Tour Diary 23

TOUR DIARY 23 – Mad drivers - life in the fast lane and how to not spot a UFO

And… the suitcases go a-wandering… again!!

We are now waiting in the airport for our flight to San Francisco going via Dallas.  So once again we have  fly north, and change planes for a journey, which should be going directly west!

We are starting to get the hang of the travel life now and arrived early to cut out any stress.  We also know now what to expect with regards to hanging out in the airports for the whole day so we expect that too and it makes it O.K.

What we can’t understand though, is that we have sent 3 boxes of winterish clothes home and have not bought much,  a few lightweight clothes and a pretty little bag for me, but somehow we have another large bag too, which is now full.

Where did all the stuff come from? Steve spent ages telling me to ensure my little pots and creams were not in my toiletry bag but in the suitcases and then got his bag searched where they confiscated his big bottles of suntan lotion and aftersun which he only just bought at great cost, because the shop did not have a small size… four days ago.  We only used them once.  He was so cross with himself and refused to let me take the mickey..  He has no sense of humour with himself when he does something like that.  At least it shows that the scanners are spotting the things they should be taking out.  I just thought they had pulled his bag out in a random search.  Two additional pots though still can’t account for the need for a big old extra bag.  I think the gremlin has diversified from putting weight on us through the osmosis process, to putting weight and dimensions on our baggage.

Our hope is that we can downsize but that just doesn’t seem to be happening.  I think I will blame Tom for buying us our lovely Texan hats… they are so special they have to have a bag of their own…

Houston was strange.  A very highly stressed city with big traffic problems.  Our hostess warned us to get through the city early in the day otherwise we wouldn’t be getting through until late at night.  It was such a shock after all our leisurely road trips with impeccable manners and good road sense up to this point.  Houston was like driving round the M25 on a Friday night.  Everyone was in such a hurry and switching lanes right in front of you constantly.  It took Steve a while to re-adjust back to ‘the English way of driving’..

We stayed with a family with a totally enchanting daughter who although only age 11 seemed more like a late teenager.  She was so beautiful and very interested in everything.  We were with the family for 3 days and as always people are so generous and kind and there really wasn’t a thing they wouldn’t do to make our stay as perfect as possible.  The house we were in was enormous with a sweeping staircase and it seems madness to know that it cost the same as our little ‘Hobbit House’ in London.  Our entire ground floor would have got lost in the lounge alone. When we are with people who live in the city we then get taken out by them to see the ‘real city,’ which is brilliant.  We were driven around the very expensive streets with the most exquisite housing.  We have a few streets like it in Hampstead, but I think even they palled by comparison.  Houston has some pretty rich residents.

Also all the streets are so impeccably kept which is also a delight to the eyes.

We were taken out to the Zoo and had a great time there too.  It’s so strange to us English, I think, to see how much better the Americans do things.  Our Zoos often have way too small enclosures and everything looks tacky, but here the enclosures are really big and overall there is a sense of real care for the animals.  My favourite was a huge Orang Utan who was eating a big frozen popsicle and obviously enjoying every lick….The highlight of the day was to be taken to a ‘new concept’ restaurant for a seafood meal.  A man called Landry has decided that eating out should be a all round experience so he has made the restaurant inside an aquarium and I have never seen such big fish, they were absolutely  gigantic.  For a while we believed that the glass must have magnified them but it was their actual size and huge manta rays.  So as we ate, the vista was this massive aquarium area all around us.  I have to say I felt really bad eating fish whilst their cousins were swimming around affording us entertainment.  Somehow it felt a little bit like serious fish abuse…

The Book meeting went really well and was held again in a private house where we were made so welcome.  Such an extraordinary response to one man and his word we are receiving here. The group of people were made up of three separate groups getting together, not just Mufon, so that made it more interesting for Steve.

We are now sitting in Dallas Fort Worth Airport and it reminds me that I did not include my last ‘Bonkers person’ story from the Mufon meeting in San Antonio.

This was an adventure on its own as it was held – I kid you not – in a Dennys restaurant.  For the English readers Dennys is down a stage or two from MacDonalds.  Steve first sentence was that he hoped to aspire to a Macdonalds the next talk he did!  It was so bizarre as the life of the restaurant went on around us including the eating of food and the detritus of food left over, not eaten, but not cleared by the waitresses either.  It was all I could do to stay in my chair and not ‘Space Clear’ the environment for Steve!

He did a great presentation and I had a few people come and connect with me who had been recommended to come and see him by Ozark conference people.

I met up with a man who had been recommended to come and talk with us and he had come early, specifically to get some talking time in with us and we were pouring over a large map book he had so that I could point out exactly where the sacred sites and stone circles were in England.  Then someone called my name and when I looked up a youngish man who was so thin I wasn’t sure how he was able to stand up started to talk … at me… He said lots of things and I was trying really hard to focus on what he wanted of me, whilst trying to make it apparent to him that I was in deep discussion with someone and didn’t want to be interrupted.

He then went on to say that I must know Dallas Fort Worth (where I am now sitting, so now of course I do)… and was amazed when I said that no I had never been there and as I am English I do not know intimately all the airports in the US, although by the end of this trip that might well be a different story.  Unfazed by this he proceeded to tell me about every single famous person he had seen go through there when he worked there.  As most of them were second-rate politicians and I don’t even know the names of the first-rate ones – (I’ve always wanted to slip in an Oxymoron like that)…I again had to say that I was sorry I didn’t have a clue who he was talking about.  So then he said.. you must know Ann Margaret then, I said not personally and she was famous when I was about 11, quite a few years ago.  He gave me a blow-by-blow account of how dreadful she looks now because she is ‘old and saggy’.  I tried again to intimate that I was in the middle of something and so he said… Ah yes… UFO’s.  Let me tell you about my experience.

Grooaaaannnnnn

For the next 10 minutes he described in minute detail about how he and a friend went up in their car to an area of San Antonio to look for UFO’s.  I got the car, the make, how far they went, where they went, what time it was… you get the picture… and then he said that they waited for over two hours  and then…..it went on and on and on….

So finally he said… And do you know what?!!  ..they didn’t see any UFO’s so they came back home!!!

Well, to say that I was totally gobsmacked would I suppose be a very polite description of what I was feeling.  Finally Steve came over and said that I had to get on and we would talk with him later as I was in a meeting and he finally moved away.

It so reminded me of the story which Peter Ustinov used to tell, so brilliantly in his one-man show, of his time touring around Ireland.  In Ireland the pastime of the young men is to turn around all the signposts.  So a signpost says that it is 8 miles to Dingle so you travel the 8 miles in that direction to find another signpost, which says that Dingle is 16 miles in the opposite direction.  These young men must be so p…..d off at the advent of the Sat Nav this gadget must have spoiled all their fun..

Anyway Ustinov’s trip was in the days when you stopped and asked directions, which he did of a lovely old man sitting on a bench by the side of the road.

The old man thought for ages… scratched his head… ummed and ahhed.. tugged his beard and finally said…’Do you know what… Oi don’t know where dat place can be’

Ustinov thanked him for trying to think of it and got back into this car and drove away, when he saw this same really old man frantically chasing after his car and waving his stick in the air.  Ustinov stopped the car thinking .. ‘Ah good he has remembered’…

The man came to his window and after quite a while as he tried to  catch  his breath he said..

‘You know wot now… I asked me young bruther there…. And do ye know wot?! ….He don’t know noither’…

I believe my bonkers man and the Irishman are distant relatives….

As I am such an incredibly polite person I find it impossible to be rude to people and ask them to go away, so I get caught up in these situations.  Steve is much better at handling such things without being rude.  However, he admitted afterwards that he had sent the man in my direction as he was trying to set up his book-stand and the man was bothering him so he sent him over to me then he quickly realized that he had made a huge mistake.

So my memory of San Antonio’s meeting will be of Denny’s… tables scattered with fast food debris and a man who  had an amazing experience NOT seeing a UFO.  I somehow think this experience will not be repeated on this trip.

Morning now and we are in a hotel in downtown San Francisco finally getting here at 1.30 in the morning because Guess What?!!  our errand suitcases, which still have plans of their own decided to stay put in Dallas.  I guess they must have really liked it there after our visit..

Steve was so upset with himself as he thought he must have made a mistake when the Virgin America lady told us that they had no agreement to forward on suitcases with Continental.  Steve hotly pursued the fact that in the documentation, (which he had printed up that morning for the journey) it clearly stated that suitcases were sent on directly and you would not have to pick them up.  It then took us half an hour to get to the terminal to find the Continental desk and Steve approached them warning them that he had potential steam coming out of his ears.  The young lady gulped and said that yes indeed they do print up… still…. for everyone to be guided by that they forward the suitcases and you do not have to do anything about that they will be waiting for you.  However, she added, unfortunately they haven’t yet got that agreement with either Virgin or Monarch.  Can you believe so much stress is being caused to extremely weary travellers because some bright spark cannot take the time to go into the website and add this line to the information package.  Steve still took the blame and said he should have checked but even if he had.. it was in writing that the suitcases would be there.

I just somehow knew they would not be with us when we got here, so I packed some clean underwear, but I had no warm clothes and it was FREEZING at 1.30 last night.  My teeth were literally chattering and Steve was in shorts and a teeshirt.  He has decided that as he looked so satorially splendid in his black shorts and tee shirt yesterday he might sport the same look today, the fact that he has absolutely no choice might have had something to do with his decision.

I think I am going to re-name my blog once it is up and running ‘The Saga of 3 suitcases who decided to strike out for themselves and have a whale of a time in the US of A!’

We have to wait now until 4 o’clock today to see if the adventurous suitcases turn up and although we were heading out today for the Big Sur we will now take a tour of SF.  We have found a marked plan route of 49 miles on a tourist map, which takes in all the right things to see.  As we go along we will stop wherever it takes our fancy.

This hotel is a Super 8 and apart from its very interesting décor, bright blue and brown, it has a wonderful view and provides everything we need, including free parking.  It is also $30.00 below our budget and as most hotels in SF start… at $200.00 it is a bargain.

Loads of love

Annie

Hi guys