Righty ho!

Just a few days after the madness of Kiwi Pincade, and having 100 punters at my house, Danni, Fiona and I are at Auckland airport about to board a plane to Houston.

Danni is now the 5th ranked Woman's pinball player in the world so she qualifies to play in the Woman's World Champs played Thursday 16 March in Dallas. We will both play at Pinmasters Pingolf champs the next day.

After that, the infamous kiwis NICKS FIGUUUUURES and YEE show up and we roadtrip to the top of Texas for a steak at the world famous Big Texan Steak Ranch on Route 66 in Amarillo. Probably drive a bit of R66 over to OK City and then head back down to Dallas.

Then we will hit up the Texas Pinball Festival, and then do a circumnavigation of the state of Texas, touring the BBQ pits of the longhorn state. Then, we fly over to Pittsburgh for PAPA and then back home.

Look forward to catching up with fellow Pinsiders as we travel around the states for the next 5 weeks!

rd

IMG_4418 (resized).JPG

Sounds sweet Art! Catch you there!

rd

Yeah Scotty, I unleashed them on Chicago Expo and Las Vegas in 2015 and nobody got arrested. That I know of ...

rd

Sounds good ... be hard to beat Fette Sau in Brooklyn though! But we will test them all and find out!

Sounds like an idea ... we haven't even seen one yet, let alone played one.

rd

That's always a highlight ....

We are already taking odds on who will be the first to bung up a hotel toilet.

rd

After no sleep on the 13 hour flight to Houston, today was a "muck around acclimation" day. We do that to settle into the time zone. Got up after midday local time (which is about 7am NZ time) now we are set for the holiday.

Went to Americas Best Eyewear for some new glasses for Danni. $69 for two nice pairs of glasses and an eye exam. Cheap cheap cheap!!

Hit up Dickies BBQ for our first texas BBQ meal. Food was cheap, and good.

Brisket $7 and pork $5 for 1/2 pound. Pork was nice and juicy (but not fatty) and brisket had a nice Smokey flavour and nice bark on the edge.

Also went to a Western boot store and checked out some boots and Stetsons. While in Rome ....

rd

IMG_4428 (resized).JPG
IMG_4429 (resized).JPG

Yeah, I can forsee the toilet blockages already.

Seriously though, some BBQ meat is fine. Just not the litre of soda they give you. We share that one drink between the whole family.

We mix in plenty of salads on the non BBQ days so hopefully we will survive the BBQ meat fest ok.

rd

Well, that went well. When I finally went to sleep at 530am.

Time zone adjustment fail.

rd

Galveston, oh, Galveston,
I still hear your seawinds blowing;
I still see her dark eyes glowing.
She was twenty one, when I left Galveston.
Galveston, oh, Galveston,
I still hear your seawaves crashin,
while I watch the cannons flashin'.
I clean my gun, and dream of Galveston.

I still see her standing by the water,
Standing there looking out to sea.
And is she waiting there for me,
On the beach where we used to run?
Galveston, oh!

So, if you didn't guess, we went to Galveston today.

It's an island on the Gulf of Mexico, about an hours drive south of Houston.

It was a big port town in 1850-1900, being the busiest port in the USA (due to cotton exports) and the biggest city in Texas. Now its port is home to cruise ships.

The town has a number of large mansions which shows the wealth that the port bought to Galveston back in the late 1800s. Almost every building in The Strand (the historic shopping district) was built around 1870. 150 years old!

There's a lot of holiday homes around the island, and a big pier with roller coasters and other stuff.

Today, the place was cold (50f/10c) and reeked of faded glory. I'm sure there is a crowd that shows up in the summer months. Plenty of empty and part restored commercial property.

I even found a Dr Who in the Strand toy store! Quite tidy too!

rd

IMG_4432 (resized).JPG
IMG_4434 (resized).JPG
IMG_4433 (resized).JPG
IMG_4442 (resized).JPG
IMG_4518 (resized).PNG

IMG_4431 (resized).JPG

If you've read my other threads, you'll know I'm fascinated by empty buildings.

Why is it empty?
What was in here?
Why isn't it still here now?
What the hell are they doing with this valuable real estate?

Found a cool one in Galveston today. Lots of other empty ones, but this one was the tallest. They'd been doing some work on it, but their interest seems to have waned somewhat...

I think my fascination comes from the fact that we don't have any empty buildings like this back home. The land is too valuable so buildings are never empty .. there's always a tenant to fill them.

rd

IMG_4489 (resized).JPG

IMG_4491 (resized).JPG

IMG_4490 (resized).JPG

Then later we drove into Houston for a look see.

Hit up a Guitar Centre and the Hard Rock (Fiona collects Hard Rock glasses from every city we go too..)

The Houston Hard Rock had the best music I've heard in a HRC for a long time, all Hard Rock/metal the whole time we were there. When we toured the east coast last year, they were all playing top 40 crap, which was a real downer. It's not called the Top 40 Cafe now, is it ... crank it up.

rd

IMG_4495 (resized).JPG

IMG_4519 (resized).JPG

IMG_4513 (resized).JPG

Yep! Went there when we drove Route 66. The other kiwis want to go there so we will take them along. Those caddies have an amazing amount of paint layers on them ... like 1/4" thick.

Fiona loves Prairie Dogs. She wants to take some home in the suitcase.

rd

I got you a Mario Andretti instead. The things I do ...

rd

Yep, I read about that. And the catastrophic one back in 1900.

All the beach house out in the bayou were up on large poles, the water must rise up quite high some times.

rd

An upper decker? Nice one!

rd