A memorable road trip

Every year around this time my sister, Maggie, and her husband, Bud, take a mandatory trip to Houston for follow-up tests. They left this morning from Cape Canaveral and no, they didn’t fly a rocket to Mission Control.

About four years ago, my brother-in-law underwent a bone marrow/stem cell transplant for AML, Acute Myelogenous Leukemia. (He has been in remission since.) He and my sister were living in Houston, where he was a long term patient at the MD Anderson Cancer Center. They’d been there for quite some time while he underwent chemo and other treatments. She kept asking when I would come to visit, and so I did…

My life-long best friend, Stewart, and I left Orlando in his wife’s Chrysler Crossfire. She sold items on ebay and the car had a vanity license plate that said “Ebay Lady”. Oh boy, I told him, everybody’s going to think we’re a couple of old queens riding around in that tiny little car. We’re both in our 50s. HELLO?! Two guys in a Bimmer convertible kept a watchful eye on us for a while until I tried to put my arm around Stew and he pushed me away. The nerve.

Along the way, we stopped for the night in Rayne, Louisiana. Did you know that Rayne is the frog capital of the world? I didn’t think so. All over town, we saw handicapped frogs getting around on miniature rollers and we couldn’t figure out why. “What happened to their legs?” we asked. No one would answer us.

When we were back on the road the next morning, Stewart called his wife. “How was the room?” she asked. She’s pretty gullible. He told her that when we got to the hotel, the only thing available was a room with one bed, but don’t worry, he slept above the covers and I was tucked in. But we had to share a pillow. Hmm, I’m pretty sure she started to wonder about the ebay boys.

We drove through the gambling district in Biloxi, hugging the coast. Pretty interesting. Casinos couldn’t be built on land, so they all floated on barges. Jefferson Davis had a home there, which is now a museum. A lot of shade trees with Spanish moss. Then we went through Bay St. Louis, which is a very nice little community. He and his wife once thought of buying a home there. From Bay St. Louis we went into the French Quarter of New Orleans and took some pictures. We went to one of the above ground cemeteries with all the mausoleums, St. Louis #1. Eerily interesting. This was just months before Katrina struck, so we got to see a lot of the areas that were destroyed. I’m very glad we had that chance. The rest of the drive was rather boring to look at. Lake Charles to the west is nothing but a giant chemical town. Next door is the town of Sulphur. I looked for Birthdefect on the map. I thought it would be nearby. Cough.

Houston itself is pretty big. There is one good sized downtown and clusters of others. The medical district alone is about the size of Orlando proper, if not larger. Bud’s hospital is big. Four floors are for leukemia only. The staff is dedicated to that disease and the care is impeccable. He says the food’s pretty good, too.

Stewart wanted to go to Galveston. My sister said it’s nothing to see. Don’t waste your time. I said, hey Stew, we drove all the way out here and you want to go to Galveston, let’s go. So we did. The three of us. We actually enjoyed it and it’s not a bad place at all. For being a beach town, real estate was remarkably affordable. We went on an oil rig museum. We walked through the gaslight area called The Strand, with shops and restaurants that have second floor iron railings, like in New Orleans. A nice place to escape the city. Too bad Hurricane Ike came roaring through. That night, back in Houston, my sister took us to a restaurant/bar for happy hour called Benjy’s in Rice Village. Certainly a good place to eat and drink. Everyone we met in Houston was very nice, but I wouldn’t want to live there. I don’t know exactly why. Maybe, because of the urban sprawl, it’s too much like Orlando and just as hot in the summer.

When we left for home, we made it all the way to Tallahassee, where we spent the night. Little did we know that FSU graduation was going on and virtually every room was filled. We did find the last one at a La Quinta at exit 99. Good thing for cell phones and that tourist booklet with hotel coupons I picked up on the way out. The next morning, back on the road, Stew talked to his wife and told her that we did have two beds this time. Good, she said. Then he told her that the air conditioner was stuck on the lowest setting and wouldn’t shut off. We had to sleep in the same bed to stay warm, but we did have separate pillows. “I’m leaving you!” she screamed. Pretty funny, but she should know better. I don’t lean that way.

One thing we did notice. There are more Waffle Houses than oil wells. EVERY exit on I-10 had a Waffle House. We were sick of seeing Waffle Houses everywhere we went, so we never stopped at one. OK, I lied. We ate at the one in Rayne. Frog’s legs and eggs.

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