Weekend accomplishments: Texas road trip edition
Friday if Lori changed her mind about going to Texas she kept it to herself, and wasn't even that late picking me up. (She said between 9:00-9:30 and was there at like 9:40; that's the equivalent of me being an hour early.) The drive was boring, I remember the drive to Galveston being on secondary highways and rather scenic, but her phone kept us on I-10 for as long as it could and routed us through Houston. After 14 years of living in the country, cities as large as Houston, with the traffic that implies, just feels surreal to me.
We found the place okay, but the stupid lock box containing the key was rusted shut. We had to call the owner, who sent someone out from the housecleaning service with an extra key. She couldn't get the box open either, so at least it wasn't just Lori and me being incompetent nitwits, it really wouldn't open.
The place was nice, once we actually got inside. The first floor was just a mudroom--most of the ground floor footprint is taken up by the parking area--the second floor is bedrooms and bathrooms, and then up another flight is an open living room/kitchen, another bathroom, and the washer/dryer. There were a lot of balconies, although not much of a view; the place wasn't like right on the beach or anything. Although behind the house was a marshy area that was good for bird-watching, and Lori and I both heard what sounded an awful lot like a coyote out there on Saturday. It was that fast yip-yip-yip they do, and I've never heard a dog do that.
I ordered Japanese food for us with Uber Eats, and while I was looking out the window for the driver (I was hungry and I got takoyaki, which really should be eaten hot) I saw my first ever in the wild Cybertruck. When Lori asked me what I was laughing at she said "I bets it's already rusted". I mean, sea air? Yeah, probably.
Jeremy flew in to Corpus Christi that night, but it was past midnight once he made it to the house, so I had given up and gone to bed.
Saturday everyone slept in pretty late, and Jeremy got us breakfast from the coffee shop that was conveniently across the street. It was raining, but not very hard, and petered out around noon. Which was around the time we were ready to head out, anyway. It stayed overcast all day, and it was warm but windy on the beach, which provided enough natural a/c to be comfortable.
Port Aransas has beaches you can just drive out on; Jeremy's rental was a Jeep, so for once the 4WD actually got used. We drove pretty far down and found a spot with not a lot of people around. Larry asked for Whiter Shade of Pale, Like A Rolling Stone, and Stairway to Heaven be played, which I said was the most Basic Boomer Funeral setlist ever; Lori laughed and said Larry had said something similar when he told her. Lori read something, then we just went out about knee deep and poured him in. Human cremains are probably not the grossest thing in the Gulf of Mexico, let's be real.
Then we just kind of hung out for a while; after a bit we drove over to Mustang Island Beach, which was smaller and had fewer people. I miss the power of the sarcastically-named Pacific, but the Gulf has its charms. It's much gentler and human scale. It's easy to swim in, whereas I feel like the Pacific doesn't really want people in it and is always trying to fling them out or pound them on rocks or just be too cold to bother. You have to really want to be in the Pacific, and the Gulf doesn't care one way or the other... unless it's gestating a hurricane.
We went to some Cheesecake Factory knock-off that was close to the townhouse for an early dinner, then except for getting gelato across the street around 6:00 we had a quiet evening, mostly we just read, and went to bed early.
Sunday we left around 9:30, Lori and I followed Jeremy to the Corpus Christi airport where he turned in the Jeep. The drive home was uneventful and we made decent time. They dropped me off in Abbeville, and stayed with a friend of Lori's before heading home today. Mom, of course, didn't plan anything for supper, and David refused to get involved because "Sunday's my day off", so I just made sandwiches. I wasn't hungry anyway and I sure as hell wasn't getting back in a car to get anything, but Phil needs to eat something.
Having been to Port Aransas, finally, I gotta say I don't understand why Larry preferred it to Galveston. Lori had told me she thought it was because Galveston is "touristy", so I was expecting some quiet little beach town like Dauphin Island. But it's just a boring small city/large town with like, strip malls. You hardly have a sense of even being on an island. And it doesn't have Galveston's charm or personality (Galveston definitely feels like an island).
I think it was probably just some mundane reason, like it was cheaper than Galveston. As someone who also has to scrounge around every year for vacation money, I get that. Larry just liked being on the beach, I suppose the town it was in was largely irrelevant.
This is Larry on the left, next to my mother (who was pregnant with one of my brothers, I think Rian), Lori, and my grandparents. Larry was the youngest child growing up, Lori was 18 years younger than him. She saw him as a second paternal figure; one who actually took an interest in her and her life. She and Larry had that in common, actually, always endlessly interested in people and what they liked and why they liked the things they did or did this instead of that. They could talk to anyone; Mom has that too, but with her it always turns into a story about herself.
We found the place okay, but the stupid lock box containing the key was rusted shut. We had to call the owner, who sent someone out from the housecleaning service with an extra key. She couldn't get the box open either, so at least it wasn't just Lori and me being incompetent nitwits, it really wouldn't open.
The place was nice, once we actually got inside. The first floor was just a mudroom--most of the ground floor footprint is taken up by the parking area--the second floor is bedrooms and bathrooms, and then up another flight is an open living room/kitchen, another bathroom, and the washer/dryer. There were a lot of balconies, although not much of a view; the place wasn't like right on the beach or anything. Although behind the house was a marshy area that was good for bird-watching, and Lori and I both heard what sounded an awful lot like a coyote out there on Saturday. It was that fast yip-yip-yip they do, and I've never heard a dog do that.
I ordered Japanese food for us with Uber Eats, and while I was looking out the window for the driver (I was hungry and I got takoyaki, which really should be eaten hot) I saw my first ever in the wild Cybertruck. When Lori asked me what I was laughing at she said "I bets it's already rusted". I mean, sea air? Yeah, probably.
Jeremy flew in to Corpus Christi that night, but it was past midnight once he made it to the house, so I had given up and gone to bed.
Saturday everyone slept in pretty late, and Jeremy got us breakfast from the coffee shop that was conveniently across the street. It was raining, but not very hard, and petered out around noon. Which was around the time we were ready to head out, anyway. It stayed overcast all day, and it was warm but windy on the beach, which provided enough natural a/c to be comfortable.
Port Aransas has beaches you can just drive out on; Jeremy's rental was a Jeep, so for once the 4WD actually got used. We drove pretty far down and found a spot with not a lot of people around. Larry asked for Whiter Shade of Pale, Like A Rolling Stone, and Stairway to Heaven be played, which I said was the most Basic Boomer Funeral setlist ever; Lori laughed and said Larry had said something similar when he told her. Lori read something, then we just went out about knee deep and poured him in. Human cremains are probably not the grossest thing in the Gulf of Mexico, let's be real.
Then we just kind of hung out for a while; after a bit we drove over to Mustang Island Beach, which was smaller and had fewer people. I miss the power of the sarcastically-named Pacific, but the Gulf has its charms. It's much gentler and human scale. It's easy to swim in, whereas I feel like the Pacific doesn't really want people in it and is always trying to fling them out or pound them on rocks or just be too cold to bother. You have to really want to be in the Pacific, and the Gulf doesn't care one way or the other... unless it's gestating a hurricane.
We went to some Cheesecake Factory knock-off that was close to the townhouse for an early dinner, then except for getting gelato across the street around 6:00 we had a quiet evening, mostly we just read, and went to bed early.
Sunday we left around 9:30, Lori and I followed Jeremy to the Corpus Christi airport where he turned in the Jeep. The drive home was uneventful and we made decent time. They dropped me off in Abbeville, and stayed with a friend of Lori's before heading home today. Mom, of course, didn't plan anything for supper, and David refused to get involved because "Sunday's my day off", so I just made sandwiches. I wasn't hungry anyway and I sure as hell wasn't getting back in a car to get anything, but Phil needs to eat something.
Having been to Port Aransas, finally, I gotta say I don't understand why Larry preferred it to Galveston. Lori had told me she thought it was because Galveston is "touristy", so I was expecting some quiet little beach town like Dauphin Island. But it's just a boring small city/large town with like, strip malls. You hardly have a sense of even being on an island. And it doesn't have Galveston's charm or personality (Galveston definitely feels like an island).
I think it was probably just some mundane reason, like it was cheaper than Galveston. As someone who also has to scrounge around every year for vacation money, I get that. Larry just liked being on the beach, I suppose the town it was in was largely irrelevant.
This is Larry on the left, next to my mother (who was pregnant with one of my brothers, I think Rian), Lori, and my grandparents. Larry was the youngest child growing up, Lori was 18 years younger than him. She saw him as a second paternal figure; one who actually took an interest in her and her life. She and Larry had that in common, actually, always endlessly interested in people and what they liked and why they liked the things they did or did this instead of that. They could talk to anyone; Mom has that too, but with her it always turns into a story about herself.