Did you notice we were gone? We're back in Wisconsin now, after a week of warmth while the north had its weirdly cold April interlude.
Talk about whatever you like in the comments. I have many more Texas pictures to show you, but it will have to wait. We're weary from the 2-day drive back home.
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62 comments:
Hope you enjoyed the bluebonnets!
This has been a good year for them.
Weary, schmeary, were there interesting walk *right out of the door* ?
Inquiring minds want to know ...
Yes, lovely bluebonnets everywhere.
The photo is from the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center.
Can you not get over your fear of flying? Ok, I know it's not fear, more like aggrivation, but still.... Despite the horror stories, there is still something glamourous about getting dressed up and boarding a plane, even if everyone else is in ripped sweats and pajamas. Others may grumble, but when I fly, I'm in my own little Pan-Am world, going on a Junket, a wondrous Escapade!....you have to dig deep, but you can imagine it. Isn't it a but like your method of taking a test, where you pretend your way into thinking it's the most enjoyable endeavor in the world??? And, think of the grist for the blogging mill. All the many bloggable posts you'll get from a single flight !!!
We just got into WI driving from New Mexico. The son gets married Saturday. I see 2 to 5 inches of snow forecast for Wed. Interesting time of year to get married in the 'far North.' We drove a very small way through a wildfire in OK - drought and high winds in NM, TX and OK, then blowing snow and high winds from MO to here. We stopped in the St Louis area where we used to live - had to get a frozen custard at Ted Drews and stayed in a Drury Inn in Fairview Heights, IL. Resisted the temptation to drive by the old house. We took the highway to Peoria and then backroads from Peoria to Belleville, WI. Gray and bleak. I'm sure it is gorgeous in late spring and the fall. If the wedding wasn't this week I'd be working on wildfires in NM - we have two on my Forest already. It is going to be an interesting year.
I went to Blue Island, Illinois last week to take in the resort atmosphere.
@gregg With plane reservations, you can’t pick the precise time to take advantage of weather conditions, which is what we did. As for loving air travel, for me, it’s the regimentation and restriction, not worrying about crashes. I worry about car crashes more than plane crashes, but I enjoy the freedom of our own mobile space. We stayed an extra two days because of the tornadoes and snow.
I'm conflicted on driving vs. flying vs. trains. We've now driven down from Salem to the Bay Area (and beyond, to Gilroy and Carmel) a few times, and that's always a two-day trip each way. I've taken the Coast Starlight (Amtrak) twice, and said I wouldn't take it a third time, but evidently the experience is softening on me. Still, I think next time I'll fly. I hate flying, but it's quick. Throw in driving to Portland and BARTing to whatever hotel you're at, and you're still talking five or six hours, not 22 (Amtrak) or 40-plus (car).
Next time you go hit Bella on the River in San Antonio. Say hi to Amanda. And don’t miss Fredericksburg.
Althouse wrote: I worry about car crashes more than plane crashes, but I enjoy the freedom of our own mobile space. You're a bit of a hippie gypsy
R.I.P. R. Lee Ermey (of Full Metal Jackey fame) and Harry Anderson (of Nightcourt fame)
Snow storm? Now? Ahhhh, global warming!!!
But glad you came to Texas. We Texicans know how to live!
Whatever you still ain't gonna be no Ann Margaret in Grumpy Old Men.
So Whatever.
I WIN.
Ann,
I'm with you on plane crashes; they basically don't matter to me. (If I die in a plane crash, it'll be over soon enough.) Being corralled like so many sheep does, and I find it a bit frightening how easily we all adapt to it.
Ah, "the freedom of our own mobile space"! Haven't you noticed that this is what the Left just hates about cars? They go where you want them to, as opposed to where someone else wants them to. And they are the only land transport of which that is true. Everything else, be it Amtrak, light rail, local bus, Greyhound, goes on fixed routes to a prearranged schedule. I can get used to that.
I once had a complicated Bay Area commute involving walking to a bus, to a ferry, to another walk, to BART, to a third walk. It took an hour and forty minutes, though thirty of those were on the ferry, and glorious. But everything was as if on rails, even the bits that weren't. Nothing was a choice made of my own volition. Not even the walked bits, which were soon as programmed in as everything else.
Be sure to stop in Fort Worth next time! There’s lots to see and do here, including world-class art museums. I’ve done the Texas-to-Wisconsin trip a couple of times as a boy. We’d drive from our farm in the Panhandle near Lubbock to see my aunt and uncle in Marshfield. It was always two solid days of driving through beautiful farm country the whole way.
Looking at that picture of Texas in the relatively warm spring sunshine versus the snow and cold in the upper Midwest brings to mind a line from an old country song--maybe by Merle Haggard. The line goes, "It ain't love, but it ain't bad."
You get your warm weather where you find it. In my business days of traveling through O'Hare in the winter, I was always bemused by the hordes of Chicgoans and such boarding planes to go south to get out of the cold.
Surely you stopped for Texas barbecue a half dozen or so times while there.
Two days coming back? Getting lazy in your late-middle age?
If, day after day, Althouse posts early in the morning and then nothing else all day (but for the occasional café post at night), I figure something is outside normal. Glad it was a trip - I had wondered if Althouse or Meade was ill, recovering from surgery or some other major burden.
So I clicked back to Althouse after checking out shit on 4chan, and I see she is back from a road trip. And, like, I think the road trip is one of the best things about America.
I mean, I think the GPS shit takes some of the fun out of it now, you don't, like, have a big blue paper map all folded ass-backwards and you got the dome light on to try to see where the hell you are because it's dark and shit, but it's still pretty cool, even if you're not in a 1973 Ford Pinto with the fucked up interior and the glovebox door that won't stay closed.
Anyway, Kerouac wrote some cool shit about road trips, but reading about her going to Texas makes me think of the road trip in 'The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.'
Like, the film is about these kids on a road trip to a concert or something, it was the Seventies so it was probably some shit like Foghat. But the van breaks down in the middle of Buttfuck, Texas, and they go off to try to find help, because they didn't have cell phones then, and even if they did they probably couldn't get any reception.
And there are still places today in America where you can drive thirty miles and never get phone reception, which is pretty cool, really, because sometimes it's good to be somewhere where people can't get ahold of you, and you can just look at the sky and shit and think about how the pioneer dudes must've felt in their covered wagons, even if you're actually in a 1973 Ford Pinto with the fucked up interior and the glovebox door that won't stay closed.
So anyway the kids who break down in Texas and are going to miss the Foghat concert go to an old broken-down farmhouse, because maybe they have one of those old rotary phones with the dial and shit, but instead of help they find a family of cannibals, and one of the cannibal dudes wears a mask made of human skin and dances in the hot Texas sun with his chainsaw. It's kinda poetic, really, except with that heat the mask probably smelled like a homeless dude's ass.
But that's part of the magic of the American road trip: you might see Mount Rushmore and shit, or you might run into a family of cannibals and watch your friends get hoisted up on meathooks.
They remade "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" a few years ago, but it wasn't as good as the Seventies one, because the Seventies one felt real sweaty dirty, not the new 'Hollywood dirty' where an old gas station looks like what some LA hipster who's never even been in a WalMart thinks an old Texas gas station looks like.
But the new one did have Jessica Biel in a tight T-shirt tied up above her stomach and shit, and she's got nice tits, so that part was good.
I post my shit here.
Not being in Wisconsin now, I’m digging the snowstorms.
But could you please wrap them up by next week?
One of the things that I miss in Hawaii is the ability to make road trips. Or take the train. I'm flying to the Midwest to visit family this summer, and I thought I'd try a fly/train thing. Fly into Seattle and take the Empire builder from there to Saint Paul. But the scheduling was not good, I would land in Seattle in the early AM and the train did not depart until the afternoon, and by dawn the next day we would be in the plains already, so not much mountain scenery to see.
The weather in Hawaii has been awful since mid January. Rain, rain, rain,even in places, like Kona and Kohala, where it usually doesn't rain much, summer or winter.
I'm flying to Portland on Wed. Anybody here from Portland?
I've only been to Portland once and don't know anybody there.
Climb Guadalupe Peak. Not scary.
Y'all come back now, y'hear?
Bay Area Guy,
I'm in Salem. It isn't super-close to Portland, but you might get here in an hour and a half or so. I'll be here if you want me. Email michelledulak - at - aol.com for directions.
But I'd shop Powell's first! Always shop Powell's first. It's the only actual reason I can think of for Portland. Well, maybe that and the airport. But it's no great recommendation for a place that its best distinction is a way to get away from it.
You guys are sooo ready to leave Madison.
I miss flying. My last years working full time, I broke 100 segments a year, mostly on Southwest. If you stay out of SFO, flying out west rarely, it seems, gets screwed up by the weather, though Denver does get hit every year or two. Still, I was flying in and out of there every other week for better than a decade, and never had a flight cancelled, and rarely were they delayed. A bit bumpy at times, but a government d friend pointed out, years ago, that what goes up, comes back down, and visa versa, in the air (and, yes, he is a pilot, who used to enjoy flying in the thermals on Longs Peak). Back 30 years ago, I was a white knuckle flyer, and before that, the ride out of Denver was sure to make me sick. But round trips in and out of Denver every other weekend for 15 years while my kid was growing up got me over that, so that I now consistently fall asleep on the takeoff roll, and wake up in time to order drinks. Even in heavy turbulence moving out of Denver.
My problem now is that my partner insists on our driving. I could almost understand Valentine's Day, when we drove to Vegas, a 4-5 hour drive. I would have preferred to fly - the time would have been about the same, but I would have been much more rested. But I got overruled. But we just did our annual pilgrimage back up to MT, which translated into a 5 day road trip, that included driving through N UT and all of E ID in a blizzard, then two nights in SW MT, resting up, before finally getting here. Far better, for me, to have flown her up here, flown back, and driven up alone. Maybe 7 hours door to door, with half of it reading a book or commenting on Althouse. But, again, I was overruled. We were supposed to have brought a second vehicle (a Tahoe) down last fall, but with snow, and the bother, it just sat in the driveway here all winter, unlocked. And since I hadn't installed the battery shutoff yet, even with a trickle charger, it had to be jumped (my truck fired up immediately, once I remembered to reconnect the battery). Her daughter and son-in-law are planning on driving it down this summer. They are young and healthy, and like road trips. Wish I could bribe them next fall to drive the Audi down too, but my partner is having nothing to do with that, which means another 4 day expedition. At least the Audi rides a lot better than the Tahoe, so she doesn't get car sick.
Unknown: "Surely you stopped for Texas barbecue a half dozen or so times while there"
Before noon.
On a single day.
With extra mustard potato salad.
And slaw.
Lots and lots of slaw.
And a diet coke.
I was surprised he was basically shunned by Hollywood for the last 6 years, with movie rolls drying up for a slightly negative comment on Obama.
>R.I.P. R. Lee Ermey (of Full Metal Jackey fame
http://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/2016/07/05/gunnytime-host-r-lee-ermey-blackballed-from-hollywood-for-conservative-views.html
Road trips are awesome! Great to hear about your getaway from the snow :) and no, didn't know you were On The Road
I figured you two were probably traveling- the lack of many posts past late morning suggested a trip to me.
Here in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, it has been the coldest April and March since I have lived here, and it was snowing this last afternoon. The temperatures have yoyoed the last few days, though- 80s on Friday, 30s on Monday.
Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.) said Monday Fox News should fire Sean Hannity in the wake of the revelation that he is a client of President Trump's personal attorney, Michael Cohen.
"I think he is so into this like a pig in the mud he can't get out of it. And I think he deserves to be fired. His word can never again be trusted," Connolly said on CNN.
Speaking of people whose words can never be trusted, we have a Democrat Congressperson and CNN for the Daily Double. And its disingenuous for a Democrat swamp creature to act like he (I assume that he identifies as 'he') ever trusted Hannity in the first place. Hannity is on Team R, Connolly is on Team D, and they hate each other as much as the Yankees and Red Sox do. Hannity is not a news reporter, he's an opinion purveyor. And he's no more (and no less) partisan than the Democrats-with-bylines at MSNBC and CNN.
AA asked: "Did you notice we were gone?"
No, I did not. But Google did. As did the government meta-data accumulators, your cell phone provider, and your credit card company. Others than those and several others, you were completely off the radar.
I've only been to Portland once and don't know anybody there.
If you like planes, go to McMinnville and t he Evergreen Air Museum.
Not far.
We drove back from Los Angeles to Tucson last Thursday and hit a zero visibility dust storm for a few minutes. It's the second time I have hit one but his one we had warning. It only lasted a minute or two but the previous one, about ten years ago (in the same spot of I 10), had no warning. Fortunately, we were in the right lane when it f=hit and could slow down and get to the shoulder.
Very windy in the desert for a week.
R. Lee Ermey was in “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” remake.
Yes I noticed but glad it was all in a good cause.
I don't know how anyone would know Ann was gone. She's been writing on this blog like she's possessed.
I’ve been thinking about the point shaving at the FBI. Comey is like a coach at a very successful college program. He’s making millions and is loved by nearly everyone. But he decides to make more betting against his team. He gets two of his best players, McCabe and Strzok, to go along. The team continues to win but doesn’t cover the spread. But then a new AD is hired and he learns of the point shaving and fires the coach for an unrelated item. The scheme, however, is not uncovered. The coach writes a book attacking the AD. For some inexplicable reason the media never looks at the scores of the games and the betting line. The distraction works.
Texas = Baja Oklahoma
Ray said...
I was surprised he was basically shunned by Hollywood for the last 6 years,
Why would anyone be surprised? You didn't think their complaining about the communist blacklist was driven by principle did you?
Somebody put up Max Reger's transcriptions of the Brandenburg Concertos, piano 4 hands
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=auqzBmdUdts&list=PL8LGdah5bu1rK6xBVRMJhMPoythUGaeiK
I always liked these, and used the score to put several of them on a Dec PDP11-40, playing the voices through an interrupt-level D/A converter, in the late 70s.
Adding square waves with frequencies added, changed and subtracted in the background.
It failed and sagged in frequency and froze with more than 6 voices because it ran out of time and never left interrupt level.
Bay Area Guy said...
I'm flying to Portland on Wed. Anybody here from Portland?
I'm in New Hampshire, so only ~2 hours from Portland.
Unless, of course, you are talking about that left-coast Portland.
Did you notice we were gone?
Yes. I noticed the posting pattern was different, and assumed it was travel.
If you are losing your interest in spring snows, that might be a ding against NH for your alt-althouse-house. We had two inches of rain-soaked snow yesterday, which froze up crunchy overnight. More snow coming Thursday.
Sources say Robert Mueller has evidence you were in Prague.
The weather has been bizarre here. Saturday was 80 and sunny. Sunday was 40 and very windy. Monday was 50s with torrential rain.
"Did you notice we were gone?"
You had me worried. You were posting later. You're usually start posting at the crack of dawn.
Heh -,yes , I'm talking left coast Portland, not lobster-eating Portland, although I been to Kennebunkport.
Thanks for the "Portland" suggestions Michele Dulak Thompson and Michael K.
B A G, There are quite a few of us here who live in Oregon but we none of us live in Portland, it seems. I reckon there is probably a reason for that.
(But I try to get up there for the sung Masses at Holy Rosary Church when I can, if that sort of thing is of interest; a Dominican priory, the traditional Dominican Rite is in regular use. The Roman Old Rite is regularly celebrated at St Stephen's, even on weekdays, with Sunday Vespers at 5:00pm, I think.)
We were in Texas (Dallas area) in April a few years ago - it was lovely - flowers blooming everywhere. Weather was like a perfect Midwest summer day - not too hot and not humid. When we left Michigan there was still frost on the roofs. We spent a day at the Dallas Arboretum - if you're ever in Dallas it's well worth visiting.
Good for you! Wish we’d done the same - we live in the area that got 20 inches
I was in Portland once and I loved Pearl Bakery.
We Texans thank you for taking the cold weather back with you.
Glad it was a fun trip and not something health-related. We all knew something was going on the other day with the late posts, but didn't know exactly what.
Hope you enjoyed your Texas visit! It's been a lovely spring, as it hasn't gotten hot too early. The flowers and trees have been beautiful this year, and my kids have loved all of the good temp. weather days. The rainstorms we've been getting have been spaced almost perfectly for enjoying the outdoors.
Blame Rossby waves for the cold weather.
I used to drive - now we always fly.
Too much time wasted.
Going to Texas for the first time---Austin---in a few weeks. Really looking forward to it; it's a family vacation with our two twenty-something kids and two of their friends. Wish darling husband could leave work long enough for us to tool around the whole state for a few weeks instead of a few days. Gracious Host, you should have stayed down south a lot longer; it's still frickin' freezing in the northern latitudes, Mr. Bigglesworth.
MK writes about Portland OR:
If you like planes, go to McMinnville and the Evergreen Air Museum.
Strongly seconded. Probably the most pleasure I've ever had in an air museum.
Smart, smart move.
Mr Forward wrote:
"Sources say Robert Mueller has evidence you were in Prague.”
Wrong Althouse.
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