Did you happen to catch the Buccaneers-Jets game a couple of weeks ago? The one where Brady marched down the field 93 yards with two minutes remaining to throw the winning touchdown pass with 15 seconds remaining?
You ain’t seen nuthin’. It’s 2:02 left in the third period. Carter’s Flames have come back from a 2 – 4 deficit to tie the game. Carter, a defenseman, gets the puck at the blue line on the left and sends a mighty blow toward the net. His buddy, Frankie, tips it in for the winning score. It’s a play Carter and Frankie practice whenever they get a chance and it paid off this time for sure. Carter gets credit for a score; Frankie gets the assist. Here’s a link to the highlight reel https://judyrick.zenfolio.com/jeffs_family/h347b8a59#h347b8a59 . Use password Grandkids if you’re asked.
Maybe you have to be his grandparent to get it, but Carter’s play is something we’ll never forget.
The previous night we attended Esme’s hockey game (#9 in white in the picture). No heroics but a great game. They won! We have three more Carter games to attend before we leave town.
On Martin Luther King Day – Monday – all three grandkids were off from school, so we took Carter down to Melrose and spent the day with Griffin and Esme. We had a waffle breakfast, walked the three grand-dogs, and played in the park and then went to see a movie – American Underdog – the Kurt Warner Story. Recommended for those looking for football action combined with a three-hanky tearjerker. Griffin loved the football action but hid his eyes for the kissing scenes. We drove back to Manchester with Carter so he could attend his 8:30 PM hockey practice.
So that, for those of you who think we’re crazy for going to New England in January, is why we do what we do. There’s enough warmth up here to counter the winter weather, no questions asked.
Who would have pictured Texas as a place for caves? Not me. But sure enough, we spent 90 minutes underground in the Longhorn State Park cave. Turns out Texas was covered by a sea 500 million years ago, which faulted 250 million years ago and then 1 to 2 million years ago acidic water started to flow through the faults, resulting in the caverns we explored today. The currents created some interesting and beautiful sculptures.
Since then, humans have made use of the cavern in a number of ways. Comanche Indians used it as a council chamber (but daylight only; they didn’t like the dark). Confederate soldiers used it to store ammunition and gun powder. A rancher’s daughter was kidnapped by Comanche braves; three US soldiers lowered themselves into the cavern and rescued her and yes, she married one of the soldiers. The cavern was a venue for dancing in the 1920s, complete with live band. During the depression, Civilian Conservation Core workers hollowed out more of the cave, installed cement floors and railways to create the environment we enjoyed today.
Afterwards we went to the Texas Hill Country Olive Company for olive oil tasting and lunch. Next, a visit to Chip and Jeanne’s youngest son, Scott, at his office where he provides deep muscle therapies to his patients. Finally, dinner outside (under a heater) with Jeanne and Chip.
It was an interesting and enjoyable day. One of the best features was driving through what is the beginning of Texas hill country.
We charged the Tesla on the way to our airport hotel. The alarm is set for 4:30 and we catch the 7:00 AM flight to Boston. Sunday, we head to Manchester to be with Carter while his dad travels to Kathmandu.
We won’t be doing more traveling until we fly back to Austin on January 24 so don’t expect more postings until the 25th. See you then!
First it was cotton and sugar plantations in Louisiana and Mississippi, then the Civil War in Vicksburg, the Civil Rights Museum and Graceland and Elvis in Memphis. Today, the Lyndon Baines Johnson Museum here in Austin. Taken together, we’ve had a pretty good review of American history from the mid 19th through the mid 20th centuries. They’re all interconnected, culturally, intellectually, economically, socially and politically. What MLK and LBJ addressed flowed directly from what went on in antebellum America and the rock-n-roll era of Elvis.
The LBJ museum at the University of Texas, co-located with the LBJ School of Public Affairs, is a ten-story building that houses a fine museum detailing LBJ’s life and political career plus the library containing the papers and records of his administration. The unexpected bonus in the museum is a detailed treatment of Lady Bird, LBJ’s wife and the First Lady of his administration.
Lady Bird was a significant force in her husband’s career. She funded his early campaigns for the US House and Senate, drawing money from an inheritance from her mother who died when Lady Bird was five years old. She ran his political office while LBJ served in the Navy during WWII and during his convalescence following his heart attack in 1955. As First Lady, she championed programs such as the Highway Beautification Act and Head Start and her husband’s various Great Society programs. She actively campaigned on her own for her husband and the 1960 Kennedy/Johnson ticket.
A successful businesswoman, she purchased and operated radio and TV stations in Texas and became the first lady to become a millionaire on her own initiative.
LBJ, of course, became president upon the assassination of JFK in 1963 and was elected president in his own right in 1964 with Walter Mondale as his vice president. His legislative record is as long as your arm, the key points being part of his Great Society initiative, including Medicare, Voting Rights and Civil Rights legislation. As the exhibits and especially the phone recordings LBJ made during his presidency show, he was both a skilled politician able to work across the aisle and a strong arm twister able to convince people to do what they didn’t want to do.
In one conversation LBJ convinced Senator Richard Russell, a democrat from Georgia, to serve on the Warren Commission formed to investigate the assassination of JFK. Russell said he disliked Earl Warren personally and would under no circumstances work with him. LBJ said, “You’ll do this for the good of the country. Your personal likes and dislikes don’t matter; you’ll do it for the country.” Russell sputtered but LBJ prevailed. Russell served.
His eventual political downfall came as we know over the buildup in Viet Nam and his inability to achieve a satisfactory solution. He decided not to run for reelection in 1968 due to his failing popularity and his belief that his heart condition would not permit him to fulfill his full term. In fact, he died of heart attacks at age 64 in 1973.
After almost four hours in the museum, we retired to a nearby barbeque spot, Micklethwait Craft Meats, for lunch. A guy in the parking lot told us it is the best barbeque place in Austin and we found nothing to disprove his claim. Beef ribs, beef brisket and pork ribs were the main items, served from a food truck. Beer and wine are available at a co-located store. Seating is on picnic tables under a sun shield. Temperatures were in the low 70s today so the meal was fulfilling. Actually, too fulfilling. They killed not only the fatted calf but its mother as well to feed the four of us.
The four of us included our friend Chip from Melrose and his son-in-law, Charlie, from Edina, MN. After lunch, we went to their Air BnB up in the hills north and west of downtown where Betsy, Charlie’s wife and Jeanne, Chip’s wife and almost-five-year-old daughter/granddaughter Penny joined us. We sat on the veranda overlooking the countryside with Lake Travis in the background. Drinks, cheese and chips followed by pizza completed our gastronomic overindulgence for the day. Penny took pizza orders as only a five-year-old can. We had great conversations with Betsy and Charlie, reminiscing over our time in Minneapolis back in the day.
Tomorrow we’re exploring caves. We’ll figure out what that means tomorrow.
When our Melrose friends Jeanne and Chip told us they had tickets to visit the LBJ Library here in Austin, we thought, “What a great idea! Let’s take it a step further and go to the GHW Bush (41) library in College Park. It’s on the way from Lafayette to Austin and, hey, Fair, Balanced and Unafraid, that’s us. Let’s cover both sides of the political spectrum.”
We get an A for strategy but an F for execution. But it all turned out just fine, as you’ll see.
The execution problem stemmed from a series of tactical blunders.
We (OK, I) picked a hotel that turned out to be 5 miles west of the supercharger site in Lafayette. That meant we had to backtrack to do the morning’s charge. Plus, we didn’t wake up until almost 8 AM, an hour later than planned. The coup de gras was what Judy calls advancing senility and I prefer to call highly-developed absent mindedness. Whatever, we arrived at the supercharger and walked to the nearby MacDonald’s for breakfast . . . without first plugging in the car. Another 20 minutes down the drain. So, about an hour from our next charging point it dawned on me that we wouldn’t reach the 41 Library until after the last (3:30 PM) ticket time. We scrambled for Plan B which, in the end, worked out just fine.
Upon crossing into Texas, we stopped at the Texas Welcome Center for a map and suggestions of what to see in Houston. The friendly fellow there suggested the San Jacino Monument, commemorating the Texas War of Independence from Mexico/Spain. We opted to bypass it in favor of downtown Houston and it’s good we did. The monument is located on the Houston Ship Canal amid innumerable petroleum and chemical processing plants.
He also recommended the Hermann Park and the Museum District, which we did visit. I’m sure there are some fine sections of Houston worthy of a tourist’s visit but, frankly, this wasn’t one of them. We didn’t have time to do a museum, which are supposed to be really fine. Instead we wandered around the streets and parks, admiring Houston’s skyscraper architecture, built with energy company money, that is quite impressive and worth a view.
We walked through Sam Houston Park which, despite its name, has as far as we could see absolutely nothing to do with Sam Houston. It’s a collection of late 18th and 19th century homes moved here and put on display. All the signage commemorates the people who put up the money to move and restore the buildings.
Sam Houston, for those of us who slept through that chapter in sophomore high school history, was a general in the Texas War of Independence, served as the first and third President of the Republic of Texas, was one of the first two senators from the State of Texas, was the sixth governor of Tennessee and the seventh governor of Texas. The guy couldn’t hold down a job to save his life.
But the visit to Houston was OK. Back in the early 1990s my business partner, Barrs Lewis, and I spent quite a bit of time in Houston doing work for our consulting client, Exxon. One thing led to another and that work was the cornerstone of Harmonic Systems, the business we grew and eventually sold to JC Penney, also located in Houston. JC Penny was in fact one of our first consulting clients. So I have a lot of memories centered on Houston.
I was able to reminisce and show Judy a little of what I remember about Houston, which wasn’t much. Not only is my memory of 30 years not quite razor sharp but even back then I spent virtually no time sightseeing: cab ride to the hotel, meetings and cab ride to the airport. But I found the Hyatt hotel and showed her Houston’s subterranean network, analogous to Minneapolis’s Skyway system. The underground stores were mostly closed so I missed the afternoon ice cream I/we had been looking forward to.
Then it was on the road headed for Austin, another almost three hours of driving. But our sightseeing wasn’t over yet. Judy discovered that the town of Hempstead, TX was just off US 290, our highway to Austin. We had to stop. We found the city hall and took pictures. We chatted with a clerk in the town office, introducing Judy Hempstead Rick. She was mildly amused but didn’t call out the mayor to present Judy with the keys to the city or anything.
The real score, however, came from our inquiry about ice cream in Hempstead. “Well, there’s Dairy Queen out by the highway, the clerk suggested.” Then another clerk yelled, “No, go to the Neveria (ice cream parlor) in the strip mall across the tracks.” What a great place! Row after row of ice cream flavors we’d never heard of before. A clean and bright place and a nice young gal who handed out samples and scooped our choices.
Moral of the story: planning is great but sometimes the best experiences come from wandering around to see what you might find.
So now we’re in Austin, arriving at our hotel about 9:00 PM after putting the feed bag on Elon’s horses and hitting the nearby Panera.
Notice I didn’t mention bodily functions once this time? All the stops went just fine, excepting the mental kerfuffle this morning.
Tomorrow we’re off the forementioned LBJ Library with Jeanne and Chip and then some good old fashioned Texas barbeque.
Our rule is that each day of the trip must include two hours or so of sightseeing. Yesterday it was the Florida capitol complex in Tallahassee. Judy’s going to provide some more detail about that excursion further on in this blog post.
Today we took a leisurely drive along the Gulf of Mexico coast from our hotel in Panama City Beach toward Pensacola. We left the shoreline drive about halfway to Pensacola due to a detour and decided enough was enough and hit the main roads on toward Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana. What we did fulfilled the two-hour sightseeing requirement, so all was well, schedule wise. And being traveling Ricks, schedule is everything. We schedule our goofing off time!
It turned out to be an interesting drive, mostly because the level of development is incredible. One high rise condo/hotel edifice after another. The hotels are built on a narrow strip of land between the coastal highway and the Gulf. Parking is provided, in many cases, in a two or three-level garage on the other side of the highway, accessed via a second-story pedestrian bridge. Our Hampton Inn was one of this sort: a very nice room with great ocean views.
We also passed through several interesting smaller developments, one with a quaint downtown and tree-lined avenues and another with tall structures marking the entrances to the development. The main drag is lined with royal palms; everything is painted white. Very classy, very pricey looking. The edifices looked to us like Hindu stupas so we named the place Stupaville. Who was it who said, “Stupa is as stupa does.” A movie line, perhaps?
We happened across a very nice little state park, Grayton Beach by name. It sports a smallish campground that even now, in 50-degree weather, was three fourths full of mostly hard-sided RVs full of, I’m sure, bargain hunting old retired folks just like us. There’s a good-sized lake with kayaking and canoeing. Lots of interesting hiking trails. The big draw is, of course, the shoreline. Pure white sand, shallow looking water and very interesting sand dunes blown up by winds from the Gulf. The wind was brisk leading to a chilly walk down to the beach.
Our overarching thought: What must this place be like next month and the rest of the Spring-time season when all these beds are filled with fun-seeking sun worshipers? Someone told us a 15-minute drive takes two hours in season. Just the rack after rack of rental bikes gives one pause.
From there it was pretty much I10 westbound with a detour to the north of New Orleans on I12 passing on the north side of Lake Pontchartrain. Baton Rouge was an hour or so further on (it took us a day by ship last November) and then on to Lafayette for our $60 Microtel hotel. We rolled out of the Supercharger in Panama City at 8:30 and arrived here at 6 PM so that’s 9:30 elapsed time, including charging. Take away two hours of goofing off along the coast and our actual travel time was about seven hours, exactly per plan.
Yesterday I complained about lack of human conveniences at Supercharger sites. Well, I had great experiences at two of our three stops. Sorta. The third turned out to be an exercise in, well, exercising.
This morning we charged up at the Busy Bee Supercharger in Panama City. Nirvana! The Busy Bee is a regular gas station with a collocated 8-bay Supercharger. The convenience store is to die for. Tee shirts, boogie boards plus every fattening foodstuff known to modern man. Pee without guilt – they expect Supercharger folks to come in just like gas pump types.
Judy took the edge off, however, purchasing a couple of doo-dads that ran up a $50 tab. Pee-for-free lost its luster.
Next was Crest View FL. Another 8-bay arrangement with a co-located Panera and Starbucks. I snuck into the Panera and did my thing without raising the alarm. Judy chose the Starbucks for her creature comfort. She succumbed to pangs of guilt and left with a $6 pistachio latte (“I know you love pistachio, Jon, so we can share.”) We cleaned up the mess when one-fourth of the latte spilled on the center console but, Hey, a $6 guilt trip is better than $50.
Our third stop near Biloxi also sported a number of walkable establishments but none that seemed ideal. I instead opted for a discount gas joint across the street but, they must have seen me coming, no toilet facilities. Instead, we opted for the Lowes just before the I10 entrance ramp. “I know right where they put the restrooms in these Lowes, right up front. We’ll park on this end to minimize the walking.” Apparently, I was remembering a Home Depot. We got in our daily 10,000 steps searching for the darned toilets.
The charging stations have been fairly busy with cars coming and going and representing many different states, including one car from Hawaii.
No real surprises on the Full Self Driving front although I’m starting to lose my patience with its lane changing habits. It loves the left-hand lane, even with no cars in sight. I turn on the blinker and force it to its rightful spot in the universe. Late in the day I got too tired to put up with its antics and sent it straight to bed and did the driving myself.
Tomorrow it’s off to Austin with some sightseeing TBD. Tune in tomorrow for the details.
Here’s Judy’s write-up about Tallahassee:
During my childhood we had guests visit in Cincinnati who were visiting state capitols with the goal of vising all 50. I thought that sounded like fun and so I have been visiting as many as I can even though I do not plan on doing all 50. So here we were in Tallahassee, and it is even “our” state capital since we live in Florida.
This capitol building is very interesting. First, we visited the Old Capital Building that is the Florida Historic Capital Museum. This building was built in 1845 and enlarged several times. The current building is the 1902 version with a central rotunda and north and south corridors. The first floor housed the governor’s offices and the Supreme Court. The House of Representative and Senate chambers are on the second floor. It is a beautiful old building with awning on the windows. I had fun taking pictures and walking the corridors. The various rooms now house historical displays and portraits of past Florida politicians.
My love for these old buildings probably started in Augusta, Maine where my Great Uncle Bill Silsby was Speaker of the House and then in the Senate. I must have been 4 years old when I watched him “spank the table” and was very impressed. Both my mother and grandmother worked for the Maine legislature so that is where my interest started.
We walked out of the West Portico of the Old Capitol and were facing this extremely tall building that is the new capitol building This building was completed in 1978 and is 22 stories high. The top floor is an Observatory Deck which we visited. The view was of the very flat terrain that is much of Florida. As we toured the House and Senate on the 5th floor, we realized that the legislative session would be starting tomorrow. People were working on getting everything ready for the big day. The Governor’s Suite was on the Plaza level with the Rotunda. This building was very pretty with its oval Rotunda with a beautiful brass Great Seal of Florida in the center.
Just another aside, while visiting in the Governor’s office I learned that Florida has Boys and Girls State that is similar to the Youth in Government program we had in Minnesota. Both Jeff and Rebecca participated, and I was a volunteer. Jon joined me for a few years during Rebecca’s last year in YIG. These programs give the youth the opportunity to experience some of how government works especially the bills. Both Jeff and Rebeeca learned a great deal.
As we were leaving the governor’s office a woman came in and asked the receptionist if by any chance, she could have a few minutes to say Hi to Governor DeSantis. She said that they had worked together in Palm Beach government years ago. The receptionist, a true pro at her job, politely deflected the request, given that the governor was busy planning for the up-coming legislative session and running for President and who-knows-what.
