Trip Report

A while back we noticed that the Naval Academy was playing Rice, at Rice. I wondered where that was and discovered it was in Houston. A couple of brain cells clashed together and I remembered that our good friends Joe and Rae live near Houston and wondered if they wanted to go see a football game. After a bit of coordination a road trip idea was born.

We launched off our hill and pointed south early Friday morning. Well, not too early, I planned for us to leave at 7:00, Cyrilee thought I said 7:30, so we left at 8:10, in the rain. It wasn't too bad driving in the rain, I had just installed new wipers on the jeep, so the windshield stayed nice and clear, much better to see our fellow travelers zip past us at about 20 miles per hour over the dry pavement speed limit.

It rained the entire trip, 513 miles without being able to turn off the windshield wipers one time. Just after we crossed the border into Texas I did get a bit worried. I thought I saw a bearded guy in a robe with a bunch of animals standing around him. I started looking around for a big squarish boat.

Finally arrived at Joe and Rae's farm in Magnolia, Texas. Actually, they are in Magnolia like we are in West Fork. Meaning that they live waaaay out of town and are only considered to be part of Magnolia because of the mysteries of the U.S. Postal Service routing system.

We stayed up way too late, but sincethe game didn't start until 2:30 on Saturday, we could sleep in a bit. When we got up in the morning we did some more catching up over a great breakfast then went for a walking tour of the farm.

They have some wonderful horses. I don't remember all their names, so I won't mention any of them in case the horses read this. Don't want them getting into a fuss because I mentioned one of their names and not all of them. They were very nice horses, though they were a bit intimidating when they gathered around us and started sniffing around to see if any of us were hiding treats in our pockets.

They also have some cows. About the only positive thing I can ever seem to say about cows is that they are tasty when someone grows one to a certain point then takes it to be whacked in the head and turned into hamburgers, country style ribs, and various configurations of steak. However, if there ever were a bunch of cows that deserved kind words while they were still in the pre-sizzle, butt you with their heads, dropping biological landmines all over the place state, this would be the bunch of cows deserving of those kind words.

Off to the game... it was a fun game, the Naval Academy won. It was a bit sad toward the end though because it was a pretty lopsided game. As Rae said, people don't really choose to go to Rice to play football. The end score was 63 to 14. Somewhere in the third quarter I started rooting for Rice inside my head. Being surrounded by a sea of Navy Blue and Gold, I wasn't sure how well cheering for Rice outside my head would have been received.

Stayed up waaay late again. Got up the next morning, ate a great breakfast, then got back on the road north. One of the interesting things about traveling around is finding new place names. When you move out of your usual environs you can find unusual and exotic names for places. All place have unusual and exotic names, it's just that after a bit those unusual and exotic names start to seem usual and mundane. Though, I'm thinking you would have to live in Cut and Shoot, Texas for a really long time before that would seem too mundane.

When seeing place names with adjectives in them that have a natural opposite (i.e. big/little) I always have a sudden urge to go find the opposite. Upon passing Big Man Lane, I really wanted to go look for a Little Man Ave, or better Little Woman Rd. We live attached to a town named West Fork, why isn't there other towns called East Fork and Middle Fork since there are similarly named branches of the same river.

...take care... t