thebaldgeek

We flew (uneventfully!) from Dallas to Denver, then from there to LA yesterday.
The lady at the Avis counter loved my accent and so gave me a free up grade on the car, so this time we are in a minivan!!!!! Its way cooler than the sports car!

The girls crashed at Jason and Brittanys while Terry and I went and spent 2.5 hours in an electronics shop…… we struggled hard, but in the end we broke down and bought a few things each. (I even found a present for GaryC (who is still pointing out broken things on my web site!))

Today I am off on a little road trip by myself (more on this possibly latter, much latter!), then on the way home I hope to go via the Goldwing shop (and it better be open! (and have the stuff I want in stock!)).

This afternoon we go to a friends house for dinner, meeting Steve and Karrie (and the kids) there, and then following them home. We spend the weekend with them, looking forward to it!

Chow for now.

Ben.

Its been a busy few days.

Saturday we drove down to Tyrell for church, its a nice little rental hall with a great bunch of people, Terry made some new friends pretty easy which was nice to see. (slight repeat with more info than the last post.)

Saturday night we drove the 1.5 hours back to Dallas and had dinner with some friends from church.

Sunday we drove down to Seguin ready for church on Monday, we stayed with some members in their nice little home out of town a bit. It was overcast so I still have not seen any stars! Doh!

Monday was a full day of church. Its a good sized church when its all combined. Amy made some good friends pretty quick.

Monday night we drove into San Antonio to look at the Alamo, we got there just as it shut. Then we walked down the river walk, it was pretty amazing. Its just a net work of footpaths along the river with waterfalls and restaurants all along and built in. It looks like a maintenance nightmare! (But VERY pretty). We had dinner there at the ‘Lone Star’. It was just Ok.

At about 8pm we went to the IMAX movie theater to watch a movie about the Alamo, it was pretty lame and did not really describe the events leading up to it, but it saved us going back in the morning.

Monday night we did not get much sleep, the cheep motel was on a main road and the traffic was really annoying!

Tuesday we went to http://www.Wingthings-texas.com shop front. They were supposed to open by 9am, but we left with no sign of them at 9:30am, to say I am really ticked off and really disappointed is an understatement.

From there we drove the 4.5ish hours to Huston. We went straight to the space center and jumped on the first tram tour. At first we thought it was going to be like the Universal Studios tour we took 4 years ago….’ in the building on the left they do really cool and interesting things, on the build to your right they do blah blah…’ But then they made a stop and showed us to the mock up building contents. Really cool, we got to see some guy get in a space suit. Then the really interesting bit, they stopped and showed us the Saturn 5 rocket. Its amazing. I just could not believe the size of it!

The rest of the space center is pretty lame, the kids liked the play room, lots of tubes and nets and stuff. The gift shop was nice but too busy and rushed. I bought a pen and some patches. We totally missed the Mercury capsule display which I am really ticked about, but Terry and I saw the Shuttle mock up which was pretty interesting).

After that it was dinner time, out to the Texas Roadhouse. Very noisy, and huge serving sizes (Again! Still!).

From there it was to the next motel. 10 bucks a night for the Internet, so this post is a little late….I did not think that any of you was worth the 10 bucks……perhaps all 3 of you combined?????….. nahhhhh.

Ok, thats about it.

Chow for now.

Ben.

P.S Freddy is coming down with a ripper cold. She is shivering and I am in a T-Shirt, hope its not too bad (and really hope I don’t get it!)

P.P.S Slight change of plans. Instead of going to Steves tomorrow afternoon, we are going back to J & B’s. Easier for me to get to Temecula on Friday morning.

P.P.P.S I got Brian’s remote control working for his home theater, this earnt me a single malt scotch, so I am going to sleep well tonight!

P.P.P.P.S MattW, we got you some shoes!!!! I think you will like them, I bought a pair exactly the same, they are that good, so SueW, you owe us a few bucks, but I think you will be happy about the results.
MattB, great to chat with you on Skype the other night, nice that the audio and video on the laptop works, we are still talking (and laughing) about the cat story!.
JasonC sorry for the lack of emails, see you in a few hours, talk is better than email any day?!
BrittanyC Freddy misses you big time!
DanH thanks again for fixing the HP card, I have been enjoying the weather heaps!
GaryC You are a pain in the @#$ to buy a souvenir for, what in the world can you get the gadget guy that has everything? Even America has it limits! (Currently looking for RV books, but lucking out on that front as well!!!!)
NickS Hope everything is going well for you back in the ‘hole’. Give the stereo a flogging for me, but don’t blow the tweeters!

We have had a nice day here in Dallas…..It snowed. Not enough to settle on the ground, but the flakes were very pretty. Thing is, we thought it was going to be hot, so we did not bring any long sleeves shirts, or jackets!
I bought a HP laptop, bought an old one because it was cheaper and because it was the only one that had XP on it. I mainly bought it for work stuff, and I don’t want Vista as I have to get stuff done on it. Also ‘all’ the new ones have super wide screens, I did not want anything that big as I bought it to work on, not watch movies on! Anyway, I am not sure if the battery is still getting up to capacity, but it seems a little light on for run time on the battery, but apart from that it seems really good. Honestly, at this stage, I have not had a lot of time to mess with it.

We had a great day at church today, nice group of people here. Looking forward to meeting a few more on Tuesday in the next city.

We have hired a minivan to move ourselves in, its rather comfy.

Apart from that, not a huge amount happening. Really enjoying kicking back with my Uncle and Aunt.

Chow for now.

Ben.

P.S The next door neighbors had a chimney fire tonight, 5 fire trucks and two cop cars turned up, it was pretty exciting for a while! Terry got to see the computer in the fire truck, he was pretty wrapped, I stuck my nose out the door, but it was too cold for me, so I went back to trying to fix my Uncles email problems……%$^#&@ Outlook Express!!!

Well, we got to Dallas, took a little longer than we planed, but we got here…..

We got to the airport in plenty of time. I would rather stand around a little than be hasseled and rushing….anyway, we got the car back (Freddy did not cry this time!), caught the shuttle bus to the terminal (Avis really has the whole thing sorted), and got our selfs checked in (no, really, you do it your self on a touch screen, its a really crummy system that should be scrapped). We got our luguage scanned (A really, really crummy system that should be totaly scrapped and re thunk from the start!), and went through the shoe removal security system……a really really REALLY crummy…..blah blah blah.

We got on the plane and settled into our seats, Terry next to the window (this is important), then Amy, then Freddy, isle, then me, and two others that were friendly enough (older married couple). Bit late leaving the termial, someone parked their plane behind us and we had to wait for them to shift it. Nice smooth take off, about 10 minutes into the flight there was a series of about 8 really loud bangs, each one shook the whole plane, and the lights in the cabin flashed in time with the bangs. I looked up and out Terrys window in time to see the last two bangs, there was bright orange flames coming out of the left engine each time it banged. Terry was sitting right behind the wing, so saw the whole thing up close and personal! Talk about great in flight entertainment!
Once it stopped, there was no difference to the sound of the plane, so I thought we would just keep going….no, the pilot came on to say they had reduced power and that we would be landing back at LAX in about 10 minutes. Bummer.
When we landed, we had the fire tucks along side of us, and the airport police cleared a way for us back to the jet bridge. We all got off and milled around. There were long que’s for those that needed to re-schedule connecting flights. Finaly after about an hour, they said that they had found another plane in a hanger and that we would be leaving in 45 minutes. Well, it turned into an hour and a half, but we finaly got into the air.
Freddy was wraped as we got to fly in Dallas at night and it sure was pretty…..

So, some 6 hours after we left, we got to Dallas.

That was yesterday.

Today, we slept in and milled around for a bit while Terry slept in some more.
Once up and running, we had a  quick lunch and then drove to  Fort Worth. We went to the  6th Floor Museum. Its set up to show the events surrounding the assasination of JFK. Out side on the grassy knoll is a guy who is set up each day to “tell the real story”, I bought his magazeine and will have a read when I can, the offical story does not add up real well in my mind, Im not sure hes got all the facts, but he claimes that he has been on the job for about 40 odd years, will be interesting reading either way.

From there we went to a placed called “Stocklands”, its like down town Texas 80 odd years ago. We went to a “pub” called Billy Bob’s, they have live bull ridding, line dancing and a big bar, all under the same roof, it was pretty crazy. (And it smelt rather…..um… interesting).

Then, to dinner, then home at about 10pm. Nice full day.

TOmorrow, I hope to buy a laptop and probably not much else……

Chow for now.

Ben (and crew).