Our RV Adventures

Today was supposed to be a nice, quiet at-home day, after our 8 hour road trip yesterday, and that’s how it started out. But that changed when Jan saw the Facebook post from Bonnie Horner’s family mentioning that they were hoping friends would drop by to visit.

As I mentioned a couple of days ago, Bonnie’s husband Richard passed away on Wednesday, so Jan and I had decided to wait a bit before we got in touch. But once we saw the Facebook post, we got dressed and hit the road for Pearland.

Lucky for us, today’s trip was the complete opposite of yesterday’s with the sun shining and just a few clouds, compared with pouring down rain yesterday. So with no weather or traffic slowdowns, we were there a little after 3pm.

Jan worked with Bonnie a good while back, and we’ve always gotten together over the years, and we were planning to set up a get-together for this year too when we got the news about Richard.

It was really good catching up with Bonnie and her children Jeanne, Susie, and Bob. Bonnie has several cats, so we all had a lot of cat stories to tell, talking about our pets.

After telling Bonnie we’d get back together for dinner soon, Jan and I headed out a little after 5. Since we were close, we decided to have dinner at one of our favorites, Floyd’s Cajun Seafood and Steakhouse right down the road in Friendswood.

We eaten at this location a number of times, though not near as many as the Floyd’s Cajun Seafood in Webster. But it’s all good no matter which one you visit.

I think I’ve mentioned before that the ‘Floyd’ in the name is Floyd Landry, the originator of the Landry’s seafood chain, before he sold it to Tilman Fertitta.

Jan loves the Chicken Fried Chicken here, especially the gravy that she always gets on the side. After the meal, when she was telling our waiter how much she loved the gravy, he said she wasn’t alone. And that they had changed the recipe once, thinking they would make it better. But they were immediately flooded with complaints, and quickly went back to the old recipe.

Don’t mess with success. Remember New Coke.

I had my usual Seafood Gumbo, as you can see is just loaded with shrimp,

and then an Shrimp & Oyster Po-Boy.

Big portions, and then only reason I was able to finish it was that I had not had breakfast or lunch today. So I had  plenty of room. But I was still stuffed afterwards.

Heading back on the way  home, we made a Wal-Mart stop for a few things. Pearland has grown so much in the last few years they now have three Wal-Mart’s. We don’t even recognize it any more.

Finally heading for Columbus, we decided to take a detour around Brookshire on I-10. Since the heavy rains the other day, part of US90 just west of Brookshire is flooded out, forcing all of US90’s traffic onto I-10, causing a 6 mile backup on i-10 through Brookshire and almost into Katy.

So leaving Pearland we headed down US59 for a bit and then cut west through Rosenberg and then onto SR36 which brought us back onto I-10 at Sealy, bypassing all the mess.

So, with a potty stop at the TA Oasis Truck Stop, we were home by 9:30. And after two long days in a row, we are definitely staying home tomorrow and Monday.

And maybe Tuesday, too.

Thought for the Day:

“By calling attention to a well-regulated militia for the security of the Nation, and the right of each citizen to keep and bear arms, our founding fathers recognized the essentially civilian nature of our economy.

Although it is extremely unlikely that the fear of governmental tyranny, which gave rise to the 2nd amendment, will ever be a major danger to our Nation, the amendment still remains an important declaration of our basic military-civilian relationship, in which every citizen must be ready to participate in the defense of his country.

For that reason I believe the 2nd Amendment will always be important.” – John F. Kennedy

dghdgh

Today started wet and dreary and then went downhill from there. It was raining when I got up at 11 and that continued all the rest of time until we left for Clear Lake around 2pm.

And then as soon as we got out on I-10 it just POURED down, slowing everyone until we were doing about 25 mph, in a 75 mph area. And then one person,  just one, decided to put their emergency flashers on. And then almost everyone else did.

And suddenly, what had been a easy to track and separate group of vehicles in front of us became a swirling, flashing mass of orange and red lights, with no way to really tell who was stopped and who was moving. A bunch of maroons.

We made a pit stop at Brandi’s, and also picked up a couple of packages waiting for us. Then it was back on the road to Clear Lake. And then the real slow down began to appear.

Based on the live traffic data on our Garmin GPS, our 1 hour trip down to League City was going to take an additional 2 hours and 59 minutes, for a total of 4 hours. Bummer. But as we slowly got closer, the delay  whittled down until the trip only took 2 and a half hours. Better than 4 hours, I guess.

We had originally planned to drop off my client’s laptop at their home in the Brittany Bay area of League City, but due to our delay, we didn’t have time before we had to meet our friends for dinner at 6pm. So our first stop was at our son Chris’ for a potty break, as well as to pick up our mail and drop off one of our Captain’s Chair’s armrests. Or rather just the insides without the foam or the leather cover.

I wanted to see if he could make me six new armrests to replace the ones I have now,. The original ones were made from two different pieces of OSB (Oriented Strand Board), or particle board. These two pieces were glued together around a steel armature that mounted the pivot rod at one end.

But over the years the glue has deteriorated and the arms have started to come apart. I put a couple of them of them back together using screws, but the screws just wallowed and came loose after a while.

So my idea is to see if Chris can cut six new armrest wooden frames out of 2×4’s. Then I’ll install the armatures in each new frame and mount them back on the chairs. BTW if you wondered how to get the armrests off the chairs, it’s really pretty easy.

Fold the armrest up until it’s vertical and parallel to the chair back. Then push in on the arm pivot point and rotate the arm on further back until it is again horizontal. At this point pull out on the arm as you rotate it back and forth slightly. Then just pull it completely free. Easy Peezy.

We meet our friends, Bob & Beth Young at Barcenas Mexican Restaurant. Right outside our subdivision, we eaten here for 20 years or more, and it’s always great.

We’ve known Bob and Beth for a long time, and have watched their five kids grow up, and we always have great time catching up.

Good food and great friends. It doesn’t get much better.

Finally saying our goodbyes a little after 7:30 we heading down to League City to drop the client’s laptop before turning around and heading back to Columbus. And after a pit stop at the Flying J in Brookshire, we finally got home about 10:30pm.

And although we didn’t see any problems when we came through, we did see three cars parked back up the hill from the low-lying bridge at the park entrance.

Don’t know if it was this bad,

or even this bad.

But I’m glad we weren’t trapped outside the park and had to wade in.]

I got an email a couple of days ago that really gave me a start. It was from a friend of ours . . .  a dead friend of ours.

Our long-time friend Gina Ellis died a little over 3 years ago, and the SPAM email I received had the right (kind of unusual) name, but not the right ISP address. It was obviously one of those emails that want you to click the enclosed link, but strangely, it referred to me as ‘Greg’, while most of these are to ‘Gregory’.

Gina, we miss you.

And finishing up on a departed friends note, this past Wednesday we lost two more long-time friends, Richard Horner and Ron Walters.

They too will be missed.

Thought for the Day:
No matter how serious life gets, you’ve still got to have that one person you can be completely stupid with. That’s why Jan has a shirt that says, “I’m with Stupid”.

asdfasdfasdf