Tuesday, May 12, 2009

College Station, TX

Saturday, April 18– 9am, everyone is gone from the house except for a snoring Pauli. We were on the road before 10, headed to College Station to see my buddy Rick from the Bahamas two northwest of Houston. The radar looked the same as the day before, areas of very heavy rain producing hail and tornados. 4-8 inches of rain had fallen within the past two days in some places. We headed into the worst of it.

Rick and I went to a 3 week trip to the Bahamas for college credit in 2005. We studied the biology and geology of the Island. Rick has been back 3 times since and now attends Texas A&M for Oceanography. We came into his college town around Noon and met him at the lab building, "the one shaped like an air traffic control tower."

Over to his place, a small but not bad little house that he leases and shares just with his good friend Stella. He had a fold out couch set up for us in his computer room. We let his dog Kaya and Daze get acquainted in the backyard. With the recent rains and poor drainage there was as much as two inches of standing water, which promptly got splashed on the dogs and us.

The plan was to take the dogs to Lick Creek to get tired out, find some geocaches and explore a cool park. 100 feet down the first trail, Yaupon loop, and it became a stream. There had been so much rain that most of the park was flooded! Dazey and Kaya were running all through the flooded forest of short and shrubby trees. The first geocache we tried to find was no luck. The heavy cloud and tree cover made us lose good reception and we kept getting taking in circles into the dense brush. Dazey had disappeared into the woods so we headed back to the car. Dazey was waiting by the car and suddenly the clearing canopy and skies allowed good GPS signal. Back to the hike!

The second cache was a success. The Tupperware container was pretty beat, and soaking wet, but we had our first Texan cache! The third one we attempted was down a trail that was crossed by a raging flood. A usually dry wash was a torrent of water 60 feet across and at least a foot deep. The heavy rains created a new river and forced us to turn around.

We stopped at Albertson's, the Nar's Pantry, and then in Rick's refrigerator to find all the ingredients for dinner tonight. Stir Fry extravaganza; green peppers, onions, eggplant, tofu, mushrooms, jalapeños, and spices over pink beans, black beans, and rice.

After an amazing meal, we took a walk with Rick to his college to check on one of his experiments. In his laboratory, we loaded samples of salt water into a machine to check the levels of organic matter in the water. In a room filled with beakers, chemicals and expensive looking equipment, we

 On the way back he said he wanted to show us what College Station was all about. He wanted to take us bar hopping, checking out the spots in town and have a drink at each one and he insisted that he had the tab. The bars in College Station have a western feel to them (duh, you're in Texas) and outdoor back patios. They are all in a row along a strip, and behind them, people walk from one patio to the next. Pretty sweet night, had a shot and a few beers in a whole bunch of cool places.



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