TX: Houston, Galveston, and Dallas

I flew into Dallas on a red-eye flight and arrived at 5:30am on October 5. By 6:30, I had picked up a rental car and was on my way to Galveston. I had asked for an economy car and Enterprise gave me Jeep Laredo. Apparently, the smaller cars were at a more expensive rate. My first experience of "Everything is big in Texas."

The drive wasn't so bad after I got out of the suburbs of the Dallas/Fort Worth area. There were still a lot of cars though. It probably would have been a more relaxing drive if I had a good night's sleep (I took a nap along the way) and if I were used to the feel of the car. Sitting higher up was a bit disconcerting.

I've been to Dallas about 15 or so years ago and I hated it. I thought it was too hot, too dry, too dusty, too flat, and too unfriendly. But after I got further south, it felt better. There were many more trees and that makes a big difference.

I arrived at my hotel around noon and asked if I could check in early. The earliest they could get my room ready was at 2pm, so I went for lunch at a Chinese restaurant called Happy Buddha. The food was mediocre, but it seems to be a favorite hangout. It was dark and cool inside and there were hidden nooks everywhere. It seemed to be the place where every businessman takes his mistress. Oh, okay, it could have been his secretary.

I spent the rest of the afternoon catching up on my sleep.


Houston

I got up fairly late and drove about an hour to Houston. I had reservations for the 11:45am Level 9 tour at the Space Center. I picked up my ticket and headed to the tram station and waited.

Then our tour guides arrived. David, our primary tour guide, talked to us individually and asked about us -- where we were from and what we did. Then, when he gathered us together in a circle, he introduced Brenda, the other tour guide. We also went around the circle and introduced ourselves to the group. There were only about eight of us and everybody came from different states; a couple came from Mexico.

We had our pictures taken (it was required because of security reasons) before we hopped on the van. Then they took us to the Astronaut Cafeteria for lunch. Most of us didn't know that lunch was included. I had catfish and fries.

I sat with a writer from Oklahoma who was writing a historical novel and was on this tour as part of his research for the book. He bought a couple of disposable cameras to take pictures for the book and I offered to let him use my pics.

He already had lunch so he didn't eat much. After he got up, two men joined me at my table. They were in a different Level 9 tour group but they chatted with me anyway. The younger one was an Italian who lives in Germany and was visiting. He's engaged to the cousin of the older man's wife. The younger one wasn't very talkative and avoided looking at me. But I had a great conversation with the older one about travelling and great places to go. He talked about the Grand Canyon and Mount Zion until it was time for us to leave.

We went to different buildings that didn't look interesting from the outside. In fact, they didn't look very interesting on the inside either, until you found out what they did in there.

Our first stop was the Sonny Carter Training Facility (Neutral Bouyancy Laboratory), where they did the astronaut training. They had a huge -- and I mean HUGE -- pool where they sank a replica of a space station or whatever space vehicle they had to train on. In fact, we could see a monitor that showed a live feed of Sunita Williams, who was in full spacesuit, performing what she would be doing in space after she gets there in early December.

We saw the Space Shuttle Mission Control Center. However, the staff that was working there were actually the Space Station staff and they were just using that room until they get their own room. Running along the left wall were plaques of logos representing every Space Shuttle mission. These logos were the same ones that are sewn as patches on the astronauts' suits.

Later in the afternoon, we saw the historic Mission Control Center, which is no longer used. They've reinstalled the equipment used in the 1960s, when they first heard the words, "The Eagle has landed."

There was also the Space Environment Simulation Lab, which housed a huge testing chamber where they tested materials and equipment for extreme heat (using very bright solar lights), extreme cold (using liquid nitrogen), and vacuum (extracting the air out from the chamber until the air left inside would fit in a golf ball). There was a smaller chamber in the opposite side where they tested the astronauts for G-forces and other conditions.

And then there was a huge warehouse with "high-fidelity" mock-ups of different pieces of space vehicles. I think it was mostly to give engineers a feel for what it's like to be inside those things, so they can design them better. Finally, in the Rocket Park, we saw an actual Space Shuttle. It was actually a composite of pieces of Space Shuttles built for cancelled missions.


Galveston

I spent a few hours just driving around Galveston. I followed Seawall Blvd to the western tip of the island. There were a lot of cars lined up along the southern side of the road. The feel was more like LA's beaches than Hawaii's beaches. It was as though people were rushing to relax. Further west, I noticed that houses looked top-heavy. There were usually three floors, and the bottom floor was smaller than the top two floors. Then I realized they were on stilts! The bottom floor was just the garage! But these were beautiful houses, many-gabled ones, A-frame ones, dome-roofed ones. Even the church was on stilts. But this part of the island is a lot quieter, more peaceful, even though there were still public access beaches.

There is a toll road near the tip of the island and I turned around by going under the bridge and headed back to 25th. I found where the Duck Tour bus was parked, but the next tour was a couple of hours away, so I decided to traverse the bay side of the island.

I parked in front of Pier 20 and found a small booth where a woman was selling tickets to a dolphin-watching cruise for $10. I bought a ticket and walked down the pier, past an antique car show. As I got on board the small vessel, the captain asked, "Flying solo today?" I said, "Yup! Or sailing solo in this case." Of course, he knew better and corrected me, "Boating solo." It was a motor boat, not a sailboat.

I sat at one of the wooden seats inside but later moved to the bow where I could get a better view. As we were leaving the dock, the captain announced that he was going to blow an "extremely loud" horn. When he sounded it, I still got very visibly startled and turned around and gave the captain a look with an expression that chastised him somewhat. He said on the loudspeaker, "What part of 'extremely loud' did you not understand, young lady?" :-D

It was a very busy bay. We saw a lot of dolphins; some even swam with our boat. The cruise ship Ecstasy was sitting at the ship terminal. And, offshore, there was a long line of commercial ships. Meanwhile, the ferry (which was free) passed by every so often, loaded with cars and people. I took LOTS of pictures within a span of an hour. I got sprayed quite a bit when we crossed wakes caused by other boats, so I'll have to clean my camera well when I get home.

After the cruise, I had a very late lunch around 4pm at Willie G's next to the dock. I got fried calamari with marinara sauce for starters, and lemon pepper catfish with fettucini alfredo for the entree. It was the BEST seafood I've ever had! The calamari was not too tender and not too chewy -- just right. And the buttery catfish melts in your mouth. And I've never been a fan of pasta, but the fettucini was perfectly al dente and the alfredo sauce was absolutely divine. And to think that the fettucini alfredo was a mistake; I ordered angel hair pasta with marinara sauce. A delightful mistake! Sometimes, fate has better plans. The servings were HUGE! So, I had to take my leftovers with me.

An offshore oil drilling rig has been turned into a museum and sits on Pier 19. However, they were closed by the time I got there. The tall ship Elissa on Pier 21 was also closed, but I still got a few pictures of her.

I thought I'd take the ferry, but the line was too long, so I decided against it. Instead, I drove to Seawolf Park and took pictures there. There were lots of people fishing along the point. I got lots of pictures of the ships and the ferry and the beautiful sunset.


Dallas

The drive to Dallas was uneventful. My GPS led me to the conference center and hotel which was right in the airport grounds. I was able to take a nap before going down to the cafeteria for the welcome dinner for seminar participants. It was a beautiful day and we sat outside. Another beautiful sunset. Had a wonderful conversation, peppered with lots of laughter, which was very unusual in a group of strangers who just met. We turned in around 8pm.

Our day started at 8:30am on Monday. Our meals were all free and the hotel kept us supplied with snacks and drinks throughout the day. In the evening, I celebrated my birthday watching Monday Night Football with five of the men in class at Willhoite's in a suburb called Grapevine. Not my ideal birthday celebration, but I was with a great group of folks, so it was a very nice evening anyway. We summoned the shuttle around 10:30pm and we were back at the hotel by 11pm.

We were too busy on Tuesday and Wednesday so I was even short on sleep. I even missed a happy hour on Wednesday evening to prepare for a presentation on Thursday. The presentation went well (considering the lack of time to prepare), and class ended with lunch (during which we had a false fire alarm). We said our goodbyes and I accompanied our teacher and another classmate on the shuttle to the airport, where I took a cab to Dallas. (I returned the car on Tuesday night.)

The cab cost me $44 plus tip (it was the standard fare), but the driver was very friendly and was very accommodating. His name is Charlie and he's from Thailand. He had been in Texas for 23 years. He said that Dallas isn't really a tourist town; there's very little to see. It's more a business destination. But he stopped at a Bank of America building halfway to Dallas so I could take pictures of the horse sculpture in the front. There were about 10 life-size horses there. Then he took me to a park where there was a large herd (about 30 or so) of cattle and three cowboys riding on horses. All in bronze, I think. All life-size. I took lots of pictures there. Then he dropped me off at the place where JFK was shot. There was a museum at the sixth story of the book depository building where Lee Harvey Oswald was supposedly standing. I took the audio tour for $13.50 and the clerk said it takes 45 minutes (it was 4pm), but I only got halfway through it when they closed at 6pm. It was certainly very interesting. And there were parts where I got teary-eyed.

Charlie had given me directions to get to the Dallas Aquarium (but I figured they were probably already closed too) and to the light rail station that would take me back to the airport. As I was crossing the street towards the station, a woman was asking a street vendor to take her picture with the street behind her. It was the street where the motorcade was passing when JFK was shot. I asked the vendor to take my picture as well. Then he crossed the street with me to show where the windows were and which building were what. I bought a copy of a newspaper about the JFK assassination from him for $5. It was probably twice what it's worth, but he took my picture after all and gave me clearer directions to the train station than the parking lot attendant did, and he was very friendly, so what's a few extra dollars? The sun was setting and I wanted to get back to the hotel safe.

A homeless young woman helped me get my ticket. I gave her a couple of dollars. Then I caught the Trinity Railway Express, which is a double-decker train painted like the Texas state flag. It was actually a comfortable, clean, and fairly new train. I sat upstairs. It was a long time before the train started moving however. By the time I got to the DFW airport station, it was already dark. The hotel shuttle didn't usually pick people up there, but they came for me anyway.


For some reason, I feel a twinge of sadness as I leave this place. It might be because I've made new friends in the seminar. Or it might be other emotional things that are going on in my life, but Texas, especially Galveston, has sentimental value to me now.


PS: Hmm. How many times did I use the word "huge"?