Dec. 31... New Year's Eve.... and we're fogged in solid here on the island.  Gary and I have had a supper of homemade hamburgers, homemade potato fries, brussel sprouts and carrots.  We'll toast the New Year in with a beer and a glass of tonic water later on tonight.  We may even stay up for the family fireworks at 9:30pm CST which we'll hear but not see on account of the fog.  So we're going to wish all of you a safe and fun New Year's Eve.  See you next year!

Dec. 27 ~ Indoor Kiting

The South Padre Island Indoor Kiters met this morning at the Convention Centre for three hours of flying fun.... Mary, Kris, Jimmy, Penny, Norma, Harry, Bill S & Bill D.  

What a colourful picture with all of the colours of those single line Wala kites... big and small.. and the two line kites Harry and Bill D were flying... and the big glider of Bill S's.  We had a lot of fun today... and we get to do it all again tomorrow... and then again next week!   If you haven't tried indoor kite flying, you should come out and see it, then try it.  You'll be buying your own kite and looking for a place to fly.

Christmas Eve 2011

Christmas Eve on the island... cold, windy, rainy... but snug in our condo.
Merry Christmas everyone... especially our grand babies Leah and Ali... and their parents!

December 24th

 'Tis a wild and woolly day on the gulf... windy, rainy, misty, cloudy... did I say windy?  But its not too cold, at least by Ontario standards of cold.  So its been a good day to stay in, read (moi),  do a bit of cooking and (gasp) laundry, watch football (not moi), and mess around with the camera and computer.

Even the birds are hunkering down in the trees today... almost looking like partridges in a pear tree except they're not partridges and that's no pear tree!


Merry Christmas Eve night all....  wishing you a wonderful little Christmas morning.

SPI Xmas Parade

Bill Doan (B&S KITES) and Bob in Bill's Festivus Car.

December 19th ~ The South Padre Island Christmas Parade  night.   We met up with friends at Padravitaville Restaurant on Padre Blvd. to watch the parade.

The parade started at 6:15 and lasted a few hours.  It was wonderful watching from the verandah of the restaurant with the temperatures in the 70s and warm southerly winds blowing... no snow, no ice, no cold toes.

Lots of folks came out and kids appeared from nowhere to scoop up the candy that was thrown from every float in the parade.

Norma and Penny... my antlers won't stay on!

Kris and Bobbi ... two pretty happy reindeer.

Mr. Gary even got into the antler action!

Friday... we've landed on the island, touched base with the B&S Kite Store, unpacked the truck, stowed everything away in the condo, gone to get groceries, put them all away, and then met up with Jimmy and Kris for a visit.  Weather is windy, overcast, misty/rainy, but warmer than home so I'm not complaining.  Its been a good drive down, and a good day to get settled in.  Yah... its all good.

 Gary's first bbq meal on this trip.... with a Shiner of course.

 I'm a little nervous about that deer behind me... hope that's not Bambi's kin on my plate!

If its Thursday, we must be in Corpus Christi... and by golly, so we are!  I am not happy with the hotel, Comfort Inn/Suites, but here we stay.  The internet is pretty weak which means I can't connect with the iPad to send myself the pictures we took at the BBQ place we found along Hwy 59 way south of Houston.  And speaking of Houston, that was a drive I plan on never making again!   Nothing bad happened, its just that I don't like the stress of going through cities with 8 lanes of traffic and fly-overs going every which way and the GPS telling me which one to take and the signs saying something else and so its just not going to happen again... ever... no way, no how, so there!

I will post the BBQ pictures when I get some connectivity... we're going to the Manager's reception right now to de-stress.  :))

Its Wednesday so that means its Survivor night.  We are in Lufkin, Texas settled into our Comfort Suites room after burgers at the "Hole in One" bar and grill next door.   Its been a 7 hour driving day with not too many pit stops... lunch was fries at a McDonald's somewhere in Louisiana... so we're both tired.  Weather was fine for driving, we had no incidents on the road, food was pretty uneventful too... so it was a pretty ho-hum day.  Tomorrow we are going to stop off at Corpus Christi which is only about 6 hours of driving.   Maybe we'll have time to go looking' for some bahbahque when we get there.

This picture is of our tire being repaired by the guys at XAct Tire Repair in Rodney, Ontario on Monday morning.   They did a great job.. the tire pressure is still holding and we are lucky we pulled into their business for the repair.

I just figured out how to send the picture (taken on Gary's iPad) to myself, then download it, then upload it to this blog.   My goodness, this techno stuff is gonna make my hair go even greyer!

Anyway, today it is only 4:30pm CST... but we are settled into our hotel at the Drury Hotel in Meridian, Mississippi.  We left Georgetown, KY around 8am this morning and Gary just felt like driving so we put on another 500 miles today.  My butt was getting sore and when I start getting cranky (or crankier as Gary says) I know its time to pull over and get out of the vehicle for the evening.  Nothing untowards happened in our travels today... breakfast, drive, rest stop, drive, lunch, drive, rest stop, drive, another rest stop, drive, stop at hotel.  How boring is that?  Weather is getting nicer and nicer; grass is getting greener and greener; skies are getting bluer... although we did just drive into a cold front that is moving towards the east  We watched the outside temperature slide down from 67F to 55F in a matter of minutes as these ominous grey clouds moved towards us... or we moved towards them as we drove west along Interstate 20.  Tomorrow we may be driving in rain but at least it won't be freezing rain with black ice on the highway.  I hope.  

8am... Gary is warming up the truck, Dean is in the driveway saying goodbye, I am on the phone with Pat making sure Miss Olive is settling in to her new digs at Pat's place.    Finally we pull out of the driveway and head to the Fifth Wheel to get our coffees for the first leg of the trip.  I love the coffee that you get at their little store, not at the coffee counter.  It's madefrom that hot concentrated coffee liquid that is mixed with hot water to make a nice tasty cup of java.  Coffees are settled into the console,  I get settled in my nice warm truck seat, turn on the iPad to read the LFP, and just relax while Gary gets settled into his driving routine.  All this settling doesn't last long though, for the first story of the day is about to occur.    Gary looks down at the dials and notices with dismay that the right front tire pressure is going down.  Twenty-six, twenty-three, twenty pounds... Uh oh... This is not  looking good.  The GPS is consulted, a tire repair centre in Rodney is located, the tire is repaired lickety-split, and we are back on the road again.  Thanks to Xact Auto Service in Rodney for quick and professional service.  The tire had a puncture in it that they repaired with a patch on the inside of the tire.  Well done, guys!  We are back on the road again by 9:45. 


It has been a pretty boring day of driving... which is a good thing, actually.  We pulled into Meijer's in Bowling Green, Ohio to pick up some lunch and beer (non-alcoholic for me).  Then we carried on to our night time stop here in Georgetown, Kentucky.  After a delivered pizza for supper, we both crashed around 8:30 and slept right through.  That was a looooonng day for us old turtles.  We will take it slower today... heading for Decatur, Alabama tonight.... there's bahbahque there!  

Friday.... three full days before blast-off to Texas... laundry not done, bags not packed, all those little things not organized..... guess I had better get off the couch and get at it!   Gary is checking the google maps, the map quest maps, the streets and trips maps, even the big atlases to make sure we know where we're going.  Me... I figure if I point south on an interstate then I'm going to be going south on that interstate... its not rocket science.  But I'm the major navigator on our trips so I had better pay attention to all of the maps even though we've travelled this way more than once.