Diary of a Fat Man: Travel

Travelogue Entry Three

Wed, 19 Jul 2006 17:29:32 GMT

Johnson Space Center (herefore known as JSC) was quite a bit different from the last time I went back in the early 90's (at least the "main" entrance area). When you first walk in, you're immediately overwhelmed by this HUGE kids play area (tubes, slides, etc) off to the right of the entrance. To the left is the entrance to a giant gift shop and in the middle of the building was the Superhero School (what that has to do with NASA is beyond me).

We arrived about 9:30 and didn't leave until almost 4pm, so Laurie's worries that there wouldn't be much to do were somewhat unnecessary. Trust me, you CAN spend the whole day there and be busy the whole time.

We did the whole tram tour thing that takes you out to the working areas of NASA. We went to what they now call the "historic Mission Control", which MC from the 60's until 1996. The last time I was there it was THE Mission Control, but now it's just an exhibit in the building. The current MC was off limits due to the fact that they had a Shuttle still in orbit. What many don't know is that there is actually a second active MC in the same building that runs the ops for the Space Station (which does have an American astronaut on it right now).

My only complaints about JSC is the costs...the ticket prices are OK ($16 for adults with a coupon), but the prices for souveniers and food are just downright crazy. $8.00 for a burger and fries? This isn't Six Flags, bitch.

Some of the cooler stuff you can see there: Mission Control, real moon rocks (there's even a piece that you can TOUCH!), one of the Mercury capsules, the trainer that was used for Space Lab, a Shuttle mockup...to me, pretty much everything there was wicked cool (that's my nod to my Beantown friends). However, Laurie said she really enjoyed it; and to her, science is like garlic to a vampire.

If you do happen to make it there, here's some advice: 1) come early; 2) don't go in the tram in July when the temps are around 100 degrees; 3) bring some Vicks Vaporub to put under your nose...this place is like the UN and there are some stank-ass mother fuckers who don't know that Americans like their visiting aliens to take a bath more than once a month.

During the trip, Laurie and I remembered the movie Space Camp (do you?). Anyway, I told Evan that I would rent it for him when we got home. I tried to get it Monday, but it seems to be as rare as self-esteem at Ricky Lake's house. I went to THREE video stores and struck out. I went to Circuit City, but they didn't have it. I finally found it at Barnes & Noble and had to buy it.

We watched it last night and it brought back fond memories...I must have watched that movie a dozen times when I was a kid. It's funny seeing the people in the movie and thinking about them today. Tate Donovan back when he was cool. Lea Thompson back when she was hot. Kate Capshaw before she was swallowing the jizz of a billionaire director. Kellie Preston back before she was the portal for alien babies. Joaquin Phoenix when he was still LEAF Phoenix.

Travelogue Entry Two

Tue, 18 Jul 2006 15:04:29 GMT

I gave y'all fools a brief rundown of the drive up and back down, so now we'll get on to the meat of the trip.

We crossed over into Galveston about 11am Saturday morning with the view of a MASSIVE oil refinery blotting the view of the Bay to the east of the bridge. Once you cross over the bridge, there is a subdivision?/condo?/group of homes off to the right that all have docks leading up to the front of the houses (which is pretty cool, but the houses/condos/whateverthefucktheyare looked somewhat rundown).

I'm guessing the the West Bay area of Gavleston is the "good" area because there are some badass houses and then across the bay from I-45, there is the Moody Gardens complex, which was WAY too pricey for my trip. It was $40 a person...unless that includes a "happy ending", I'm not paying $40 for any activity.

From what I saw of Galveston, it is a shit hole. I know most of you have never heard of Shreveport, LA (let alone know what it looks like), but Galveston reminded me of the worst areas of Shreveport. It was old, dirty, and rundown. Other than maybe a half dozen houses that I saw on the drive in to the beach, the bulk of the housing seemed ramshackle. The hotels looked like something out of Porky's (again, a few exceptions like the Galvez). I got harrassed by a cracked out homeless guy when I went to buy lunch. When I told the guy I had no money (liar, liar pants on fire) he spazzed out and started talking to himself as he walked away.

We get to the beach and realized that there isn't really any place to change into our swimming clothes. We cover ourselves with blankets and change in the car, parked on the side of Seawall Blvd. There's something liberating about freeballing on leather seats when there are dozens of people walking past you (STARING at you as the pass, btw).

The beach was OK. My last beach experience was the white sand, turqouise watered beaches of Panama City Beach FL. This ain't PCB, baby. The beach was pretty clean, but was the mucky brown sand that looks like brown sugar and the water was like a giant bowl of luke warm tea. It felt good, but you couldn't see past a few inches into the water. As with most Gulf beaches, the surf sucked for anything other than giving the kids a thrill.

I take a couple of pics of the kids and join them in the water. We go out about 100 yards form the shore and float around on the boogie boards and watch the pelicans dive-bombing the water from fifty feet up. The kids float back closer to the shore and I lean back to float in the water, my arms spreading out to my side when -ZAP-, it feels like someone hit my arm with a cattleprod and then my arm starts tingling and burning. Mother fucker.

Less than twenty minutes of being at the beach, I'm stung by a mother fucking jellyfish. Stung by a jellyfish after telling Laurie for twenty minutes not to worry about jellyfish because there weren't any around us. Karma's a bitch.

We stay at the beach until about four and cruise back north to our hotel which is in Houston (technically Webster, TX), which is just a few miles from Johnson Space Center. When we went to Seaworld earlier this year, we stayed at a Quality Inn for dirt cheap. This time, we spent a little more on a Hampton Inn. The hotel was frickin' sweet. Nice, new, and CLEAN. The beds had white duvets that felt like they were filled with down (but I doubt they were), fluffy mattresses, and pillows that were like big balls of marshmallow fluff. My only complaint was that the pillows were too soft...

After spending close to five hours at the beach, what do you think the first thing we did after checking in would be? Eat? Shower? Nope, we went swimming for an hour.

We can back up to the room and cleaned up. The girl at the front desk recommended a place called Lupe's Tortillas for dinner. The place was packed when we got there, but we got a table within five minutes. The service could politely be called brisk...efficient and fast, but the waiter had no personality and the service felt wham-bam-thank you ma'am. The food was fucking outstanding.

After dinner, we went to a place called the Kemah Boardwalk. I had never heard of the place, didn't see any ads for the place; I just saw a highway exit sign that said "Kemah Boardwalk" and recognized the name in a little blurb that was in the hotel directory that said "Kemah Boardwalk: restaurants, games, rides". That's it. We decided to check it out and even if it did suck, we'd walk along the docks.

The place was unbelievable. So fucking cool. It was lit up with neon signs and packed with people. There's a lighthouse, a huge area filled with shops, a ton of restaurants, a marina with hundreds of boats, carnival rides and games, a lighted plaza that has water squirting out of the ground for the kids to play in. There is also a stingray aquarium where you can feed and touch stingrays. Advanced warning, feeding fish to a stingray will make your fingers stink like a $10 whore for few days...I tried soap, antibacterial wipes, antibacterial lotion...the only thing that got rid of the smell was turpentine. The boardwalk goes along the entrance to the marina, so we stood and watched the assholes in their big, beautiful sailboats coming back from their day in the gulf. Between the restaurants, there are lit areas under the boardwalk where you can throw dogfood down to the catfish (*sniff* smells like irony). I've never seen anything quite like that in my life...it was like a blanket of catfish. The catfish were literally crawling over each other to get the food.

So oddly enough, the highlight of the day was not the anticipated trip to the beach, but the unexpected fun that we had at the Kemah Boardwalk. If you are ever in the Houston area, I highly recommend going there.

Tomorrow: Johnson Space Center.

Travelogue Entry One

Mon, 17 Jul 2006 21:30:56 GMT

Spaces drives me frickin' crazy. Why are things overly complicated and irrationally functioning? I posted 200+ pics today (from home before work, mind you, since the stupid photo uploader thingee doesn't work behind the firewall at work) into a miscellenous album. Once I got to work, I created a couple of new albums, added the appropriate pictures to the new albums (Galveston & The Space Center). I saw that they were in both the new albums AND the old one, so I deleted them from the old album. Spaces says "You sure you want to delete these from THIS ALBUM" (those dirty whores) and imagine my surprise when I see it's deleted them FROM EVERY FOOKIN ALBUM. I should have dumped them into Flickr, like I had originally planned.

On to the trip recap.

We planned on leaving the house by 5:30, but since I didn't want to load up the Explorer the night before, we didn't roll out until 5:45. The drive down was fairly uneventful until we got into the vicinity of Houston, when traffic started to back up due to construction. We stopped in Houston to pee and quickly realized that we were in a REALLY bad part of town. The bathroom was closed at the gas station so we headed up a few more exits and used the facilities as the skankiest Jack in the Box I've ever been in. There was a homeless guy sitting in the lobby (just sitting--not eating, drinking, or anything else) and the bathroom smelled like a really bad taxi. Across the street, a group of "kids"(?) were doing some type of car wash fundraiser. I have the question mark and quotes on kids because I don't know if that's what they were. In my town, the people holding the signs are hot little seventeen year olds in bikini tops and cheerleader shorts (the kind that baaarrreeellllyyy cover their nubile and peach-like asses)...in this one, it was a six foot two dude who looked about 25 with huge tattoo covered arms and cornrows. And I SWEAR I could see a kevlar vest under his tank top.

The only other notable observations about the drive down are 1) traffic is crap from Conroe all the way down Texas City (basically, north and south of Houston); 2) Car lots in south TX LOVE them some inflatable animals. Every two minutes the kids were yelling "Crazy Gorilla" or "Giant Eagle"...my personal favorite was the giant cowboy with the big gay handlebar mustache. He looked like a cross between Yosemite Sam and one of the dudes from the Village People.; 3) That Sam Houston statue on I-45 is HUGE. It scared Laurie when she drove by it because she didn't notice it at first. On the drive back home, I tried to get a pic of it, but my camera was dead (it's a piece of crap, which you can tell by the quality of the pics it takes). We noticed a sign that said "The Largest Statue of an American Hero, exit 112" (we think that's what it said). By the time we got to the statue, we had rewrote the sign in our heads to "The largest statue of an American Hero in Southern Texas on Interstate 45 between mile marker 100 and 125!".

Notable observations about the drive back home: 1) There are a LOT of fucking people that want to get their Dairy Queen on; 2) Dairy Queen is the SLOWEST place on the planet; 3) Dairy Queens are the DIRTIEST, SMELLIEST, MOST WHITE TRASHIEST PLACES on the planet...we went to three DQs before finally finding one that wasn't horribly crowded (by that meaning 10 cars in the drive-thru and/or a line of people snaking out of the door); 4) Heath Bar Blizzards are so tasty that the memory of the giant roaches and piss covered walls of the bathroom fade after the first spoonful hits your waiting tongue.

This has literally taken me all day to write in between actual job duties (and this appears to be building to a post of epic proportions). So, I'll cut this bad-boy into at least two posts (maybe more, beeyotch...I can do whatever the fuck I want and you'll take it! Yes, you'll take it ALL. Bwahahahaha).

Tomorrow: Galveston Beach (aka Big Houses to Crack Houses to 100 yards of dirty sand and little waves in 20 minutes)