Saturday, July 31, 2004

Dallas-Day 2

Thursday started out with the news.

It seems that overnight greater Dallas was downpoured into a flood. Parts all around were under water. All the TV stations were there live with their "action cams" giving reports on the aftermath, and that it wasn't over yet.

Mary didn't even have time to notice. She was going to have a busy day with her convention and prolly wouldn't be seeing the outside for a day or two anyway.

Josh and I didn't have too many options; parts of the city are flooded, I don't know the city. It seemed best to just stay local in downtown Dallas and not drive anywhere. The last thing I want to do is add "high water rescue" to my vacation plans.

So I had to figure out what to do with Josh to fill the day.

First we found a place near the Subway that made breakfast. Then we scouted about a little before returning to the hotel. We stayed in for a good part of the day and traded guitar licks. Thank god he asked to bring his guitar because it helped to pass the day.

Noon had us driving around trying to find a Walgreens. I always forget to pack something and this time it was my razor. We bought some chips and some sodas along with a package of Oreos for Mary. Halfway back to the hotel I realized I'd forgotten to buy a razor. That'll give us something to do Friday.

Mid afternoon it started to clear up so we grabbed our boards and went for a ride. Downtown Dallas was cleaned up a few years back. There's biiiiiiiig money there. And it had all of the sidewalks repaved with brick. So riding around was a little bumpy, but not bad enough that you couldn't ride. Just an ever present clicking.

We rode all the down to the touristy "West End" and only got a couple of remarks. One guy looked at me and said "Woah, somebody's doing it old school." GRRRRR!!!!!! Am I that old that I get the "old school" moniker? After a while we just picked up our boards and started walking. About 10 minutes later some older lady remarked "I heard that skateboarders couldn't be on the sidewalk". That pissed me off because at that point we were pedestrians! We were walking and had been for over 10 minutes. I let it go, because if I said anything I'd be the asshole. Old ladies always win in this so why fight.

We headed back and found a cool park made for carving. So we did. Then went back to the hotel and made dinner plans.

Mary had come in and out while we were gone. We really didn't expect to see her this week. We decided to have some pizza at a place real close to the hotel instead of going to the touristy West End. It was a cool little place. The walls were covered with pictures. Some were of family. Most were of patrons getting caught mid bite, business men and women with napkins placed as bibs trying to smile with half bitten slices hanging from their mouths. Then there were a couple of pictures of celebrities who'd visited. There was a picture Jay Leno mugging it up, and sports celebs that were from Dallas. Bet the best shot was of Mohamed Ali looking young and healthy, totally unaware that the owner was trying to take a picture with him, just trying to leave. Josh didn't know who he was. So I told him a little about the greatest.

We walked back and watched some TV until Mary came back to the room.

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