For the weekend following up to New Years I spent it in Texas with my family. The ride was long and boring and I didn’t look out the window at all. We really didn’t do much at all either. It was nice to escape from the cold for a few days though.

I wasn’t asked to go until 21:00PM the previous day; so I had to decide what I wanted to take with me and procrastinate a bit to decide whether or not I really wanted to go. I really wanted to take my bicycle so if we ended up doing nothing I would have a last resort of freedom because on some trips my family doesn’t do much. I didn’t take the bike but instead took my laptop, camera, and my Watchmen graphic novel.

On the ride the night I went home, it was extremely foggy out, I could barely see the road in front of me. I drove with my hazard lights on because if I had not someone would have been close to rear ending my car. It took me about two and a half hours to do what normally takes forty minutes. I called my sister to tell her to stay at my apartment but she did not answer. Once I was about home she called and said she was going to sleep in her car at the Walmart parking lot. I told her that was dumb and she should sleep at our grandparents since the only live a couple blocks away but she did not want to wake them up since it was midnight. When I got home I called my grandma and woke her up so she could call me sister and get her somewhere warm and safer. I don’t know how mad that made her but at least she was somewhere better.

We started the trip around 06:00AM and I was dead tired because I was making sure I had my computer up-to-date with all my games, patches, and software. Ben let me borrow his DC to AC power converter which saved my life during the boring ride. I played “Left 4 Dead”, “Warcraft III”, and “Overlord” pretty much nonstop till we arrived at a hotel in Oklahoma. This was the only time we stayed in a hotel and it was pretty nice. My dad and I watched “Survivor Man” and talked about stuff. In the morning when we started driving again I figured I would switch up my riding activity and read Watchmen; by the time I finished it we had arrived at our old neighbors new home. She was excited to see my family again. She is an old woman (70+ years old?) named Joy and my mom and dad would visit her all the time.

Most of the trip consisted of my dad helping her son finish her house which was like a small lake cabin. My dad helped work on that place every day we were there. I was very bored the whole time. My mom spent most of her time hanging out with her and my sister spent all her time hanging out with her granddaughter. I hung out at Joy’s son’s house a lot of my time. One of her granddaughters that was not there most the time had geckos and ferrets. Those animals helped make a lot of the time fly by. I dunno why but I like watching animals. Ever since I was a kid I always had a lot of pets and it was kind of like going back in time.

Dallas and Fort Worth were equal distances from the town we were staying in but we chose to hangout in Dallas for a day. In Dallas we went to their art museum for their King Tut exhibit and we went to their Worlds Aquarium. Their downtown area surprisingly had little and no traffic on most roads; they have a highway that wraps tightly around the city so no one has to drive through it. The air was a lot cooler because of all the tall building blocking the sun. We walked around a lot and I took a lot of photos…

While we were walking around we picked up some pizza at a pretty cool pizzeria and then picked up our tickets for the King Tut exhibit. We had about three hours to kill so we asked an old man who worked at the museum if he knew of anything we could do for that time. He told us that a few blocks down there’s a huge aquarium we could check out; so we did.

Outside of the entrance they had loud tropical birds and lots of bamboo. There were curved walkways and the air was humid and fresh. There were winding walkways that went around the edge of the building and through it, above the ground floor. Inside birds were free to fly wherever they wanted in the huge indoor garden. The only thing I can say that I did not like about the place was how crowded it was; it made taking a nice photo hard. Because of all the people I also lost my mom and sister a few times because I like to wander off a lot. They had so many animals and fish to look at. There were huge crocodiles, turtles that weigh more than me, and fish that would be taller than I. The closest thing Fort Wayne has to this place is the Botanical Garden; which is not much different in the atmosphere of things other than having no animals.

The last day we spent there I did a lot of napping trying to make the trip go by faster. I woke up later in the afternoon. Joy’s granddaughter that was not around much took me out to hang out with her friends. One of her friends owns horses so she took her boyfriend and I out there. There were three horses, two females and one male. No one rode the male because the girl that owned them said that he had not been rode for a while. She used to race him so I guess I can see why he would be more aggressive as well. The female horses were not slim like the male but were fat. When I rode them I could tell that they did not want to do anything but eat. Even if you agitated them to move faster then would just walk. I couldn’t even get them to trot. It was still nice though to get out of where we were staying and be around some people my own age. After we were done riding the horses they all wanted to go out to the “dog park” so everyone left for their houses and picked them up.

Out at the “dog park” I saw all different kinds: big ones, small ones, hairy ones, bald ones. No two dogs were a like and they all got along. Mika’s dog and her boyfriends dog were having problems though. Her dog is a female dog that is a mid size one and her boyfriend’s dog is a male that is small. The entire time we were out there his dog would not stop trying to mate with her dog; her dog showed no interest but he still tried. The park was pretty cool. It was a huge fenced off area were you unleash your dog and just let it run around and play with other dogs. While we were there I didn’t see one dog get into a fight. It was a lot of fun for me to sit and watch the dogs interact. I even played catch with a few. No one really cared if you played with their dog.

When we went home the next morning I slept in the car nearly the entire time. I also didn’t pee for over fifteen hours but I didn’t drink at all either. When I woke up I started reading Dante’s Inferno and I finished it. The book is pretty hard to follow and I will probly read it again… I guess that is something you have to do with a translated book from the 1200’s. We made it home around 01:00AM with little difficulty. I was kinda upset that I missed out hanging out with my friends for New Years Eve but oh well.

The trip was pretty enjoyable and I got to see Texas for the first time. I know I would not mind living out there. It was warm, people were nice, and there are big cities all over. I know I would like to go out there again someday but hopefully with a better plan of things to do.