I hate to fly. But I like traveling - the actual act of traveling, the main carriage, I enjoy that. The people in their business suits, the luggage, the rush-rush-rush of everybody around me, the feeling that all normalcy is suspended, so I can run into one of the little airport shops and buy a candy bar and five magazines, and who cares? I love the men and women who still get all dolled up in their best, as though we are all living in some fabulous 1950s movie musical. Airports are also a prime place for excellent people-watching, and I am a passionate people-watcher.
So powerful is this rush of anticipatory adrenaline, I usually forget about the fear-of-flying thing until I’m actually sitting in the plane and hearing the engines roar to life. It’s the take-off and landing I can’t stand; during the stable part of the flight, I can actually bear to open the window and admire the view, the quilt of the land below, the soft curls of the clouds, city lights like jewels on black silk. But during the bumpy parts, hopefully I’m in a window seat, so I can pull down the blind to spare myself the traumatizing sight of the plane plummeting uncontrollably toward the earth. As Patton Oswalt so eloquently put it, flying is spitting in god’s face. It just shouldn’t be happening, this metal object filled with people should not be floating above the ground. I can’t get over it.
Anyway, where all this was leading before I jumped the rails was that I went to Texas this weekend. Glenn was out there for some training, and he flew me out to see Austin and San Antonio with him over the weekend. His brother, who is a chef at a gay restaurant (seriously), lives out there with his wife and two kids, so I met part of the family, too. On Friday night, we spent the early evening standing on the Congress Avenue Bridge, waiting for the 1.5 million bats that nest underneath it, the largest urban bat colony in North America, to fly out for the night. That was pretty spectacular - there were boat tours sailing back and forth beneath the bridge shining red lights up at them so you could see them better, and sometimes when the light hit just right, it was like watching thousands of autumn leaves falling at once. It was very cool to see them zip around after insects and hear them clicking away with their echolocation.
After it got too dark to really see any more bats, we were planning to visit Glenn’s brother Mark’s restaurant, M2, but Glenn made a very Glenn suggestion that we go to another restaurant first for a sort of pre-meal meal. I readily agreed, given that all I’d eaten in the last few hours was a candy bar, and we got jalapeno cheddar sausage kolaches and drinks at the Shiner Saloon. I really regretted our visit to the Saloon later on, though, when we got to M2 and Glenn’s brother began sending out bowl after bowl of absolutely delicious free food and I could hardly touch it. The antelope skewers over the grilled watermelon were my favorite - it is a testament to Mark’s skill and talent that I ate the watermelon and liked it. No eel bacon, though – it wasn’t a very popular item and they pulled it from the menu. In fact, the whole restaurant isn’t doing too well, and Mark’s expecting it to go under very soon; we were actually worried that it would close before I even flew into Austin. I was concerned about what Mark was going to do, but he’s already got another job lined up, and he really seems to loathe the place anyway.
Saturday morning we checked out of our hotel and went to meet Mark’s family; I played Lego Harry Potter with his little boy while Glenn and Mark caught up, and then Glenn and I drove the 90 minutes to San Antonio and the Alamo. The best thing I learned at the Alamo was that Phil Collins is a huge Alamo freak; he owns the largest collection of Alamo artifacts in the world, which he keeps in the basement of his house in Switzerland. His collection includes the world’s largest Alamo diorama, which is housed in a little antiques shop across the street from the Alamo itself. The shop owner says that he comes to visit it occasionally, and that he was just there the previous Friday. The story is that he used to love watching Davey Crockett on TV as a kid and now he’s incredibly passionate about it. My favorite thing about historical sites is seeing all the little domestic items they used, the sugar pots and the bits of china and the silverware; I like the idea of something created entirely by hand, before mass-produced became the norm, totally unique and one-of-a-kind.
Mark had recommended the Tower of the Americas as another cool thing to see in San Antonio, so after the Alamo, Glenn and I Riverwalked over to it. We saw a wedding and a quinceanera on the way! I think the view from the top of the Tower would’ve been more spectacular at night than during the afternoon, but the Riverwalk was pretty fun. It’s so hot in Texas, it was nice to be able to splash the water on my chest, no matter how gross it was. That night we tried to find the Bracken Bat Cave, home to more than twenty million bats, but we drove in circles forever and never saw a hair of any bat swarm, so we just went home. Neither of us was feeling too well by that point anyway; I’d had a headache all day and I was getting hungry, and Glenn said he felt “funny.”
Sunday morning saw us both feeling refreshed and healthy, so we went to the Natural Bridge Caverns near San Antonio.
I think Glenn may have preferred the Alamo, history buff that he is, but this was definitely my favorite part. Unfortunately, my camera ran out of batteries as soon as we entered the coolest parts of the cavern. I was being injudicious with my photographs, though. I don’t take a lot of pictures on my hikes, since a tree’s a tree, a rock’s a rock, and mountains are actually really ugly up close, but I’ve never seen anything like these caves! I was taking pictures like, well, like Glenn. However, I continue to be the world’s worst photographer; below is what I could scavenge from my memory card full of blurry photos with bits of my fingers and hair in them. These sculptures were really unbelievable, and the pictures don’t do them any justice.
All of the formations had this low waxy sheen to them. I was dying to touch them, but you’re not allowed. They did pass around some chunks at the end, but they were dirty and rough from being handled.
We did a couple tours of two different caverns; the Natural Bridge Caverns are what’s known as commercial caves, meaning they’ve been thoroughly explored and set up with staircases and hallways so us normals can go through them. Going up and down the stairs made me really feel like I was in shape, since everybody else was huffing and puffing around me – yay for being used to thin air! Then it was back to Austin for another brief visit with Mark and on to the airport to face the flight back home. It was so nice to breathe in Colorado again; breathing in Texas made me feel like a fish.
It was such a fun weekend that I’m really looking forward to Utah in a week.
So powerful is this rush of anticipatory adrenaline, I usually forget about the fear-of-flying thing until I’m actually sitting in the plane and hearing the engines roar to life. It’s the take-off and landing I can’t stand; during the stable part of the flight, I can actually bear to open the window and admire the view, the quilt of the land below, the soft curls of the clouds, city lights like jewels on black silk. But during the bumpy parts, hopefully I’m in a window seat, so I can pull down the blind to spare myself the traumatizing sight of the plane plummeting uncontrollably toward the earth. As Patton Oswalt so eloquently put it, flying is spitting in god’s face. It just shouldn’t be happening, this metal object filled with people should not be floating above the ground. I can’t get over it.
Anyway, where all this was leading before I jumped the rails was that I went to Texas this weekend. Glenn was out there for some training, and he flew me out to see Austin and San Antonio with him over the weekend. His brother, who is a chef at a gay restaurant (seriously), lives out there with his wife and two kids, so I met part of the family, too. On Friday night, we spent the early evening standing on the Congress Avenue Bridge, waiting for the 1.5 million bats that nest underneath it, the largest urban bat colony in North America, to fly out for the night. That was pretty spectacular - there were boat tours sailing back and forth beneath the bridge shining red lights up at them so you could see them better, and sometimes when the light hit just right, it was like watching thousands of autumn leaves falling at once. It was very cool to see them zip around after insects and hear them clicking away with their echolocation.
After it got too dark to really see any more bats, we were planning to visit Glenn’s brother Mark’s restaurant, M2, but Glenn made a very Glenn suggestion that we go to another restaurant first for a sort of pre-meal meal. I readily agreed, given that all I’d eaten in the last few hours was a candy bar, and we got jalapeno cheddar sausage kolaches and drinks at the Shiner Saloon. I really regretted our visit to the Saloon later on, though, when we got to M2 and Glenn’s brother began sending out bowl after bowl of absolutely delicious free food and I could hardly touch it. The antelope skewers over the grilled watermelon were my favorite - it is a testament to Mark’s skill and talent that I ate the watermelon and liked it. No eel bacon, though – it wasn’t a very popular item and they pulled it from the menu. In fact, the whole restaurant isn’t doing too well, and Mark’s expecting it to go under very soon; we were actually worried that it would close before I even flew into Austin. I was concerned about what Mark was going to do, but he’s already got another job lined up, and he really seems to loathe the place anyway.
Saturday morning we checked out of our hotel and went to meet Mark’s family; I played Lego Harry Potter with his little boy while Glenn and Mark caught up, and then Glenn and I drove the 90 minutes to San Antonio and the Alamo. The best thing I learned at the Alamo was that Phil Collins is a huge Alamo freak; he owns the largest collection of Alamo artifacts in the world, which he keeps in the basement of his house in Switzerland. His collection includes the world’s largest Alamo diorama, which is housed in a little antiques shop across the street from the Alamo itself. The shop owner says that he comes to visit it occasionally, and that he was just there the previous Friday. The story is that he used to love watching Davey Crockett on TV as a kid and now he’s incredibly passionate about it. My favorite thing about historical sites is seeing all the little domestic items they used, the sugar pots and the bits of china and the silverware; I like the idea of something created entirely by hand, before mass-produced became the norm, totally unique and one-of-a-kind.
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| "If this siege continues, I may have to surrender sober." - Davey Crockett |
Sunday morning saw us both feeling refreshed and healthy, so we went to the Natural Bridge Caverns near San Antonio.
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| The natural bridge of Natural Bridge Caverns |
We did a couple tours of two different caverns; the Natural Bridge Caverns are what’s known as commercial caves, meaning they’ve been thoroughly explored and set up with staircases and hallways so us normals can go through them. Going up and down the stairs made me really feel like I was in shape, since everybody else was huffing and puffing around me – yay for being used to thin air! Then it was back to Austin for another brief visit with Mark and on to the airport to face the flight back home. It was so nice to breathe in Colorado again; breathing in Texas made me feel like a fish.
It was such a fun weekend that I’m really looking forward to Utah in a week.
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