I was excited about going to Texas, although I also was also overly stressed out about the whole experience. As we've discussed many times in this blog, I have an irrational fear of flying, that usually rears its head in the weeks directly leading up to a trip. That's fine, nothing I haven't dealt with before, but something that puts me a little on edge and also makes me hard to deal with in that week (sorry, friends and boy). What complicated the situation more was the fact that I was going to be presenting a paper at a conference...so it wasn't exactly going to be a vacation. Not to mention that during the previous week I had practiced with my former adviser, and she ONLY made me cry twice in the midst of the 2 hours I spent practicing in front of her. Ugh.
Our flight out of State College was at 6am June 1st. My thought process for booking flights always seems rational and a no-brainer at the time, but it ends up stressing me out way more than it should. 6am flights are typically cheaper, you get less turbulence in the early morning hours, you "get" to see the sunrise, and you arrive at your destination with practically a full day ahead of you. Win-win, until you realize that in order to make your flight on time you have to wake up at approximately 4am (or earlier depending on the airport. For flights out of SCE, it's 4). Dave had a friend visiting the night before I left and he was staying at my place in my extra bedroom (Dave had no room in his place), and so that stressed me out as well. I was a grumpy dinnertime host that Friday evening. But I had fun hanging out with David and Paul, drinking some beer in my living room, catching up on Paul's interesting life, and making last-minute edits on my PowerPoint slides for the conference. Let's just say that I didn't go to bed as early as I should have for an early-morning flight. An also-tired and grumpy David graciously drove his roommate Chris and I to the airport in the wee hours of the morning, and we were off the ground before the rest of State College had even woken up.
Texas was HOT. We arrived before noon, and the temperatures were already in the 90s. Ugh, it was going to be a long week. The 5 of us who had traveled together, tired as we were, decided that we didn't have time to nap, and we wanted food. Good Texas food. Jacob found a listing for a hole-in-the-wall Mexican place within a block of our hotel (seriously, what did we do before smartphones?), and so we went. Service was grumpy and slow, but the food was FANTASTIC. Welcome to San Antonio, where you are basically in Mexico already, so the Mexican food is wonderful (and cheap!). With full bellies and some caffeine, we decided to wander around downtown San Antonio the rest of the afternoon. First stop: The Alamo.
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| All greasy and glasses-eyed from an early-morning almost-cross-country flight. Also, Chris and I are wearing the same color shirt. Oops. |
The alamo was smack in the middle of the city. Across the street were skyscrapers...it was kind of weird. But hey, I guess it was here first, right? Not its fault that the rest of the city was built around it. The Alamo was cool and museum-y. The air-conditioned parts were more popular than the un-air-conditioned parts. I actually had no idea what the story of the Alamo was until this day.
The rest of the afternoon is a bit of a blur. Maybe we slept. It's entirely possible that we spent 8 hours at the Alamo. I have no idea...I think I was still pretty delirious from not sleeping the night before.
We met up for dinner with a former lab-mate of ours and his fiance. We ate at yet ANOTHER Tex-Mex place, although this one was more touristy and not as good. I had a giant margarita.
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| And so did Christine. Also, I changed my clothes so we probably had a nap time sometime before dinner. |
In retrospect, the margarita was a bad decision. I used to drink margaritas of this size once a week at El Canelo back in undergrad, and could tolerate them fairly well. This one was STRONG and also HUGE, also it had been at least a year since I had had a margarita. And it was also like, a million dollars, so I had to finish it or else that money would have gone to waste. So I drank it and was tipsier than I should have been the rest of the evening. Worth it.
After dinner, Jason and Christine told us that they had tickets to a dance show on the river-walk stage and we should come. The boys went, "nahhhhh," while Katie, Amy and I decided to join them. It was the coolest thing. Mariachi bands and Salsa/Tango/Texas dancing. Best way to start a week in San Antonio.
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| Those dresses! |
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| By the end of the show, the 3 of us were approaching 19 hours sans sleep. |
At the end of the show, Amy decided that 19 hours without sleep was quite enough for her, Jason and Christine wanted to retire to their rooms and be all couple-y and stuff, while Katie and I decided to go find out what the boys were up to. The boys had been at a bar watching a basketball game, of course. So we went and found them (again, smartphones!). As we arrived at the bar, EVERYBODY else was leaving the bar (the game had just ended?), and so it was really just the 4 of us in that bar. Okay. We decided after 20 minutes that it was too weird, and went to find another bar.
The next bar we found was open-air (Texas!), and also had a FOUNTAIN that was on FIRE. So we picked that one and stayed. There was also a band, so SCORE.
The four of us reveled in the fact that we were on vacation for today and tomorrow before the conference actually started. We laughed and drank some beer. We talked about our day and what we thought of Texas. I hadn't really spent a significant amount of time with these 3 since I graduated 6 months before, so it was good to catch up. We also got to see the "drunk enough to flirt with girls" side of Chris that we had never seen before. We made friends with a group of Texans who had come straight from a Kenny Chesney concert wearing cowboy boots and hats (you can't make this stuff up). One of the new-friend girls was hilarious and talked about how she hated the shirt she was wearing. Chris complimented the shirt anyway. Life was fun and we were in Texas.
Anyway, we stayed at that bar until closing time and made it back to the hotel by 2:30. If you're counting, that's 1.5 hours short of being up for a full 24 hours. If you're counting, and also taking into account the fact that we jumped back one hour when we flew there, we were half an hour short of a full 24 hour day. Katie and I got into our shared hotel bed and slept like babies.
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| Katie! |
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| I also took this picture. The bar we were at had some dancing upstairs. I thought I'd be able to accurately capture the moment. Jake is in this picture TWICE. |
For a week that started pretty grumpy, it ended on a fun note. And that was our first day in Texas.
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