Houston

January 25 & 26  WiFi available for the first time since leaving Houston . . .

We stopped in Houston for a couple of days to see our friends Magdalena, Justin, Monique and Chris.

Since Monique and Chris were in school, we let Maggie to pick the activities.  She chose SKYDIVING (in a wind chamber) and GOLF.  I assumed she meant mini golf as I had previously sworn off golf after a disastrous outing years ago.

We went to a facility called “iFly” and registered, took a static lesson and then suited up. By “we”, I mean Maggie and Cathy.  Justin and I opted out due to newly remembered war injuries.  Both ladies got two sessions with an instructor and learned how to manuever and finished the flight with a trip “up the tube”, about 30′ off the surface.  There were large fans below a wire trampoline type floor that were capable of moving the air at almost 150 MPH.  It only took 70 MPH to get them airborne though.

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After flying, we went on to the mini golf, although it was not mini.  The facility was basically a three deck driving range with targets to about 200 yards.  It becomes very popular as the evening progresses with live bands, multiple bars, fire pits, lighting and as a sidelight . . golf.  The scoring was electronic, so there was no room for a “shoe wedge”.  I continued to embarrass myself and still know why I don’t play golf.  Don’t know my final score but I did finish behind Maggie, Cathy and Justin and the groundskeeper . .  I think Maggie sandbagged me

We met that evening for dinner at an incredible Mexican restaurant that was decorated with ?African? art.  The food was great, and the place was packed.  We had to park a block away as all of the lots were full.

Monique challenged me to a trivia game that she had downloaded to her phone, so I downloaded it to my phone so we could play against each other.  She is very competitive and we were pretty evenly matched, although, without her I cannot figure out how to play the game by myself.  The young ones are much better at these things.

This is a shot of Chris “riding the burrito” after dinner taken by Maggie.  The shots that I took that evening were in .avi mode (don’t know how I did that and I cannot figure out how to convert to individual JPeg to add to this blog.  If I can figure it out, I will add them later.

I think I may have figured out how to take a shot of an .avi so here goes . . . this is Monique, who will be celebrating her Quinceanera this year:

Leaving Houston, we stopped at this rest area midday.  I noticed that these birds found a way to stay out of the sun.  They were huddled together in the shade of this motor home. Several hours later, while fueling up this motorhome pulled into the slot next to me and recognized me as the one who took the photo.