Friday April 11: Goodbye to Texas, we shall miss you.

Well, this has been an intense day, and it really should not have been. Today was supposed to be just a simple really long drive... it was supposed to be the most boring, mind numbing part of this leg of the trip. If this has taught us nothing though, it is that no day is a normal day.

It started on one of the biggest downers of the trip, we had to leave Texas. Our time in Lubock will surely go down in my memory books as one of the most intensely enjoyable periods of time I have ever spent. Aly and Ram are two of the best people I have ever been able to call friend. Their kids are some of the nicest and well mannered people I have ever met... freakishly so. I am gonna start a petition to force Aly and Ram to write a book on parenting... I don't know what they are doing, but it clearly works.

I won't go into detail as to our activities, you can read that in Petes previous post, but I just wanted to reiterate what incredibly wonderful people Aly and Ram are. Aly is the exact same sweetheart we have all grown to know and love on Vent. Ram, however is silent on vent most of the time, so he was was a bit of a mystery. He isn't so quite in real life. I had several fantastic and powerful conversations with him over the last 2 days. He is insightful, clever, and thoughtful. As we drove away from Lubock this morning, my mind was full of all the other controversial subjects and deep thoughts that I just didn't have time to pick his brain about. Poor me.

All well. The day began with a hearty breakfast of some of the tastiest strawberry pie I have ever had a-la Nem. Wait, does that work? Maybe it should simply read Nems most awesome yummy strawberry masterpiece.Yes , that sounds better. Actually on the subject of food, we found some cookies that we got from Aly too, between these two ladies and their culinary skills, we ate very well today, just not very healthy. Oh well, die happy.

Anyway. This has just been a driving day. Nothing special. We drove from Lubock Texas to Flagstaff Arizona, and yah know what??? It was COLD! Not only was it cold... but it SNOWED!!!! We drove through snow in New Mexico, and it is snowing as I type this here in Arizona! Now, I can sort of understand the Arizona... sort of. We are up really high, spent a lot of the drive between 5000-6000 feel above sea level. I gotta say though, despite the snow, this drive has been one of the most magestic drives we have had. The landscape was in a constant state of flux through New Mexico. The rock formations were mind boggling. Then in Arizona, we are up so high, and the ground is so flat, and the sky so close it felt like you could touch heaven. The sky was so big, and with no civilization around, we lamented not driving through here at night, I bet it has one of the most beautify night skys on the planet. I have included some pictures, but really, this was something that no piece of technology could capture.... the magnitude and freedom of this landscape defied our attempts to squeeze it into this camera to show you all. You must all just come here and see it for yourself.

After arriving in Flagstaff, we checked into the Knights Inn, and went out to find some supper. We ended up at a family restaurant named Granny's Closet. It had good food, but what made it unique was that each booth had it's own TV. It was an experience to be sure, but as the meal progressed, I was reminded why my parents insisted that we eat supper together at the dinner table instead of in front of the TV. Having that box there kills the entire meal as far as human interaction goes.

OK. Today we passed through not one, but two time zones. The local clock says it is approaching 11pm, but for me, it is almost two in the morning. The free continental breakfast ends at 9am local time, so to get our tummies filled tomorrow morning, we gotta be getting up early. So with that, I draw this post to an end, but don't forget to tune in tomorrow. Tomorrow we shall meet Eldrik and Eaden. What wild and bizarre things will happen when we all get together? Stay tuned to find out.

Friday April 10: Aly and Ram and New Experiences

Having just said our goodbyes to Aly and Ram and two of their sons, Sean and Jake, I'm once again struck by how gracious and hospitable and generous our hosts have been on this trip. You guys have really made this trip spectacular for us, and we really appreciate it. Aly and Ram were no exception, bringing forth a host of new experiences for us to try. Let's recap.

New Experience 1: This one was kinda just for me. Knowing that I smoke, Ram thought it would be neat if I were to try tobacco in the Texan fashion. He had bought me a can of dip and a pouch of chew and we had a great time trying both out and making a wonderfully disgusting mess in his spit cup. Not that Ram usually chews tobacco, but he didn't think he'd be a very good host if he let me go it alone. I know this was already covered by Chris, but I thought it a fitting way to begin.

New Experience 2: Rising at about 10am, we hooked up with Aly (Ram got an unexpected call from work and had to disappear for a few hours) and headed out to a local eatery called Josie's to try some authentic breakfast burritos. Chris and I both ordered the same thing, two burritos we've never heard of before. The first was stuffed with a Mexican sausage of some sort and egg. Very tasty, though Ram later joked that we wouldn't have thought so if we knew what was in them. The second we had no idea what was in it, only that it was very good. Later, we found it was stuffed with potato and fried pig skin. What we didn't know didn't hurt us, and was actually very good.

New Experience 3: After breakfast we crossed the street to visit the local Western Wear store so Chris could look into buying his very own cowboy hat. A running joke between us is that I was suckered into buying a "tourist" cowboy hat but he was going to get the "real thing". Well, we had a great time poking around the store, trying on various hats, and likely making fools of ourselves before Chris finally settled on a hat. Though I don't know about it being any more "authentic" than my own, and though it doesn't look nearly as good on him as mine does on me, it's still a very nice cowboy hat. Aly seems to think we'll have all the ladies swooning if we wear them on the beaches in California. We shall see.

New Experience 4: Next, it was time to meet up with Ram at the Buddy Holley statue for a photo op. The statue is surrounded by plaques to honor Lubbock's contribution to the areas of music, art and entertainment. Besides Buddy Holly, Lubbock also gave us Roy Orbison and many others. As it said on one plaque, " An area's culture is described by the activities it's citizens embrace in the pursuit of entertainment". I thought that was a pretty neat way to look at it. Ram brought out his own Fender Stratocaster (a guitar that Buddy Holley is known for) and we all took turns posing by the statue and being all rock star. It was great.

New Experience 5: We loaded the guitar back into Ram's van and then Aly, Chris and I headed out of the city to a local winery. It was a really cool experience, as I've never been taste testing before, despite having grown up so close to Ontario's wine country. The folks at the winery took us on a tour of their facilities and explained how a winery even came to exist on the Texas Panhandle Plains (not exactly where you'd think of when you think of grape vines, eh?). Then we picked out several wines we wanted to try out and had a great time sampling. So much fun!

New Experience 6: Meeting up with Ram again, we all went down to a local park to have a picnic lunch. What was on the menu, you ask? Well, it was a big spread, let me tell you, all picked up at local restaurants and diners so that we could have a taste of Texas that we weren't familiar with. The new foods we tried out included tamales, Mesquite smoked beef, and the kicker, deep fried chicken gizzards. I loved the tamales and roast, and enjoyed the gizzards though the texture of those did put me off a little. Ram had also brought along his acoustic guitar, and first he and then I serenaded the group with a little music. It was a perfect lunch, in my opinion.

New Experience 7: Next came the highlight of the day, and probably one of the coolest experiences of my life. We went to the range! (And no, I'm not talking about where the deer and antelope play). We went to the firing range! Honestly, we're in Texas, we have cowboy hats, it's only a matter of time before someone sticks a gun in our hands, right? On the way, Ram explained gun safety to us as Chris and I are woefully ignorant of such things, and then were were there and unloading the van. And unloading. And unloading, until we'd assembled enough firearms to field a small army. Having been a member of the shooting range for some time now, Ram had amassed quite an impressive collection of rifles and pistols for us to try out.

Guns we shot: AK-47, M-16, M1A, 12-gauge Shotgun, Winchester Lever-Action rifle, Ruger Blackhawk .357 single action revolver, U.S.Army Colt .45 Automatic, Glock 9mm (and .40) and a Smith and Wesson .38 revolver. All told, 4 rifles, 1 shotgun and and 5 hand guns.

It was absolutely amazing. And Chris and I didn't do half bad considering it was all mostly new to us. (we'd both shot .22 rifles once or twice before but nothing like this!) My favorites were the M1A and the Glock, but probably just because they were the only ones I seemed to be comfortable enough with to actually knock some targets over with. It was all a little surreal, and I'm not sure I'd believe my memory of events tomorrow if I didn't have the pictures to back it up with. As Ram said, "many notches in your belt today". Was it ever!

New Experience 8: And even then, they weren't done showing us a good time. We loaded up the van once more and headed back to the city for supper at a place called Bryon's Steaks. Once again, I had food stuffed into me until I thought I was going to burst. It's an interestingly set up restaurant, where you all line up at a cafeteria style counter, pick up your drinks, order your steak, pay for the meal, then collect a little number thing to stick on your table. Then, you head up to the salad bar (which includes many hot side dishes), fill up on what you want to snack on while waiting for your main course to arrive. Now, I've had the benefit of having some pretty good steaks in my life, but I don't think any of those compared to the rib eye steak we had at Bryon's. So tasty. Added to that, we ordered a Chicken Fried Steak for us all to try. It's basically a breaded, fried steak smothered in Southern White Gravy. Also, very, very good. I swear, I'm going to be about 200lbs bigger by the time I get back to Ontario.

We finished the night off by lounging around our hotel while Aly and Ram's sons went swimming, drinking a local beer (Lone Star) and just having relaxed conversation about politics and religion and everything in between.

You can get to know a person very well over the Internet, especially if you have a voice program where you can actually talk instead of type. But I appreciate Aly and Ram so much more now that I've met them in real life. It's been such an enjoyable day, it was really hard to say our farewells. This is always the hardest part. Tomorrow is probably one of the most grueling legs of our trip, as we travel from Lubbock, TX, through the entire state of New Mexico to Flagstaff, AZ. I should probably get some sleep, eh?

Goodnight!