Whirlwind Texas Weekend

My friend (and former roommate from Emory) Doan has been living in Houston for the past several years, but I haven't yet had the chance to visit her. She's moving to Portland Oregon soon, and I found a really good flight deal to San Antonio, so I went to visit her and combined it with some roller coasters and a visit with my friend Chandra in Austin. Covering 650 miles of asphalt and three major cities in just three days wasn't the best idea - I wish I had more time to visit with my friends - but I still had a great time.

I started at the San Antonio airport and immediately drove to Houston. Doan lives near the Texas Medical Center, which is a massive area with hospitals, a lot of cancer research organizations, medical schools, nursing schools, public health schools - it's the largest medical center in the entire world. It's really a bizarre area, like its own little city (except nobody lives there). Nearby is Rice University and Hermann Park. Houston has some of the bad aspects of Atlanta (sprawl, air pollution, massive highways and traffic), but it has a few neat neighborhoods and a high-class arts scene. I wish it had more trees and wasn't so hot!

Statue of Sam Houston near Hermann Park

Skyscrapers in downtown Houston

Japanese Gardens in Hermann Park

Rice University

Houston's light rail system

Doan in Discovery Green, downtown Houston

We took a quick roadtrip down to Kemah and Galveston, two coastal cities that each have a seaside amusement area. I rode two roller coasters, and we got to check out the Gulf of Mexico. Galveston was recently devastated by a hurricane, but it seemed to be recovering. The whole amusement pier area was brand new.

About to ride the Boardwalk Bullet! It's actually one of only two wooden coasters in Texas. Very fun ride!

The Pleasure Pier in Galveston

Beyond 90 degrees on Iron Shark

Doan made a new friend

Major thunderstorm on the way back to Houston

BBQ from Goode Company. The meat was decent, the bun was great, but I didn't like the sauce very much.

After dinner I drove back to San Antonio, and went to Six Flags Fiesta Texas the next morning. Fiesta Texas is a neat amusement park that is built into a former rock quarry, so 100-ft tall rock cliffs surround much of the park. Several of the rides go up on top of the quarry wall. The new coaster is Iron Rattler, which is actually a wooden coaster built in 1992 that has been redesigned with steel I-beam track and an inversion. It's a fantastic ride - smooth and fast and with some good airtime and a tunnel finale. It probably ranks in my top 15 or so steel coasters. Unfortunately it was already insanely hot and humid, so I left the park shortly after noon to drive up to Austin.

Goliath swoops over the entrance

Iron Rattler time!

The first drop over the side of the quarry wall

Iron Rattler doing its thing

The Superman coaster also interacts with the quarry wall

Goliath's first loop

After getting the three new credits I didn't have at Fiesta Texas, I drove up to Austin to visit Chandra. Austin is a really neat city. It seems like everywhere you look there is a bar, a food truck, or a cute little local shop. The lack of chain stores and restaurants was refreshing. It's really a fascinating city of contradictions and idiosyncrasies - the liberal heart of a conservative state, the home of Rick Perry and hipsters, high-rise condos and bike lanes, cowboys and tourists and Yankee transplants. It seems that even with all of its rapid growth, Austin has kept weird (and South Austin has kept even weirder). There are definitely challenges ahead for the city. What happens when glass-covered 30 story condos raise property values and push out the restaurants and bars that made Austin unique in the first place? How will the city maintain its progressive mindset when the Texas legislature tries to reign it in? Can a bus system and one small light rail line with only 9 stops (and no concrete plans for future rail expansion) support all of the growth, or will the roads and highways just become more crowded? Despite these issues, Austin remains a vibrant and attractive city with a strong heartbeat of BBQ and PBR.

Simón Bolívar takes a catnap

View of the Capitol from the car

Austin does have one light rail line - but it doesn't run on Sundays!

101 beers on tap at Bangers. Drool...

Interesting! Lots of off-beat stuff like this around Austin.

At The Liberty Bar

Waiting for the bats at the Congress Ave bridge - over a million bats live here!

Downtown Austin

This was the best shot I could get of the bats

This was my second trip to Texas this year. My friends in Dallas and Houston will soon be moving out of the state, but I'm already thinking about another trip back to Austin to do some more exploring.

Corn and Thunderstorms - a Visit to Iowa

Ahh, memorial day weekend. Perfect for a trip to the beach, or maybe just a BBQ with family. But that would be too obvious, so we decided to visit the corn growin', gay-marriage havin', beer drinkin', more pigs than people, rain-soaked heartland of America - IOWA!

Our friends from Canada and Sweden were visiting our other friends in Iowa City, so it was a perfect chance to catch-up while also visiting new cities... and of course Paul found some roller coasters nearby. :)

We arrived in Des Moines late Friday night and high-tailed it to downtown for dinner. When in Iowa, we did as the Iowans do and ate Chinese Pizza. Yes, Fong's Pizza piles Americanized Chinese food on top of pizza. It was surprisingly good! We tried the Moo Shu Pork pizza (hoisin bbq, diced pork, mirepoix, cabbage, mozzarella, and green onion, drizzled with Moo Shu sauce) and the Crab Rangoon pizza (crab rangoon base, surimi, green onion, asiago and mozzarella, topped with crispy egg roll strips and sweet chili sauce). The Moo Shu Pork was good, but the Crab Rangoon pizza was excellent. Highly recommended if you're in Des Moines! We also were pleasantly surprised with the Friday night streetlife in the city. Lots of bars and clubs along 4th Street and Court Avenue. But we had a busy day ahead of us, so after dinner we went to our hotel to get some sleep.

Drinking local beer at Fong's Pizza

Moo shu pork pizza

Meanwhile, rain and thunderstorms started to move in. It ended up raining all weekend (we finally saw the sun on Monday when we were leaving the airport), but we didn't let that stop us. Saturday morning we went to Iowa's beautiful State Capitol Building. Possibly because of the bad weather (wishful thinking), there were only two other people on our tour - a couple of nice lesbians from Des Moines. The tour guide was very informative, and we got to see a few behind-the-scenes areas. This is definitely one of our favorite state capitol buildings.

Inside the dome of the Iowa State Capitol.

Library.

Mosaic in the Capitol.

Iowa Senate chamber.

The only state capitol with 5 domes.

Gold dome.

Iowa doesn't mess around!

JUMP!

Downtown Des Moines

There was a slight break in the rain, so we drove over to Adventureland with hopes of getting in a few coaster credits. Again, because of the weather, there were no lines - but most of the rides were still open! We grabbed a quick ride on Underground and Dragon. The woodies weren't open yet, so we got some Dippin Dots (what people in 1987 thought future ice cream would be) and parked ourselves by Outlaw. Luckily they started testing, and we were the first in line. Outlaw is a really fun family woodie. Smooth, with some nice forces, and great PTC trains with just buzzbars. Unfortunately Tornado never opened, and a maintenance person told us it was a mechanical issue, unrelated to the weather. So Paul will just have to visit Iowa again in the future to get the credit.

The Dragon.

Outlaw's curvy first drop.

I warned you there are more pigs than people in Iowa!

From there, we drove east to Andrew and Tori's house in Iowa City. We hung out with them and their adorable kids and pets and had Tori's delicious home-made country fried steak for dinner. Andrew and Paul made a beer run to the amazing John's Grocery, and when Janice and Peter arrived we commenced drinking immediately. Obviously. The group was unsuccessful in their attempt to film Paul patting his head while rubbing his belly.

On Sunday we did some touring around the area, including a stop at Prairie Lights Book Store, some yummy hamburgers for lunch, and a visit to the Natural History Museum, where we learned that large ice age sloths often shake their fist at things. Then we drove out to the Amana Colonies. This is a weird collection of little villages that isn't really Amish and isn't really communist, but they sure do make good cheese. And there's a brewery! We mostly managed to avoid the rain, but did see a decent thunderstorm that evening. Since we started the trip with crazy pizza at Fong's, we had a nice bookend to our journey with Andrew's home-made pizza with equally bizarre ingredient choices for dinner. How about mango chutney, chocolate chips, mozzarella, and sriracha? It was delicious. Like amazingly delicious.

Some Canadian beers Janice and Peter brought. Oh, and Bigfoot.

Andrew and Janice living the High Life.

Mmmm, beers...

General William Tecumseh Sherman liked to sleep on Paul's pants. 

Look, it's Sam! She was looking for banana-os on the floor, I assume.

Sebastian is a majestic hairball.

Pooh is not impressed with our pancake breakfast.

The old Iowa Capitol, on University of Iowa's campus.

Damn you, sloth!

The rain didn't stop us!

Janice and Peter at the brewery in Amana.

Paul and David at the brewery.

Another night, another set of beers!

Just another normal day in Iowa.

Monday morning, after saying goodbye to our lovely friends, we took a quick driving detour through Cedar Rapids and Ames on our way to the airport. Our flight back to Atlanta ended up being delayed, so we got to explore the Des Moines airport for an extra 3 hours. Somebody needs to open up an ice cream or froyo joint in this airport!

I'm sure we'll be back to Iowa sooner rather than later. We still need to see Iowa City on a sunny day.

Sam said this beer was just OK. She couldn't really taste the maple.