Texas Trip

This past week, I took a road trip to Houston, Texas. My brother wants to move there to take a nursing job once he's done school at the end of next year. It was a short vacation, doubling as a scouting mission to get the lay of the land.

Five of us left in a rental car on Sunday April 29th and we got back into London on Saturday May 5th. The drive took approximately 25 hours, including a relaxing stop in either direction for one meal. I used to do periodic 20-hour drives to Florida when my paternal grandparents were still living there so the difference wasn't too bad. We also had four drivers for the trip so the driving itself was a breeze.

The main problem was that we had three grown men sitting in the back seat of our rental car at any given time and that back seat was really designed for two people only. Not exactly comfortable. Here's a pic of our happy little gang before we left. In the foreground on the left is Bruce, and Darryl is to his right. In the background, from left to right, are me, Derrick and my brother Dave.


In this next picture, we just hit the Texas border and we're posing inside the giant Texas star that they have there. Derrick is the guy that is missing from this shot since he had the camera most of the time. And wow, the temperature was gorgeous down there. To quote myself when we were taking this shot, "This metal is so hot! My butt is hot! I. Have. A. Hot. Ass." Heh.


The highlight of the trip was the round of 18-hole golf that we played on our second day there. It was nice and warm with a pleasant breeze the whole time. Fortunately, this particular course allowed us to play as a fivesome rather than the usual foursome, as long as we took three golf carts with us. That was big and fancy for Derrick, who had never driven a golf cart before. Special.

On the first hole, three of us scored 9s and 10s, whilst the other two guys had 5 and 6. Based on that, we immediately switched to playing Best Ball on the second tee. Derrick, my brother Dave and I were teamed up against Darryl and Bruce. Darryl was by far the best player in our group, natch. Darryl and Bruce were leading for the first set of holes and then my group caught up and led for the next set of holes. It finally came down to the final four holes and we were all tied up as we approached the 18th tee.


The competition was a lot of fun since it was so close for the entire game. And by playing best ball, no one had to worry about one terrible shot (or four of them) derailing the game. In the picture above, Dave and Derrick had some fun teeing off at the same time. Amusingly, Dave's shot swung wide right and Derrick's shot swung wide left, forming a rather artistic X through the blue sky. As the third member of our team, I then stepped up split the difference, sending it straight down the fairway.


I had a fairly good game that day with the majority of my shots heading straight towards my targets. The downside is that I lack power so my longest drive was only about 165 yards. Compared to Dave and Bruce, that ain't much at all since they can easily crack 200 when they keep their shots straight.

At one point, I spasmed and twitched several times as I realized that ants were attacking my feet. I only had sandals on, which wasn't such a clever idea. I received about ten bites during that day and the top of my feet were rather itchy, red and swollen for a full day after that. And speaking of ants, the next two shots depict the wonderful new gold tee that we discovered. If you look closely, you can see that we actually placed the golf ball on an ant hill and we teed up from there. So weird and yet cool.


For the record, my team won the game by a single stroke. It was the first time that my brother had ever managed to beat Darryl in a game of golf, so he was proud of that even if was a team win.

On Wednesday of that week, we went to watch the Houston Astros play against the Cincinatti Reds. Considering that the 'Stros lost 10-1 the previous day against that same team, we were quite happy to see them pull off a 3-1 win the day that we were there. This particular game had a little bit of everything: a home run, a hit batter, strike outs and walks, a triple, a guy getting injured at 2nd base in a collision, and one baseball record. Craig Biggio had two hits to move into 29th place on the all-time hits list in major league baseball, with a new total of 2956 as he hunts down that magic 3000. Always good to see history being made.


Beyond that, it was good times. My brother and I shared one motel room for the week whilst the other three guys crammed into a second room. On Thursday of that week, I stayed at the motel and spent most of the time reading various books, including the fascinating Houdini biography. The rest of the group headed off for a tour of a local hospital and to talk to recruiters, and then they hit the beach. Throw in three different buffets and a number of other resturants and fast food joints and it was quite the week. The main problem was that our wireless internet service was down for much of the week, which was a pain for me.

Oh, one other major thing that I need to mention. My brother "rented" a GPS system from Best Buy for the trip. It's a TomTom box that you can stick on your car's dashboard. You punch in your desired destination - a town, a mall, a restaurant, etc. - and it lays out the whole trip for you. As you come up to exits and intersections, it gives you warnings and it actually gives you a moving map as you drive down the road, showing your exact location. It's freakin' amazing. If anyone is headed on a major trip or is visiting a big city, I highly recommend getting one of these gadgets.

We configured our TomTom box to use a women's voice and we started referring to "her" directions. At one point, I suggested that "Tom" was a bad name if this was a female. I proposed a simple name change to "Tammy" since that was somewhat similar. The name stuck and we gradually assigned all kinds of personality traits to her as she bossed us around, changed her mind and generally told us what to do. Heh. Double entendres were the name of the game for this road trip, natch.

Great trip, fun group, good times.