Houston? We ain't got noooo problem

In looking at the weather last night it appeared that I was facing a formidable opponent in the Houston weather forecast. The prediction was for an 80% chance of rain and I wanted to tour the NASA Houston Space Center, then go, by way of Galveston (a quick reminder, it's on a peninsula in the Gulf of Mexico), and end up in Port Arthur. I gave some thought to just laying low for a day but Friday didn't look any better.

So I got up early, but not as early as I had planned. Between thunder and pounding rain storms 

my neighbor in the next room had not figured out that it was permissible to unload more than one item from his car in a single trip and, despite only approximately two minutes between trips, felt it necessary to lock his car each time he left it. That was a problem not because of the motel room door slamming shut each time he closed it, but because his car was one that tooted the horn each time the doors are locked. So it sounded like this:

Slam, beep, car door clunk, beep, beep, slam, clap of thunder, slam, beep, car door clunk, beep, beep, slam... for about two hours. The alarm went off at 7 a.m., but it was obviously still raining so I rolled over one more time and woke up at 7:45. 

It had stopped raining so I quickly packed and loaded up, checked out and went to Denny's for breakfast (yes, Lisa, even with a Waffle House literally next door). As I put the bike on the side stand it began to drizzle and as I hit the door the sky opened up.

I don't know why I keep thinking you can tell how hard it's raining from a still photo

If I can be allowed to paraphrase my good friend Colls, "It's better to be in a restaurant wishing you were on the road than to be on the road wishing you were in a restaurant!"

I downed my breakfast at a leisurely pace and, just as I was getting my check, the rain ceased. I went to my bike, wiped the seat off, and rode approximately 3 miles to the Houston Space Center, parked the bike and walked over to the ticket window. It was there that I found out two things - the ticket window didn't open for another 45 minutes and it was about to rain again - and hard!

I had a nice conversation with "Fast", a 62 year old biker from Sacremento who was there with his wife in their RV. They were planning a trip through Idaho for next year so I was able to alleviate his fears of not being able to find gas stations in the small towns of Idaho.

I was lucky and found lockers available for my helmet and jacket, so the tour was relaxed and hands free!

I took the audio tour, as I had done at Alcatraz and The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza. It started with a very well edited (I can't help myself) film that capsulized the entire space program in about 15 minutes. It was hosted by a flat JFK

JFK delivered his famous "We choose to do these things" speech from this very lecturn.

From there we filed into the first exhibits which talked, fittingly, about the early days of the program with the development of the Saturn, Mercury, Gemini and Apollo programs. I was surprised that I saw no reference to the Apollo 1 fire that killed three astronauts. Multiple mentions were made regarding the Challenger and Columbia disasters.

One of the most incredible displays was just outside the front doors. A full sized shuttle mounted on a NASA 905 transport plane, or Shuttle Carrier. The public was allowed inside both vehicles sp it was extremely impressive.

In addition the displays inside brought back many memories, things from the recesses of this old mind. Things that I had heard during my teens and beyond, and long since forgotten. It reminded me of how incredible space exploration had been as each mission provided a new list of "firsts". Unfortunately, as more and more missions were flown, we (the general public) became desensitized and it lost its luster. It wasn't until the Challenger, then again with the Columbia, that we were jarred back to the reality that this was still stretching the boundaries of what was possible.

I did find a picture of STS 118, with Barbara Morgan of McCall, Idaho. She was a back-up to Christa Mcauliffe for the first Teacher in Space flight on the Challenger flight in 1986. When the program was resurrected 20 years after the Challenger was lost shortly after launch, Barbara jumped at the chance to go back into training and, in 2007, became the first teacher to complete a shuttle mission. She is, I believe, a professor at Boise State today.

I can't possibly describe all that I saw there so let me end this part of my day with a quote

I took a break after seeing all that I had to see, sat down for a quick bite and pulled up the weather radar for Houston.

It looked something like this except the two storms were on each side of Houston. It appeared that, the way I saw it, there was a very narrow window of opportunity. If I left soon, I could ride south to Galveston Island, take the ferry to Boliver Peninsula, then ride north east "chasing" the coat tails of the first storm up the coast while staying just ahead of the second.

So that quickly became my Plan B. I went outside to find puddles everywhere and dark skies approaching from the west. I managed to take a couple of wrong turns (the girls were arguing about whether I should go north around the bay or south to Galveston to catch the ferry). As I entered the south of Galveston Island one of the girls was saying "stay on highway 87 for one and a half miles". The other was counting down "do a u-turn on fifty third st... Do a u-turn on fifty second st.... Do a u-turn...". I made it all the way to the twenties before she finally gave it up and decided the ferry would be okay.

The ferry allowed me on directly, no waiting this time, and because it was a longer ride than the ride I took in Corpus Christi, everyone was able to get out of their cars and mingle. I had a nice chat with a local from Crystal Beach (on the east side of the crossing) who owned an old Harley that he said he'd hesitate to take as far as Houston, let alone around the P48. Also met Lance Anaya, a Pastor from Galveston that was showing his cousin (?) who had just moved from Colorado, around. 

This crossing was complete with swarms of gulls and an escort of dolphins

By the time I disembarked on Boliver Peninsula it was time to move. The clouds coming in off the gulf seemed to be more threatening than the ones that were chasing me from behind. There is basically one highway that runs the length of the peninsula. All the side roads were flooded and highway 87 was wet but not flooded. I found that, no doubt because they've seen a storm or two, the road was crowned and running just above the center of the lane would keep me dry. I did, however, need to be careful with traffic running east to west so they didn't splash onto my side of the road. 

The road is somewhere over 25 miles, running true between the East Bay on the north and the ugly, angry, frothy Gulf on the south. The ditches were filled to overflowing the entire length. I did see a couple of things I would have liked to get a picture of but thought it best to keep moving (like the sight of the great Texas Frog Fest). The houses were mostly older but still large. Perhaps the area used to be a favorite get-away of well to do Houstonites. There was one house that still had three walls standing and portions of external wall material attached to each frame. I wondered how long it had stood like that since it was last inhabited.

On the north-east end of the peninsula the road suddenly turned north and became highway 124. At that point my attention also turned, from staying ahead of the storms to the west to not catching up with the storm ahead of me. I noticed that the trucks coming the other direction had headlights and windshield wipers on. The sky was black and I rolled into Port Arthur Texas less than a half hour after a heck of a storm had dumped on this East Texas town. The first store I stopped at still had paper and mats spread out on the floor to soak up the rain that everyone was tracking in. Now that's timing!

Tomorrow I will tour museums here in Port Arthur, Texas which, it turns out, is not only the birthplace of one of my all-time favorite singers, Janis Joplin, but also Babe Didrikson Zaharias, the greatest female athlete of all time.

Stay tuned!