifying some more of the pictures I’d taken
today, I noticed that I was getting hungry. It
was suppertime; where to go? What did I
want? Tonight, I felt like Middle Eastern
food. Using the Urbanspoon app on my iPad, I
found the Mediterranean Cafe on Nasa Road 1 in Nassau
Bay, close to where the Kings Inn used to be. In
fact, the building it is in may be where the Steak and
Egg restaurant was located. There was only one
other customer in the restaurant when I arrived, and
he left before I was finished. Perhaps the
restaurant does most of its business during
lunchtime. All I know is that the meal I had
last night was very good: some hummus with pita bread,
and a kabob plate consisting of shish kabob, shish
tawook (chicken kabob) and shish kafta. It
wasn’t a cheap meal, but it was a good meal. Was
it as good as the Middle Eastern restaurants of metro
Detroit? I’d say so. The shish kabob was
my least favorite portion of the meal; I thought it a
bit tough. But the tawook and the kafta more
than made up for it.
Back in the room, I turned on the TV to see what
sporting events were on. Nothing caught my
attention, so I turned on NASA TV, which was showing
coverage of activities on the space station. It
had to have been riveting viewing, for at some point,
I fell asleep.
Top
Wednesday September 21
Once again, I’d fallen asleep to something
on television. I awoke around 2 to some video
from aboard the space station. Not being able to
immediately return to sleep, I got up to use the
restroom, checked e-mail and did a bit of reading from
an e-book. At this point, I tried to go back to
sleep again; I succeeded, for the next time I
remembered checking the clock, it was around
6:30. I didn’t need to hurry out of bed and get
breakfast because the meeting I was to run at work had
been cancelled. I didn’t go down for breakfast
until 8:30.
Now later this afternoon, I would see a longtime
friend of the family, Lou Miller. Until then,
what would I do? I started by driving through
the old part of League City for a bit, noticing the
historical marker in front of the house on the
northwest corner of 2nd Street and Kansas (it had come
up during discussions on Facebook), then drove Kansas
Street to its end at the cemetery. I then tried
driving on Old Galveston Road in Webster; a small
section was paved from Nasa 1 down to a storage
facility, with the road beyond being unpaved but
signed Authorized Vehicles Only. Then I drove
down Upper Bay Road in Nassau Bay to the park and
turned around, picking up Saturn Lane to Bay Area
Boulevard for a trip to Baybrook Mall. It wasn’t
too busy at that time of the morning; neither was the
Apple Store. I didn’t get anything there, or
anywhere else at the mall for that matter.
Over at the Target across the street and down a ways,
I was looking for some barber scissors, for I needed
to trim my hair. It turned out that barber
scissors and a comb were just as much as a complete
hair trimming kit, so I got that instead. I had
one at home, but it was doing me no good up
there. I also picked up two replacement wiper
blades for my Mariner; my current ones were beginning
to streak rather badly, which was definitely not a
good thing. Better to be safe than sorry, I
figured. Then it was over to Guitar Center in
Webster to pick up some extra strings for the travel
guitar in case I broke one.
Now, it was lunchtime. What did I want, and
where did I want to go? Where did I really want
to go on my trip that I hadn’t visited yet?
Tookie’s, that’s where. The restaurant had just
reopened under new ownership a month or so ago and was
doing a bang-up business. So I drove over to
Seabrook and found a place to park. I had to
park on the street because all of the regular parking
was full; that was a regular occurence, I
understood. There was a 15-minute wait for
inside seating but no wait for seating on the deck out
back, a new feature of the rebuilt restaurant.
From what I saw of the inside as I walked through it,
it looked very much like the old Tookie’s, although
the tables seemed darker in color and the big KLIF
clock was missing. The deck got some shade from
a big oak tree, so I wasn’t burning up out
there. The deck was not full, but there were a
few people having their lunch back there. The
menu was just like before; that was a condition of the
sale of the restaurant, in fact. I ordered a
#99, some fries and a Coke Zero (a little caffeine at
lunch would be OK, I figured). It was just as
good as I remembered -- and as messy as I had
forgotten! At least the rolls of paper towels
were still on the tables. After paying my bill, I
drove back to the hotel parking deck to replace my
wiper blades, but the attempt didn’t go well. I
needed to swap an adapter on the blade in order to
make it fit my Mariner, and I was having trouble with
that. Better to do the swap in my room -- in my
cool room with good light. So the blades were
put aside for a while.
My next destination was a short distance away, to a
subdivision on Davis Road to visit Lou Miller.
On the way there, I saw a helicopter hovering over the
high school; I couldn’t tell if it was a police
helicopter or a TV news helicopter. There had
been an incident at Creek earlier; one student had
stabbed another student in the neck with a pair of
scissors in a fight over a girl. In my day, that
would have been a fist fight, and it wouldn’t have
escalated beyond that. Back to my visit: Lou was
a longtime friend of the family, having been my
mother’s boss for some 10 years at AER Supply in
Seabrook (and my boss, too, for one summer). I
had brought over my MacBook Pro with all of my recent
pictures, and I showed her the ones from my recent
cruise and from my visit to Uganda in 2009. That
would have been of interest because I was visiting my
sister Sharon and her family then, and naturally Lou
would want to see those pictures. I also showed
her one from this summer of my nieces Candice and
Heather serving as bridesmaids at the wedding of their
best friend. One of Lou’s friends came over
while I was showing the Ugandan safari pictures; they
both marveled at how well many of them had turned out.
Back at the hotel, I brought the wiper blades up to my
room to add the proper attachment for mounting onto my
Mariner’s wiper arms. Then I brought them down
to the garage and installed them; it was a little
tricky, but I got them on, and I washed the windshield
to make sure they were working properly. They
were indeed; no more streaking! Then it was time
to go over to the Fitness Center for another
workout. No bike for me today; instead, I used
the treadmill for 20 minutes. When I went back
to the hotel, I took a cool shower and then gave
myself a haircut using the new kit I’d bought earlier
today. Well, the only parts of the kit I used
were the scissors and the comb. They did the
job.
As part of my e-mail and Facebook checks, I learned
(or was reminded) about two Blu-Ray sets of classic
cartoons coming out within the next few months, one
for Looney Tunes and one for Tom and Jerry. Did
I want to get these? I sure did, and that’s
exactly what I did, ordering them via
Amazon.com. I’d receive the Tom & Jerry set
in about a month; the Looney Tunes set would follow
one month later.
What would I do for supper tonight? I felt like
Italian, or at least pizza. And that led me to
think of Cici’s Pizza. The closest one to the
hotel was in Kemah, so I went to that one. It
had been some time since I’d been to Cici’s, as the
one I frequented in Garden City had closed. It
had reopened as American Pie, and it wasn’t bad, but
it wasn’t Cici’s. The Cici’s in Kemah was indeed
a Cici’s, with all that that implied. The slices
of pizza I had were decent -- not spectacular, just
decent. For the price, the pizza was good
enough.
Top
Thursday September 22
When I woke up this morning, it was 5:26
AM. Time to perform the e-mail check for what
came in overnight. One of the messages was from
American Express, and it left me worried.
Apparently, they had not received my most recent bill
payment. I had mailed it from Tallahassee last
Friday, so it should have arrived by then. I’d
mailed my phone bill at the same time, and I wondered
if it also had gone astray (it turned out it did reach
its destination, albeit rather late. So did the Amex
check. leading to other problems, but that's another
story). I’d worry about that one later.
But what to do about the Amex bill? I knew I
could pay it with a direct transfer from my bank
account, and that’s what I eventually did. But I
had to stop payment on the check in case it showed up,
and so I had to contact my credit union. There
was a $30 fee involved; I didn’t care for that, but it
was necessary.
After all of that had been handled, it was time for
breakfast. The breakfast bar had the same items
on it as it had had every day but Sunday, and I took
the same items I usually took. It was good, as
always, but it was getting just a bit
monotonous. Back in the room, I ordered an
upgrade to the Bento database program for my MacBook
Pro, but I chose to download it at home. It was
a very large program and would have used a significant
part of my data quota for the month, and I didn’t need
it right away. Thanks to remote screen programs,
it was easy for me to do the download at home.
Now I had arranged to meet Chris Mallios for lunch at
Logan’s Roadhouse at noon. What would I do for
the rest of the morning? For starters, I went
over to the JSC Credit Union office to get some
money. Then I drove through old League City,
including around what I think was what the old-timers
called Dead Man’s Curve. I suspect it gained
that name because you’d end up in the creek if you
didn’t curve in time, no matter which way you were
going. There was Heritage Park, and there was
the Butler Longhorn Museum, built to honor the cattle
breed that was developed and that grazed in League
City. They probably grazed where our house now
stands. I found myself driving down Dickinson
Avenue to Dickinson (appropriately enough), where,
after a few turns, I was driving past the shopping
center that used to have the Sears catalog store for
the area. That store was long gone, as was the
Ben Franklin store (succeeded by a Dollar General
store -- same type of store). I drove down past
Dickinson High School, then turned around and drove
all of the way through Dickinson toward the freeway.
Could I remember where the old Magliolo Clinic main
location was? (I thought so, but no)
Not long thereafter, I was passing by the HEB store at
FM 646 and the freeway. Would there be anything
there I was interested in? There sure would be!
I wanted to get some peanuts, but I had a real hard
time finding the nuts. The signs over the aisles
were misleading. Did the aisle saying “chips and nuts”
have them? No. What about the other aisle that
said “nuts”? Those were nuts for baking, not
snacking. I eventually did find the nuts I
wanted, and I got three jars’ worth of HEB
peanuts. One of those jars had a wide mouth that
facilitated reaching in with the hand (good for a
quick bite behind the wheel). And of course, I’d
have to get something to wash everything down, and so
I picked up two bottles of Topo Chico mineral water
from Mexico and a bottle of Caffeine Free Diet Dr
Pepper. By the time I’d checked out, it was a
bit before 11:30. It was still too early for
lunch, so I went over to the Home Depot for a
while. I didn’t get anything there; I could
have, but it would have made more sense to wait until
I’d returned home.
Now it was noon, and I was at Logan’s Roadhouse.
Thinking that Chris might be late, I brought in the
iPad with me, but it turned out that he was already
there. We had a great lunch, remembering old
times, updating each other on our families, griping
about the state of politics in Galveston County --
well, it was Chris who was doing the griping, a
longtime Democrat bemoaning the shift of the North
County to the right -- bewailing the plight of the
Astros, on their way to their worst-ever season, and
glad that our fathers were not there to see it.
He mentioned that our old house had been up for sale
but was now being rented out; if the price were right,
he’d seriously consider buying it, moving in there,
and letting his daughter live in his old house.
The two oak trees my dad had planted were still doing
well in the backyard, he said. He was a little
dismayed to learn that Ford had discontinued the
Ranger compact pickup truck, for he liked the one he
owned.
At one point during our lunch, Chris had to take a
phone call or respond to an e-mail. I used that
opportunity to do a quick e-mail check, and among my
latest messages was one from Candy Silcott.
Would I be able to join her for lunch or dinner at the
barbecue place on Kirby in Taylor Lake Village today
to review the options for food at the KMSC reunion?
Lunch seemed unlikely, since I was already having
lunch, but dinner was a possibility. I’d reply
later, once lunch was finished.
Back at the hotel, I responded to Candy’s e-mail, then
found she had sent me her cell phone number. I
called; it turned out that she and her husband were at
the barbecue place right then, and could I come
over. I certainly could come over, and 15 to 20
minutes later, I was at Dave’s Smokehouse and Bay Area
Meat Market. Candy and husband John were in the
middle of their lunch. It smelled pretty good in
the restaurant, and if I hadn’t just finished a big
lunch at the steakhouse, I’d have ordered some chopped
beef, either on a sandwich or as part of a
potato. We discussed how much barbecue to order
for the reunion on Saturday; we also had to estimate
how many would be attending. Did we want any
side dishes, or did we want to go with simple
fare? I didn’t order a meal, for I’d just had a
very filling lunch, but I did get small samplers of
the chopped beef and the sausage for later
tasting. Was this barbecue any good?
We went back to the Silcott residence to continue
planning for this weekend. John had other
business to take care of, so Candy rode back with me
and guided me to their house in the Timber Cove
neighborhood. This was where the Mercury
astronauts lived, and we drove by some of their former
houses on the way to the house. Housekeepers
were still at work when we arrived, so we went out
onto the deck, which overlooked Taylor Lake, to firm
up plans and sit and talk. And that deck was a
great place to sit and talk -- and to taste the
barbecue, which turned out to be pretty good.
I’d have enjoyed a chopped beef sandwich had I been
hungry enough. We were pretty well set for
Saturday.
Now those who have read my other travelogues will know
that I have been a customer of satellite radio from
its first year of operation. I have raved about it to
many folks; more to the point of this travelogue, I
had raved about it to Candy on previous visits.
That raving had an effect, for I now learned I had
sold her on it; she and John were customers.
They were regular listeners of the ‘60s on 6 channel
but weren’t big fans of Cousin Brucie (he is an
acquired taste, to be sure) or of DJ’s on the channel,
period. Personally, I don’t have any problems
with DJ’s Phlash Phelps or Terry “Motormouth” Young,
holdovers from XM days.
Later on, daughter Laine came out with her 7 month old
daughter Aviana. She was proving to be a monkey
in the making, scrambling around on the hammock.
I got the feeling I should have said that a cute baby
would be present at the reunion; attendance would go
up significantly!
AN ASIDE: Now why was there going to be a KMSC reunion
on Saturday? For that matter, what was the
KMSC? It consisted of those members or would-be
members of the Clear Creek class of 1981 that attended
Webster Intermediate School and had had Candy as an
English teacher anytime during that time. Some
of us had her for the entire 6th grade year, but
others came later as part of a literary appreciation
class called Getting Into Books (I was one of
those). This group was the core of the KMSC.
Most of us from that group continued as a class into
7th grade, a class I would characterize as a premium
or honors English class. We didn’t continue as a
class into 8th grade, for Candy had left WIS to spend
some time in Europe. However, some of us got her again
halfway through the year after our instructor left for
reasons unknown to me and she was persuaded to return
and take over those classes. We all considered her
very influential in our lives in one way or
another. And some of us would have children that
went through the WAVE program for gifted and talented
students, a program that she founded and headed until
her retirement this year
But why the name “KMSC”, and what does “KMSC” stand
for? Well, it stands for “Kill Meany Sullivan Club”,
with Sullivan being Candy’s maiden name. This
was the mid-1970’s, a more innocent time when such a
name would not be understood or taken literally by
anyone. It sprang from the frustrations of two
classmates left off of the choir for an important
event due to a less-than-satisfactory conduct grade
given by Guess Who. What prompted the poor conduct
grade has been lost to time. They repented and were
eventually reinstated to the choir for that event. END
OF ASIDE
Back to today: Not long after I returned to the
hotel, I finished off the barbecue sampler. It had
already sat around long enough, I had no way to reheat
it, and I wasn’t going to eat it cold. But it was
still good, and I was actually hungry enough to really
enjoy it by now. But it was still just the
remnants of a sampler, not a full meal. A few hours
later, I was hungry again, and so I went over to a
nearby McDonald’s to bring back a salad to the
room. I was hoping they would have the Asian
salad, which had been for sale at Michigan
restaurants, but no, they didn’t have it. The
bacon ranch salad wasn’t too bad, though, and that’s
what I had for my late supper as I watched North
Carolina State play Cincinnati in football. I
had one of the bottles of Topo Chico mineral water
with the salad; it was probably better for me than the
Diet Coke or regular Sprite I might otherwise have
gotten.
Top
Friday September 23
Today was the start of reunion
weekend. Well, not quite; the reunion activities
wouldn’t begin until this evening. What would I
do until then? Well, first I would have breakfast in
the restaurant. Next, I would firm up
arrangements to see longtime family friend Linda Coney
in the afternoon. But that would be a few hours
away. How to pass the time until then? Well,
when I went to the HEB store yesterday, I saw they
carried wasabi-coated peas. But I didn’t get
any, because they were different from the wasabi peas
that I first grew to like. Those came from the
Central Market. But for a while, the Central
Market peas had changed; they had a slightly different
taste. Had they changed back? There was
only one way to find out, and that was to go
there. And so, I started heading into town
around 9 AM.
Traffic wasn’t too bad until I got close to the
Loop. I had been thinking about how I would get
to the Central Market; the traffic told me I should
take the South Loop. Things didn’t look that
different from when I’d last been there in
March. I got off at Stella Link and took that
northward, not knowing where I’d have to turn to get
to the store. It turned out I didn’t have to
make another turn except into the store parking lot,
for Stella Link became Weslayan, and I knew the store
was at Westheimer and Weslayan. After paying a
visit to the restroom, I went through the store,
seeing what there was to see, buying two packs of
green chile flavored tortilla chips (not before
sampling them), and finally checking the wasabi
peas. Yes, they tasted like they used to!
I got around a pound’s worth in two containers.
Now I needed to head to Alvin, for that was where I’d
be meeting Linda. I took Westheimer over to the
West Loop, which became the South Loop. I drove
down 288, the South Freeway, to Highway 6 and took
that over to Alvin. It was still before noon,
too early to meet, so I went to the Wal-Mart. I
didn’t get anything there; I just needed to kill some
time before heading over to Alvin Community
College. That was where Linda was --
specifically, the pottery studio in J Building. Once I
arrived there, I called her and she invited me inside
to see the studio, meet some of the students and meet
the instructor. It was lunchtime, so we went
over to the Barbed Rose in downtown Alvin, east of the
intersection of Gordon and Sealy. The restaurant was
fairly new, and it had two parts, the restaurant
proper and a covered outdoor burger bar. We ate
in the restaurant proper, and it was a good
meal. I had a buffalo burger, while Linda had a
Cobb salad. My parents would have enjoyed eating
there, were they still living and were they still
living in Texas.
Now I had tried arranging a meeting with Linda and
husband Steve earlier in the week, but Steve had taken
ill and was still recovering. I wouldn’t be
seeing him this time, but I would see their son David,
for after our meal, we drove over to his office in
Friendswood (he’s a stockbroker for Edward T. Jones)
and spent some time with him. Then it was back
to the pottery studio, where Linda showed me her
recent pieces and invited me to select one of the cups
as a gift. Then it was back to the hotel for me
until the evening.
I made sure I was prepared for this evening. The
camera batteries were charged, but the iPod touch’s
batteries weren’t; I needed to charge it before
setting off. The camera had a large-capacity
memory card in place. It was warm, so I didn’t
need a jacket, and I had my Creek cap in the
car. Yes, I was prepared. I set off for
the stadium shortly after 6; it wasn’t far away at
all, but I wanted to be sure of getting a good parking
spot. The main parking lot was already fairly
full some 45 minutes before kickoff, but I got a
decent enough spot. I took a few pictures
outside the stadium before buying my ticket and
heading inside. I bought a hot dog and a bottle
of water; that would be my supper tonight. And
then I found my way to the seating area where we’d
agreed to meet, 10 rows up on the east side of the
press box. It turned out I was the first member
of the class there, giving me opportunity to eat my
hot dog. Soon, other class members started to
arrive. Bill Porter and his wife arrived next,
followed not long after by Stacie Barnett Bemis and
Janet Bergeron Vidrine, who’d just arrived from Baton
Rouge. Janet didn’t graduate with us, having moved
away after freshman year, but she was still one of us.
Then the arrivals became too difficult to track.
Here’s whom I remember seeing at the game: Rob and Amy
Ellison Wohrer were there, along with Amy’s son Angus,
who tried to read a book (he wasn’t feeling well, I
would later learn). Greg Laurence and David
Zabalaoui came later. Kelly Griffith and Helen
Rickards Foreman were there, as were Cyndi Miller
Dean, David Williams, Laurie Gay Vaughn, Lynn
Covington, Mark Wilkinson, Kathy Matchette Douglas,
Frederic Lambert (he also had moved away after 9th
grade), David Bealmear, Dale Fortenberry, Mike Scanlon
and Liz Hoober Scanlon, Clan Beeth and wife Stefanie,
Lupe Ramirez, Kathleen Ling Amyx, Frances Owens Yeaney
and husband Jeff, who else? Oh yes, a pre-haircut
Shawn Merrell. In support of his job-hunting
efforts, he was going to get his hair cut tomorrow by
Robert Balderas, who now ran the hair salon started by
his mother. She cut my hair a few times during
high school. There were more, I’m sure.
How was the game? Well, it started out poorly,
with Creek giving up a safety after the punter stepped
out of the end zone. Dickinson kept pouring it
on so that by halftime, it was 22-7 in favor of the
Gators. It didn’t look good for the
Wildcats. But they didn’t give up. They clawed
their way back to go ahead by one point, 23-22.
And that was how the game ended: Clear Creek won,
23-22! It wasn’t the official Homecoming game
(that had been two weeks earlier), but it was our
Homecoming, you could say, and we could celebrate with
a win! Some had bailed out for T-Bone Tom’s
earlier; they’d missed the comeback. Now the
rest of us were on our way there.
T-Bone Tom’s in Kemah was already pretty busy when I
arrived there. Rob Wohrer was welcoming everyone
up by the bar. I got a Sierra Mist (I needed
something without caffeine) and went out to the patio
area. The Ezra Charles band was playing; their
notable feature was an all-female brass section. The
area where we had gathered was right in front of one
of the band’s PA system, making for a loud
evening. I had a hard time hearing people speak,
and I found myself speaking loudly (if not shouting)
in order to be heard. That was tiring, and I
didn’t feel like hanging around too long under those
conditions. The bandleader did acknowledge our
reunion during his set.
Who did I see on the patio that I hadn’t seen at the
football game? I recall seeing Laura Cook Velie, Ann
McMahon Russo, Kenneth (Kent) Wood and his wife Susan
(they were absolutely raving about their slightly used
Mustang Cobra). I also saw Laurie Scarcella Delesandri
and Kathy Malone in the distance but didn’t get to
speak to them. Chris Cartwright was there, and I spoke
to him briefly. I saw Connie Churchill Foster but
didn’t get to speak to her.
Kenneth and Susan had driven down from east Texas that
evening and were calling it an early night, but before
they left, they had me come out and look at their
Cobra. They also asked for help in getting the
owner’s manual, which the previous owner had neglected
to leave in the car. I promised to look for
copies once I returned to the office; I knew I could
get electronic versions.
I popped in the bar area for a brief visit to see good
night to Rob; he had remained up there. David
Zabalaoui and Greg Laurence were there; so were
Melissa Mayo Snell and husband Willy, who had said
they would not be at the game but would be at
Tom’s. Then I hear someone calling my name from
behind me. I turned toward the bar, and I saw who
called to me. It took me a moment to register
who it was; it was Cory Coldwell, whom I hadn’t seen
in 25 years, not since the 5-year reunion. I might
have had a harder time recognizing her had I not seen
recent pictures of her on Facebook (that was true with
a lot of folks!); her longer hair would have thrown me
off, for remembered her with shorter hair. I
wanted to talk more, but I was still tired. Had
I spent the evening up by the bar, I might not have
been as tired. But I said my goodbyes and headed
back to the hotel.
I was indeed tired, but I wasn’t so tired that I
couldn’t offload the pictures and video from my camera
and put some of them on Facebook. Mine were
among the first; they would by no means be the
last. Then I called it an evening.
Top
Saturday September 24
Unfortunately, I had to wake up a couple of
times during the night to use the restroom, thanks to
that large Sierra Mist. But if I’d had the same
size Diet Coke, I might have been awake all night,
which would have been worse or have felt worse.
I wish they’d had caffeine-free Diet Coke. When
I woke up for good, I took a look outside. There
was the crescent moon rising over the Bay Area.
That was worthy of a picture, I thought, and I took
one. Later on, I saw the sun rising; that, too,
was worthy of a picture. I posted those to my
Facebook account. But as I checked other things
on Facebook, I saw a message from David Horrigan: due
to a last-minute speaking engagement, he would be
unable to make it to Houston for the reunions.
The engagement was in Chicago, where he would be
filling in for his boss. Apparently, he tried
and tried but could not find a way to be able to go
from Boston to Houston to Chicago. I knew he was
looking forward to the event, and I know we all wanted
to see him.
After I took a shower, I went downstairs for breakfast
and got the usual breakfast bar, which by now had
become the same ol’ same ol’ -- admittedly, a very
good same ol’ same ol’. Halfway through my meal,
Dale Fortenberry and David Bealmear came in for their
breakfast. I moved over to eat with them.
We talked about a number of items relating to the
reunion and who we saw last night, who had changed the
most and least, ideas for the 50th birthday
celebration that we were considering for next year or
the year following, etc. Either Dale or David
made the following statement: the ones who seem to
enjoy the reunions the most tend to be the ones from
out of town. The locals tend to see their
classmates on a regular basis and so don’t get all
that excited about reunion events; why pay to go when
they see them every day for free? That wasn’t true for
every local, to be sure. There was some truth in
that, I thought. As we discussed this, Melissa Mayo
Snell and husband Willy came in for their
breakfast. They couldn’t sit with us because our
table was full (more precisely, we had an empty spot,
but two spots were needed). Then Duncan Allred
stopped by to say hello; he’d been elsewhere in the
restaurant. We were having a mini-reunion right
there!
Dale, David and I were finished, so we let Melissa and
Willy get to their breakfast. Dale and David went into
Houston to check on Dale’s booth at the Houston Wine
Festival (he offers tours of Texas wineries). As for
me, my morning was empty. I didn’t have anything
scheduled until the KMSC reunion in the afternoon and
the Creek reunion in the evening. So I decided
to drive around for a while. I got some gas, and then
I drove over to Newport and went up and down all of
the original streets -- Sunset Ct. N and S, Fairfield
Ct. N and S, Williamsburg Ct. N and S, Savanna Ct. N
and S. This was a drive down Memory Lane. How
many of the original residents were still in their
houses, I wondered. As I drove past our street on the
way out of the subdivision, I thought about my late
parents. Then I went over to Clear Creek Village and
did something similar; I even went down Aggie
Lane! What’s more, there was a Longhorn banner
flying from a house on Aggie Lane! Well, it was a
divided banner; both UT and A&M were represented.
Then I drove over to see the new high school for the
west side of League City, Clear Springs High
School. If I had been growing up in Newport now,
I would have been going to Clear Springs, not Clear
Creek. From the outside, it looked like a decent
enough facility. But it would never be my school.
After my drive down Memory Lane, I turned on the
Michigan State football game on Sirius and drove up to
Fry’s for another look-around. It remained a
look-around, though; I didn’t get anything. I
listened to the game on the way back to the
hotel. Unfortunately, I couldn’t put it on TV;
Michigan State versus Central Michigan wasn’t a
popular matchup in southeast Texas. But MSU was doing
quite well, so I turned on another game and kept up
with the score that way. I also got out my
suitcase and my overnight bag and started to
pack. I could do some packing now, but a lot
would need to wait until morning, for I had to pack my
jacket away. I needed it for the reunion
tonight.
It was 2 o’clock. The lunch at Tookie’s was
starting. Many of my classmates were gathering
there for lunch before the reunion. We’d done
something similar before the 25-year reunion, and I’d
been part of that this time. But because the
lunch was starting so late in order to avoid the
crowds, it would overlap with the KMSC reunion.
This was a slight dilemma, but I knew it could not be
avoided. Had the lunch been at 11, then there
would have been little if any conflict. But I
did not control the schedule for the lunch. This
was one reason why I went there earlier in the week:
my attendance on Saturday was doubtful. From the
pictures I saw posted, everyone was having a great
time out on the back deck. During the event,
though, a serious accident happened right in front of
the restaurant. Rob Wohrer, a Seabrook firefighter,
bounded over the railing on the deck to render aid,
according to those who were there.
The remainder of this entry is still
being written.
Top
Sunday September 25
Miles driven during the week in League City:
482.2
Miles today: 505.3
Miles for this segment of the trip: 505.3
No, I was not going to get a good night’s sleep
tonight. I popped awake around 4:30; when I
couldn’t immediately get back to sleep, I checked my
e-mail, and then I tried to go back to sleep
again. I’m not sure that I did; I rested, but I
don’t think I slept. When I noticed it starting
to get light outside, I got up and started to
pack. Yes, it was time for me to start heading
back to Michigan. The suitcase couldn’t really
be packed until now, for my jacket had to go in there,
and I was wearing it last night. Thanks to
putting my laundry in a separate bag, the suitcase
wasn’t as full as it had been at the start of the
trip.
For my last visit to the breakfast bar, I noticed that
the selection had expanded again to include the
cheeses, the sausage patties, the additional pastries,
etc., that were there last Sunday. I didn’t see
any of my classmates in the restaurant; they were
probably still asleep. I couldn’t afford to be,
though, for I had to hit the road pretty soon.
After breakfast, I loaded up the car, then went to
check out. It was 8:25, and I was about to set
out for home.
I drove out of the parking garage, up the ramp, and
down to FM 2094, where I made my way through League
City and over to the freeway. By going that way,
I had decided I would not take the southern Louisiana
route. Instead, I’d be going up into town, then
onto US 59 into East Texas. As I drove through
Houston and up the Eastex Freeway, I was doing my
customary bouncing around the satellites -- satellite
radio channels, that is. A little bit of
Breakfast with the Beatles, a lot of vintage American
Top 40; that’s what kept me company as I drove out of
Harris County and into east Texas. The drive was
uneventful as I went through (well, near, when you
count the bypasses) Cleveland, Livingston, Lufkin,
Nacogdoches, Carthage, and a lot of smaller towns.
By the time I reached Marshall, the Mariner needed a
refueling. I filled it up there, and then I did
something I had never done before: I took I-20
eastward towards Shreveport. It was now early
afternoon, and the NFL football games had
started. I was listening to Detroit play
Minnesota, and the game was starting rather badly for
the Lions. I stopped for lunch at a Wendy’s on the
west side of Shreveport; one of the TV’s in there was
carrying the NFL Network and its running summary of
all the games in progress. While I ate, I made
hotel reservations for Jackson, Mississippi, which I
was sure I could easily make before nightfall. I
was able to use some of my HHonors points to get a
discount at the Hilton Garden Inn in Pearl. Back
in the car, I drove eastward on I-20, through
Shreveport and Bossier City, on to Monroe and then
through Vicksburg. I heard the Lions come from
behind to win their game, but the Texans lost to the
Saints.
The Hilton Garden Inn in Pearl was right on I-20, and
that was almost literally true: the freeway ran some
20-25 feet away from my room. I feared road
noise would keep me awake during the night.
There were steakhouses within walking distance on
either side of the hotel, but I wasn’t that
hungry. After checking my e-mail and seeing all
the post-reunion activity on Facebook, I turned on the
Sunday Night Football pre-game show and lay down on
the bed.
I never did have supper that night, nor do I remember
anything about the football game. When I lay
down, I must have fallen asleep right away, not waking
up until 5 hours later with all the lights in the room
still on and the TV showing Entertainment
Tonight. I needed that sleep.
Top
Monday September 26
Miles today: 517.3
Miles for the return trip: 1023.3
After waking up from my early shuteye, I turned off
the TV and turned down the bed, but I couldn’t get
back to sleep, so I read for a bit before I got tired
again. I had to use the restroom, but when I
did, I got a rude surprise: the toilet wouldn’t
flush! The chain had come undone from the flush
lever, and I couldn’t attach it. I could pull it
by hand, though. I would have to report that
when I checked out in the morning.
I got up for good around 5:30, got dressed and then
went down to the lobby for breakfast. Breakfast
was not complimentary here. I had their buffet,
which included items cooked to order; I chose to order
chocolate chip pancakes, sausage patties, grilled
potatoes (a.k.a. home fries), some pineapple pieces
and a muffin. Very good, but very filling; I
couldn’t quite finish everything.
By 8 o’clock, I was on the road -- to the gas station
for a fill-up. Not long after, I was really on
the road, continuing eastward on I-20 toward Meridian
and Birmingham. The drive to Birmingham was
uneventful, but once I started heading north on I-65
out of Birmingham, the rain started. South of
the town of Cullman, the rain started pouring down so
heavily that I pulled off at a rest area until it
subsided. I used my iPad to check the weather
radar; if I continued going north, I would eventually
clear the rain. I waited until the rain slacked
before I set off again, and the weather did improve.
The drive through Nashville was uneventful, and I
stopped at the first rest area in Kentucky.
Where would I stay that night? Would I be able
to make it to Louisville? I didn’t think
so. How about Elizabethtown? Yes, I could
make it there, but when I checked the Hilton website,
I found a better hotel deal between Elizabethtown and
Bowling Green, one with the same deal as last night:
$40 plus HHonors points. And so I made a
reservation for the Hampton Inn in Horse Cave.
Thanks to the large breakfast, I didn’t stop for lunch
today, although I did nibble on some of those Central
Market green chile tortilla chips. But I did
make sure to have supper tonight. It wasn’t a
fancy supper; I had a burger at McDonald’s at the
Love’s truck stop across the freeway from the
hotel. The setting seemed familiar to me; it was
quite possible that I had stopped there before, most
likely in March on my previous trip to Texas.
Once I checked in to the hotel, I did some work on my
photos, some Facebook work, some e-mail checking,
etc. Then I turned on Monday Night Football and
watched that game to its conclusion. Then it was
time for bed.
Top
Tuesday September 27
Miles today: 439.4
Miles for the return trip: 1462.7
I had a dream overnight that ended rather
disturbingly. I was in some sort of collegiate
setting, and I’d found a lightweight radio chassis that
could have been gutted to put another radio
inside. The disturbing part: I was walking and saw
evidence of things that had been demolished, and I
reached my destination only to find that my favorite
Rickenbacker 12-string had been smashed to bits, as
though Pete Townshend in his guitar-smashing days had
gotten hold of it. I didn’t get to react very
long, though, for that was when I woke up. It was
5:50 AM, I was in Kentucky, and my favorite Rickenbacker
12-string was back in Michigan. By the end of the
day, I would be as well.
After doing my e-mail and web checks, I went downstairs
to have breakfast at the breakfast bar. It was the
normal Hampton Inn breakfast bar, and today I had a dish
of Special K, a muffin and some yogurt. I did not
have any scrambled eggs; I’d had enough of those at
South Shore for the last week. I brushed my teeth
back at the room, gathered my stuff, checked out, and
got under way shortly after 7 o’clock. Make that 8
o’clock Eastern time, for I was about to cross over into
Eastern time and had to regain that mindset. I
listened to the Underground Garage for the most part as
I drove up I-65 toward Louisville, although I bounced
around a lot during that drive and during the day.
I did find it oddly appropriate to be driving through
Oldham County in Kentucky as I listened to the Andrew
Oldham program on the Underground Garage.
The weather was definitely changing as I drove northward
on this trip. It was in the 60’s this morning; I
eventually had to put on a jacket. There was fog
on I-65, and it was cloudy for the entire trip to
Detroit. I even encountered a few raindrops along
the way, although it was not nearly as bad as yesterday
in Alabama. I stopped for gas along I-71 between
Louisville and Cincinnati, then continued onward.
Traffic got rather heavy in Cincy, as it usually does;
it lightened slightly between Cincinnati and Dayton; got
heavy in Dayton again, thanks to its perpetual
construction along I-75; then lightened again until
Toledo.
Thanks to the nibbles I had in my car, I didn’t have to
stop for lunch right away, although I did eventually
stop at a truck stop in North Baltimore (I was stopping
for gas at the same time). Now I was
well-positioned for the final homeward push. One
final stop at the first rest area in Michigan for a
bathroom break, and then reasonably smooth driving up
I-75 and I-275 up to metro Detroit. Gas prices had
come down a bit since my departure, but they were
nowhere near as low as in Ohio or Texas. And by
4:05, I was pulling into my garage in Westland; I was
home. Time to unload the car; time to unpack the
suitcase; time to do a load of laundry; time to upload
photos from the two reunions to Facebook; time to watch
the first episode of New
Girl and to start catching up on the Doctor
Who I’d missed; time to get ready for work.
And so, my vacation came to an end.
Top
THE END
Top
Back to Travels page
©2011 R.
W. Reini. All rights reserved.
Written by Roger
Reini
Revised
October 7, 2011
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