<IMG SRC="http://pic4.picturetrail.com/VOL784/4062504/8448420/126923752.jpg" border="0" alt="Image Hosting by PictureTrail.com">
The Texas Star.
Houston was our first real stop in Texas and home to the centre where all the Apollo space launches were controlled up until the mid 1980´s. The astronauts are still trained there for the space shuttle. It was great to go into the actual observation room of the control centre for these space missions, which included the first landing on the moon and the infamous Apollo13 recovery made famous by the recent film staring Tom Hanks. Until the observation room became part of NASA´s history, only the invited were allowed to attend ! Gene Roberts was the flight Director for most, if not all of the Apollo missions, and his wife made him a new waistcoast for each Apollo.
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Buzz Aldrin & Neil Armstrong looked identical to Space control on earth so one of them had to wear red arm bands.
<IMG SRC="http://pic4.picturetrail.com/VOL784/4062504/8448420/126922993.jpg" border="0" alt="Image Hosting by PictureTrail.com">
The cargo bay of a test space shuttle.
We spent all day here at the Museum and saw the training area and got to watch live a satellite link to the space station where we observed one of the 16 sunrises that the space station see in every 24 hour period (along with 16 sunsets).
<IMG SRC="http://pic4.picturetrail.com/VOL784/4062504/8448420/126923087.jpg" border="0" alt="Image Hosting by PictureTrail.com">
One of the 16 sun-rises seen from the Space station, the white you can see is part of the station itself.
It was hard to try and understand the history and how much was achieved in to little time.
Please forgive the quality of some of the photos, I´ve tried to select them for space interest as opposed to their quality.
In the evening after eating we headed for a bar where we had noticed a live band playing the previous evening. The place looked full so we though there might be another band on tonight as well. We were wrong, it was just a Texan disco. There was a cover to get in but as we entered a line dance song started. The dance floor immediately became packed. It was something to behold. The whole floor moved as one doing the same dance and movements at the same time. John didn’t know wether to be impressed or very scared as a whole entity could be controlled to move with no individuality! The music was ,as you would expect, county but the DJ had put a disco beat over the top of every song . Not good. So we left and called it time.
The next day was one of our weekly Admin days-these days we use to update this site, our washing and any shopping and/or ad-hoc maintenance. The bikes were now overdue their second 6000 service but we weren’t planning to do this until we’re back in Colorado in a fortnights time so we just did a partial oil change(just the oil which resides in the oil tank-about 2l) to stop the bikes from disintegrating!
The next day we had a lie in, which believe it or not, is rare !!, and headed for Galveston in the afternoon.
We were both were fed up with the amount of weight we’d been putting on with sitting on the bikes all day long and so went for a 10 min run on the beach in the morning before it got too hot. None-the-less, even at 07:45 it is still very warm. We both felt significantly better and clear headed for it and set off for some R&R on the beach after breakfast. Armed with our Spanish lessons, music and sun cream we hit the beach and both enjoyed the warmth and slow pace for a while. I went for a swim but the waves were high and were breaking quite a way out and so after about 10 mins returned to the beach. John was concerned about being in the sun for too long on the first day and retired to the room to catch up on some admin. I stay for the best part of the rest of the day and try for another swim-this time I was clobbered by a huge wave when swimming quite a way out. Ordinarily I wouldn’t have minded too much but am still tired and so took this as my warning signal to quit whilst I was ahead.
We had dinner in Landrys, a decent chain fish restaurant, The service was very poor and resulted us in getting our drinks free……………which we appreciated. The food was good.
The following morning we´re out again for another run first thing-it is warmer and harder but still felt good when we sat down to breakfast after showering. I didn’t fancy lying on the beach first thing and so backed-up our photo library so we could delete about 8/9 Gig to free up some seriously needed space on the laptop. John worked on his Spanish. Later we did a bit of shopping and had lunch in the Rainforest café where some animated gorillas and elephants “mounted” in a fairly impressive rainforest display would go through a process of whooping and trumpeting every so often, this “display” also included movements to accompany the sounds. Sounds tacky but the overall display, including a pretty impressive set of fish tanks was acceptably novel. In the evening we ate at Landrys again but had to pay for our drinks tonight……which was ok with us !
No run today. We set the bikes up, download the route to Austin onto the GPS. Before we left though we needed to re-insure our bikes as we´d overstayed our planned time in The States and so phoned through, however the re-application needed to be e-mailed so we did that and packed up.
It was very windy leaving (However, check our last entry for Mexico to see what windy really can be like !!). We went to the Post office to send some backed-up photos on CD’s home, along with some gifts for Nephews & nieces. I had to complete a cutoms form for each item we sent declaring the value etc of each and this took a while.
Not long after the GPS goes bezerk, telling me to turn at the same point for three different roads & then to follow one long 186 mile run to Austin. Some thing was not right !! We stopped for lunch and checked to see if the insurance was sorted out only to learn that we weren’t covered !!!, so we had to wait for about an hour whilst it was sorted out. Meanwhile, we were trying to re-download the maps onto the 2610(GPS unit) as it didn’t think it had them-unfortunately, the laptop was no longer recognising the 2610 as a unit and therefore we had to abandon that. As we approached Austin, the map sprang back into life albeit that the map moved about on the screen, but it proved sufficient enough to get us to a La quienta(normally moderately priced Motel chain), our hopefully cheap accomodation for the night…..but not $106 +TAX.
We went into town and had a really good dinner as Dan Mclusckies, followed by a band in “Friends”, which initially sounded good until I realised that basically all their songs were the same apart from the beginning, and just used as an excuse for loads of longs blues solo’s. John wasn’t feeling too grand so we called it a night and headed back to the motel.
I Slept badly last night as there had a pretty big domestic dispute next door which sounded like they´d called in The Partrdige Family to help out,...... which went on nearly all night. We only just made breakfast too ! And then there was a short power cut.
Finally we get going and see loads more cotton fields than in Alabama. It was sunny with clear blue skies and clear roads but the scenery was pretty boring. We had decided on Anson as destination as it looked like there might be somewhere to stay and eat. On our first run through the town it looked a bit like a ghost town. We came back though and found a side turning which had a Motel, The Morning Star, which looked clean enough so we took it. We went for a run in shorts past the "Sirloin" restaurant on a fairly cold evening and attracted the attention of some of the staff, who remembered us when we went in for dinner later. We watched The Blues Bros, and a very badly edited version of The National Lampoons Animal house and went to sleep.
The next day we set off to Amerillo........ha ha..........I can hear your joke attempts from here !!! ... It is actually home to one of the remaining sections of Route 66.
Again the weather was great, blue skies, sun and cear roads but pretty straight and boring until we got to Canyon, just outside Amarillo. Canyon was fairly big and worth a stop, something John and I don’t seem to allow ourselves a lot of! Saw a few variety of Cactus, snacked on a banana and headed into Amarillo. Amarillo was described in our guide book as a truck stop-we don’t often agree with the book BUT it was a cross between a truck stop and a high-rise city tower blocks. Trying to find anywhere off of the I40 was a real problem-the I40 was too busy to consider sleeping by-Fortunately we found a Micromotel which was far enough away for the sound of the interstate to be minimal.
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Canyon, just outside of Amarillo.
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Another shot of Canyon.
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One of our first Cactus sightings !
The following morning we slipped into our Saturday routine pretty quickly now. John was on his web updates whilst I replaced the fuse for the heated clothing-unfortunately it is placed beneath the faux-tank so the tank bag/seat etc has to come off to grant access, but the temp was starting to drop and this was not an option I wished to put off.
We went for a run after doing our admin and settled on a evening bar/diner, called Mulberrys. Food and beer was good-live act wasn’t. Singer and bongo player were too into themselves, even more than Daniel Bedingfield. Still, the general atmoshere was good and we enjoyed the night.
<IMG SRC="http://pic4.picturetrail.com/VOL784/4062504/8448420/126922921.jpg" border="0" alt="Image Hosting by PictureTrail.com">
The one and only...the original.
<IMG SRC="http://pic4.picturetrail.com/VOL784/4062504/8448420/126923167.jpg" border="0" alt="Image Hosting by PictureTrail.com">
Further proof....if you needed it !!
<IMG SRC="http://pic4.picturetrail.com/VOL784/4062504/8448420/126922882.jpg" border="0" alt="Image Hosting by PictureTrail.com">
The road forming part of the old route......not quite Abbey Road........
We left Amarillo to spend the next few days travelling to meet up with Gary and Kent again in Fort Collins. The journey for the northern part of Texas returned to being very flat and very boring again. The road was littered with dead skunks and the accompanying smell was gross. Even in flat pack form they smell foul. I even saw a dead cow lying by the side of the road which had probably ben hit by a truck !
The next day we headed for Denver as we were ahead of schedule so planned to spend the afternoon and evening there. The morning went well and covered the first 100 miles in about 1hr 40.......so we stopped for a longish lunch then got ready to head off. This is when the problems started. John´s bike alarm, which had been playing up resetting, would not reset and remained on. In the past leaving it for a while it seemed to sort itself out and John had planned to sort it out properly when we reached Fort Collins. Three hours later......still no joy, and so we had to stay overnight in the same place we had an early lunch. Fortunately, when the problem initially started he´d downloaded the reset documents so we pushed the bike with the alarm blaring all the way to the motel some 200m away. The seat was off in no time and the alarm still going 19 to the dozen whilst he tried to unscrew the securing screws to get inside to do the reset ...... when he found out they had a non-standard hex head. Given the thought of staying where we were for another day and the alarm going off at any hint of a vibration, there was no option but to hacksaw off the corners with the fixing screws. This done, the alarm was reset in accordance with the instructions and we had to sit and wait 6 hrs whilst the system de-charges(overnight, so more of a lay really). The next morning it was re-assembled but to no avail as the alarm still wouldn´t reset. Datatool in the UK were called and the tech support guy talked John through a few options before declaring that there was a fault with the unit and told him how to by-pass the alarm.
This meant we were able to move off and we headed straight to our friends in Fort Collins (Gary, Jill, Kent and Carol) and arrived late afternoon at Gary and Jill‘s with a BMW thanksgiving cake, something we´d prepared earlier !!
Mike.
The Texas Star.
Houston was our first real stop in Texas and home to the centre where all the Apollo space launches were controlled up until the mid 1980´s. The astronauts are still trained there for the space shuttle. It was great to go into the actual observation room of the control centre for these space missions, which included the first landing on the moon and the infamous Apollo13 recovery made famous by the recent film staring Tom Hanks. Until the observation room became part of NASA´s history, only the invited were allowed to attend ! Gene Roberts was the flight Director for most, if not all of the Apollo missions, and his wife made him a new waistcoast for each Apollo.
<IMG SRC="http://pic4.picturetrail.com/VOL784/4062504/8448420/126923042.jpg" border="0" alt="Image Hosting by PictureTrail.com">
Buzz Aldrin & Neil Armstrong looked identical to Space control on earth so one of them had to wear red arm bands.
<IMG SRC="http://pic4.picturetrail.com/VOL784/4062504/8448420/126922993.jpg" border="0" alt="Image Hosting by PictureTrail.com">
The cargo bay of a test space shuttle.
We spent all day here at the Museum and saw the training area and got to watch live a satellite link to the space station where we observed one of the 16 sunrises that the space station see in every 24 hour period (along with 16 sunsets).
<IMG SRC="http://pic4.picturetrail.com/VOL784/4062504/8448420/126923087.jpg" border="0" alt="Image Hosting by PictureTrail.com">
One of the 16 sun-rises seen from the Space station, the white you can see is part of the station itself.
It was hard to try and understand the history and how much was achieved in to little time.
Please forgive the quality of some of the photos, I´ve tried to select them for space interest as opposed to their quality.
In the evening after eating we headed for a bar where we had noticed a live band playing the previous evening. The place looked full so we though there might be another band on tonight as well. We were wrong, it was just a Texan disco. There was a cover to get in but as we entered a line dance song started. The dance floor immediately became packed. It was something to behold. The whole floor moved as one doing the same dance and movements at the same time. John didn’t know wether to be impressed or very scared as a whole entity could be controlled to move with no individuality! The music was ,as you would expect, county but the DJ had put a disco beat over the top of every song . Not good. So we left and called it time.
The next day was one of our weekly Admin days-these days we use to update this site, our washing and any shopping and/or ad-hoc maintenance. The bikes were now overdue their second 6000 service but we weren’t planning to do this until we’re back in Colorado in a fortnights time so we just did a partial oil change(just the oil which resides in the oil tank-about 2l) to stop the bikes from disintegrating!
The next day we had a lie in, which believe it or not, is rare !!, and headed for Galveston in the afternoon.
We were both were fed up with the amount of weight we’d been putting on with sitting on the bikes all day long and so went for a 10 min run on the beach in the morning before it got too hot. None-the-less, even at 07:45 it is still very warm. We both felt significantly better and clear headed for it and set off for some R&R on the beach after breakfast. Armed with our Spanish lessons, music and sun cream we hit the beach and both enjoyed the warmth and slow pace for a while. I went for a swim but the waves were high and were breaking quite a way out and so after about 10 mins returned to the beach. John was concerned about being in the sun for too long on the first day and retired to the room to catch up on some admin. I stay for the best part of the rest of the day and try for another swim-this time I was clobbered by a huge wave when swimming quite a way out. Ordinarily I wouldn’t have minded too much but am still tired and so took this as my warning signal to quit whilst I was ahead.
We had dinner in Landrys, a decent chain fish restaurant, The service was very poor and resulted us in getting our drinks free……………which we appreciated. The food was good.
The following morning we´re out again for another run first thing-it is warmer and harder but still felt good when we sat down to breakfast after showering. I didn’t fancy lying on the beach first thing and so backed-up our photo library so we could delete about 8/9 Gig to free up some seriously needed space on the laptop. John worked on his Spanish. Later we did a bit of shopping and had lunch in the Rainforest café where some animated gorillas and elephants “mounted” in a fairly impressive rainforest display would go through a process of whooping and trumpeting every so often, this “display” also included movements to accompany the sounds. Sounds tacky but the overall display, including a pretty impressive set of fish tanks was acceptably novel. In the evening we ate at Landrys again but had to pay for our drinks tonight……which was ok with us !
No run today. We set the bikes up, download the route to Austin onto the GPS. Before we left though we needed to re-insure our bikes as we´d overstayed our planned time in The States and so phoned through, however the re-application needed to be e-mailed so we did that and packed up.
It was very windy leaving (However, check our last entry for Mexico to see what windy really can be like !!). We went to the Post office to send some backed-up photos on CD’s home, along with some gifts for Nephews & nieces. I had to complete a cutoms form for each item we sent declaring the value etc of each and this took a while.
Not long after the GPS goes bezerk, telling me to turn at the same point for three different roads & then to follow one long 186 mile run to Austin. Some thing was not right !! We stopped for lunch and checked to see if the insurance was sorted out only to learn that we weren’t covered !!!, so we had to wait for about an hour whilst it was sorted out. Meanwhile, we were trying to re-download the maps onto the 2610(GPS unit) as it didn’t think it had them-unfortunately, the laptop was no longer recognising the 2610 as a unit and therefore we had to abandon that. As we approached Austin, the map sprang back into life albeit that the map moved about on the screen, but it proved sufficient enough to get us to a La quienta(normally moderately priced Motel chain), our hopefully cheap accomodation for the night…..but not $106 +TAX.
We went into town and had a really good dinner as Dan Mclusckies, followed by a band in “Friends”, which initially sounded good until I realised that basically all their songs were the same apart from the beginning, and just used as an excuse for loads of longs blues solo’s. John wasn’t feeling too grand so we called it a night and headed back to the motel.
I Slept badly last night as there had a pretty big domestic dispute next door which sounded like they´d called in The Partrdige Family to help out,...... which went on nearly all night. We only just made breakfast too ! And then there was a short power cut.
Finally we get going and see loads more cotton fields than in Alabama. It was sunny with clear blue skies and clear roads but the scenery was pretty boring. We had decided on Anson as destination as it looked like there might be somewhere to stay and eat. On our first run through the town it looked a bit like a ghost town. We came back though and found a side turning which had a Motel, The Morning Star, which looked clean enough so we took it. We went for a run in shorts past the "Sirloin" restaurant on a fairly cold evening and attracted the attention of some of the staff, who remembered us when we went in for dinner later. We watched The Blues Bros, and a very badly edited version of The National Lampoons Animal house and went to sleep.
The next day we set off to Amerillo........ha ha..........I can hear your joke attempts from here !!! ... It is actually home to one of the remaining sections of Route 66.
Again the weather was great, blue skies, sun and cear roads but pretty straight and boring until we got to Canyon, just outside Amarillo. Canyon was fairly big and worth a stop, something John and I don’t seem to allow ourselves a lot of! Saw a few variety of Cactus, snacked on a banana and headed into Amarillo. Amarillo was described in our guide book as a truck stop-we don’t often agree with the book BUT it was a cross between a truck stop and a high-rise city tower blocks. Trying to find anywhere off of the I40 was a real problem-the I40 was too busy to consider sleeping by-Fortunately we found a Micromotel which was far enough away for the sound of the interstate to be minimal.
<IMG SRC="http://pic4.picturetrail.com/VOL784/4062504/8448420/126922764.jpg" border="0" alt="Image Hosting by PictureTrail.com">
Canyon, just outside of Amarillo.
<IMG SRC="http://pic4.picturetrail.com/VOL784/4062504/8448420/126922712.jpg" border="0" alt="Image Hosting by PictureTrail.com">
Another shot of Canyon.
<IMG SRC="http://pic4.picturetrail.com/VOL784/4062504/8448420/126927576.jpg" border="0" alt="Image Hosting by PictureTrail.com">
One of our first Cactus sightings !
The following morning we slipped into our Saturday routine pretty quickly now. John was on his web updates whilst I replaced the fuse for the heated clothing-unfortunately it is placed beneath the faux-tank so the tank bag/seat etc has to come off to grant access, but the temp was starting to drop and this was not an option I wished to put off.
We went for a run after doing our admin and settled on a evening bar/diner, called Mulberrys. Food and beer was good-live act wasn’t. Singer and bongo player were too into themselves, even more than Daniel Bedingfield. Still, the general atmoshere was good and we enjoyed the night.
<IMG SRC="http://pic4.picturetrail.com/VOL784/4062504/8448420/126922921.jpg" border="0" alt="Image Hosting by PictureTrail.com">
The one and only...the original.
<IMG SRC="http://pic4.picturetrail.com/VOL784/4062504/8448420/126923167.jpg" border="0" alt="Image Hosting by PictureTrail.com">
Further proof....if you needed it !!
<IMG SRC="http://pic4.picturetrail.com/VOL784/4062504/8448420/126922882.jpg" border="0" alt="Image Hosting by PictureTrail.com">
The road forming part of the old route......not quite Abbey Road........
We left Amarillo to spend the next few days travelling to meet up with Gary and Kent again in Fort Collins. The journey for the northern part of Texas returned to being very flat and very boring again. The road was littered with dead skunks and the accompanying smell was gross. Even in flat pack form they smell foul. I even saw a dead cow lying by the side of the road which had probably ben hit by a truck !
The next day we headed for Denver as we were ahead of schedule so planned to spend the afternoon and evening there. The morning went well and covered the first 100 miles in about 1hr 40.......so we stopped for a longish lunch then got ready to head off. This is when the problems started. John´s bike alarm, which had been playing up resetting, would not reset and remained on. In the past leaving it for a while it seemed to sort itself out and John had planned to sort it out properly when we reached Fort Collins. Three hours later......still no joy, and so we had to stay overnight in the same place we had an early lunch. Fortunately, when the problem initially started he´d downloaded the reset documents so we pushed the bike with the alarm blaring all the way to the motel some 200m away. The seat was off in no time and the alarm still going 19 to the dozen whilst he tried to unscrew the securing screws to get inside to do the reset ...... when he found out they had a non-standard hex head. Given the thought of staying where we were for another day and the alarm going off at any hint of a vibration, there was no option but to hacksaw off the corners with the fixing screws. This done, the alarm was reset in accordance with the instructions and we had to sit and wait 6 hrs whilst the system de-charges(overnight, so more of a lay really). The next morning it was re-assembled but to no avail as the alarm still wouldn´t reset. Datatool in the UK were called and the tech support guy talked John through a few options before declaring that there was a fault with the unit and told him how to by-pass the alarm.
This meant we were able to move off and we headed straight to our friends in Fort Collins (Gary, Jill, Kent and Carol) and arrived late afternoon at Gary and Jill‘s with a BMW thanksgiving cake, something we´d prepared earlier !!
Mike.
