dallas to los angeles

what a trip! i left fort worth on a shuttle to dallas at 7:05am, not big deal. in dallas i was informed that the bus i was going to ride had a flat that needed changing, no big deal. wrong! it turned to be a two hour delay deal. so that meant that we had little chance of making our connection in phoenix. although we didn't make our connection i did meet a real texas cowboy who rode the bus for a while until we dropped him in the middle of nowhere(where he requested). the trip all through texas was so beautiful and for most of it i had a whole seat to myself. i even saw a rainbow. just after the sun had disappeared over the horizon two lightning storms where visable. there were strikes in two distinct parts of the sky and there were close to four strikes every second. the two storms were far enough away so that from my bus i could see the storms in their entirety. it was an awesome spectical to see. by the time the sun had come up the next morning i was in phoenix. since we missed our connection the bus we were stuffed onto was a shedule that would arrive in los angeles two hours later than our already late shedule. weather or not any of that made any sence, we were going to be arriving four hours late. this delay tightened my shedule a wee bit. but it worked out in the end becuase the delay caused me to sit next to a woman who has lived in palm springs for the last 20 years and it just so happened that she was raised in morgantown and grateuated from wvu in the early 70s. so we conversed about touchdown city for a while and then i told her about my plans. well, she told me how it wasn't a very good plan mostly because of downtown weekday traffic in los angeles and the distances involved. so we formulated a new plan with a aaa travel map and a tour book i had been carrying.


along my trip i saw so many windturbines, it was an increadable sight. they seemed to go on for miles. i saw a few wind farms about an hour or so from dallas and quiet a bit of them after phoenix. driving on the outskirts of joshua tree national park was aslo extremely breathtaking.

bang

well we all slept in late on saturday after being up so late the night before, so we went to fuzzy's taco shop for a late lunch. we all enjoyed some fish tacos there and then went to briefly visit the school where mandy teaches. after that it was back to matt and mandy's home to decide what to do with the rest of the day. so after a few ideas being tossed around matt and i decided to go shoot some guns. we drove a short ways down to the winchester shooting gallery, that matt passes everyday on the way to work. now, matt had shot guns before but i had never really even held a gun. but i learned quickly. we shot two different guns. we started off with a mid-size glock 9mm. and i've got to tell you that sqeezing off that first shoot was a rush.
then we tried the smith & wesson .44, which was much more powerful. all in all it was quite an experience. i enjoyed the glock more because the .44 was a bit too powerful for me. after we finished shooting and left the range we perused the adjacent gun store, we were just looking. for the next hour or so i was real wound up over the whole shooting a gun for the first time thing. so to take my mind off of it matt treated me to a meal at chicken express where they had some of the best iced tea i've ever had. it was a good day.

culture in fort worth

well i've started my great american adventure. i began in charleston on thursday the 10th. at 3:00pm my bus left for fort worth, tx. a day and 5 hours later, i arrived and matt lester picked me up. from there he drove me past six flags and the new cowboy's football stadium being built. we went straight to the stockyards "district" where we had some great burgers and beer at the love shack. from there we headed over to the rodeo for some fun times. my favorite part was when the kids from the audience were asked to all come down and chase a calf for a ribbon on it's tail... hilarity ensued. buying tickets to the rodeo also afforded us free admission to the world's largest honky tonk, billy bob's... it was a bit much for me, but everyone else there seemed to be enjoying themselves. now i've never been to a honky tonk before so i don't have any frame of reference here but it was huge. if i had to pick out a theme from billy bob's it would be that the honky tonk loves texas and texas loves the honky tonk. so after all that me and matt drove to DFW airport to pick up mandy who was flying in from SFO and by this point i was pretty exhausted so i slept most of the way back to their home.

a fully operational battlestation

so i'm behind already, i should've posted this before i left for my Bob's American Adventure but i didn't. so here are a few pics of my recently completed death star II... it's awesome and my cats like it too. it's about 3 and a half thousand peices.

hello internet

welcome, it has come to my attention that there is an increasing demand by people to know what i'm doing. i realized this when, according to gmail, my trash folder would not accept anymore facebook invites. this is as close as you will get to "poking" me. stay tuned... this is where i will be chronicaling the happenings in my life and maybe ill post some links every once in a while too. in case you've been wondering how i've been filling my time lately, here's the story:

1. went to myrtle beach for a week starting father's day weekend
2. went to zak and grant's wedding
3. went to see indy 4... it was ok
   
4. went to see morgan spurlock show and dicuss his new film where in the world is osama
5. went to blues, brews & bbq @ UC (very over priced by the way)
6. went to a live taping of whad'ya know? (mp3 of the shows first hour on this page)
7. went to see wall*e, and it's awesome
   
8. finished my lego imperial star destroyer which inspired me to start my death star II