reunion in Houston
 

US1193 BOS PHL 0715 0852 321 3C
was 1735 BOS PHL 0930 1100 733 2F

I had this plan. I was on the 0930 flight, but having woken
at 3 and checked to find the earlier flight was still F8,
I decided to take the 0510 bus, which doesn't go where I
want, walk half a mile to the subway, and get to the airport
about 0615, when there should still be seats in first. Well,
this wonderful bus showed up at 0530 and kept getting
behinder and behinder, so the next bus (which went to
Wonderland) caught up with it; I was too lazy to switch
buses but stuck with what I had, a mistake. I was barely at
West Lynn at 6, so I decided to bail in favor of the bus
that was supposed to leave there at 0608 and get me to the
airport at 0626. How wonderful it is to have so many choices
in public transport. How nasty to have them all not work on
the same day. Anyhow, this airport bus showed up half an
hour late, and I got to Terminal C at 7. Walked as fast as
my little legs could take me to US Air, checked in, went
into the priority security, and, despite making way for a
pilot or two, was at the gate at 0710. There was still room
in F, yay. In fact, the flight left with two empties in F.

A bit of a snooze and a tiny delay (flow control as usual),
and here we were, beautiful Filthydelphia.

US3121 PHL IAH 1005 1301 175 3F
was 3257 PHL IAH 1405 1650 175 2A

Got to the gate in plenty of time to stand by for the early
flight, and the grumpy agent said, "it'll cost ya." I
pointed out I was Gold, so she warmed up a bit and
acknowledged that there was room, and I could get it for
free. Onto the little regional jet: why they are running
humongous half-empty planes up and down the east coast and
these little guys halfway across the country I can't figure.

I got one of the few seats with an empty next, but at some
point a woman vacated 4A to sit by me. This was not because
of my undeniable charms, but because 5A was noisy and kept
kicking her seat (it was a child of some sort). I told her
I was happy to have her sit by me, but I was going to ignore
her and go to sleep. This was fine with both of us.

It got extremely bumpy half an hour before landing, and I
woke a little prematurely, so my seatmate and I perforce
started chatting, first about bumpy flights and noisy
children, and then about Houston - it turns out that she
knew some faculty at my high school (whose reunion I was
attending), plus she gave me a useful tip about the Central
Market, which she said was just down a few blocks from it.
I like food shopping and so promised to check it out.

SuperShuttle came pretty soon after I hit the counter, and
it was completely full - I had to sit in the death seat.
And, lo and behold, the Renaissance Greenway Plaza was the
first stop: LIFO, a good way to travel. I felt a tad guilty,
but then the van emptied out. They'd managed to fill the van
with Renaissance passengers.

I was shown to a very nice room on the 10th floor. Never
mind that it was next to the elevators - turns out that in
contrast to my experience at the Hilton Atlanta, the Ren
elevators were whisper quiet.

==

Luling City Market - this is not the real thing but rather a
facsimile 138.4 miles due east of the original. It's
pleasantly tacky and seedy, with the bar area in front and
the food out back. As with many such places you get your
sustenance and then wend your way to the bar for your
sustenance.

I asked for my brisket extra fatty, and the guy pulled a
new one from the steam table and sliced me some off the
top: quite delicious, properly smoked, salted just this side
of too much, meltingly tender. A hot link was appropriately
hot, smoky, and nicely not too salty; on the other hand the
meat was ground too fine and was a bit mushy (steam table
issues?), and there was an unaccountably large amount of
sugar in the mix.

The blonde bartender (rather cute) was more interested in
chatting with her regulars than finding me beers, so I had
only two. Shiner Bock = 3.25, a good price.

A six-minute (counting wait at the stop) bus ride back to
the hotel.

==

Bayou City Seafood & Pasta is in the same block as the
Luling Market, and for my next meal I tried it. The brunette
bartender was (almost by definition) more forthcoming than
the blonde down the way. From 2 to 6 a pound of boiled
crawfish is $5, and I just squeaked in to the happy hour
price. Great crawfish, not the Chinese farmed junk we
usually get (and that I was expecting). Shiner Bock here
is a whopping 4.50, and I had only one, for my second
carbohydrate hit ordering a link of boudin ($6, no happy
hour break) - lots of pigskin ground in, which lends a
peculiar and I think toothsome flavor, but it was way
underseasoned.

houston ballet
 

The ballet, with my friend Jay, who's on the board or
something, so we had seats close enough so I could actually
see what was going on for a change. A triple bill, which he
told me was less of an audience draw than the big multi-act
classics, by which I believe he means Nutcracker and maybe
Coppelia and Swine Flu, er, Swan Lake, and the like. He also
stated with some pride that his organization was on pretty
sound financial footing, unlike most of the performing arts
organizations on this planet.

We started with Nosotros by Stanton Welch, the artistic
director and choreographer. It was a tour de technical
force, but the story line seemed a bit tired: it went like
this: boy gets girl boy2 gets girl2 boy3 gets girl3 boy4
gets girl4 boy5 gets girl5 boy6 gets girl6. All to the
sometimes lushly romantic, sometimes martial, sometimes
chilling dance-of-deathly Rachmaninov Paganini Rhapsody,
which was given a decent performance, hampered by being
Procrusteanized for dance purposes, by the resident
pianist and orchestra.

Jardi Tancat by Nacho Duato, though much less my style,
being part classical dance, part folk dance, and large
part acrobatics in the Blue Man way, was more interesting
to me. Its story is, more or less, boy gets girl, boy loses
girl (or vice versa), girl becomes a bird or something out
of grief or insanity. This senza orchestra, the music
being recorded Catalan folk music by a powerful vocalist
whose name of course escapes me.

Jay figured I was hungry, and it was getting late, so we
missed Christopher Wheeldon's Carousel. Later we discovered
that 1. it's only 13 minutes long, so we might have gotten
to the restaurant by closing time, and 2. the Chronicle
gave it the only rave of the evening.

Be that as it may, we went to Little Pappas Seafood, an
ancestor of the Pappacito's, Pappadeaux, and the like chain.
Our waitress saw our ballet programs, smirked a little, and
asked how it was. Great, Jay said, but I shouldn't be the
one to ask. She made the expected inference.

Oysters on the half shell were fresh and briny, very good.
I also ordered fried softshell crabs (three, from the
squadron that ate Chicago, in a slightly too thick batter,
with Parmesan, which I think is a mistake) with asparagus
instead of fries - got to keep that boyish figure. The
crabs were giant and fresh and quite good, not enhanced
by the frying though. Asparagus was a mixture of thick
and thin spears.

Jay had gumbo followed by a Caesar salad adulterated with
lump (I originally typed the unfair "limp") crabmeat.
Pronounced it good.

Lungarotti Pinot Grigio, though a bit grapy and obvious, did
the job and went pretty well with all the food.

Enjoying the report. Nice to hear about my hometown from the perspective of an 'outsider'.

A lot of changes in the last 40 years - and I'd been back only about
7-8 times in all that time.

As none of my classmates seemed up for lunch (it being a
work day), I took the bus out to Ragin Cajun; got there
kind of early and had to wait until it opened. They let
a fairly considerable number of early eaters mill around
inside until 11, when we crowded the ordering window -
wouldn't it have made sense to take our orders ahead
and put them in to the kitchen at opening time, I mean,
the manager was just standing around, and it wouldn't
have meant extra time spent for his staff if he did it,
which he ended up doing anyhow.

I had an infected fingernail from the other day, which
always happens when I do crab or crawfish boil, so I didn't
go for the 1.75 lb $11 half bucket but instead got the fried
crawfish tail appetizer, which had to be close on a pound of
fresh sweet bugmeat in a very ehh flour coating, helped by
the shaker of steak seasoning (tasted sort of like crawfish
boil, but that's what the label said) and Rajin Cajun hot
sauce, the house blend of herbs and cayennes in not too much
vinegar. Pepperdoux hot sauce is also available, but it
tastes sort of like Tabasco, only not so good.

Boudin ($4 for a big link) was, though shot with black
pepper, otherwise quite bland and tasteless - no match for
that at Bayou City.

Shiner Bock was $3.50, so my disappointment at the
characterlessness of the food was made up for.

=

Shiner Bock was $3.50 at the Ren as well, which surprised
me. I guess the hotels are finally figuring out that they
can't extort us as badly as they used to be able to.

=

My old buddy P.D. picked me up at the hotel. He was a little
preadolescent in high school and heavily picked on, but he
grew a half a foot the year after we graduated. He is now
about the third tallest person in our class and has become
good-looking in an outdoorsy way. I didn't want to go to the
rather sterile hotel bar, so we wandered randomly, ending up
at that Central Market, which turns out to be like Wegman's
but with Whole Foods prices. The idea was to get coffee and
sit outside and chat, but I found the to-go beer department
and had a Young's Double Chocolate Stout, which of course is
Stout flavored with cocoa. It was fine to sip slowly while
P.D. and I caught up on our lives over the last 40 years.

I could make only one event of my reunion, a dinner at the
home of one of our cheerleaders (the cheerleaders were
despite all that goes with cheerleaderism quite decent
humans on the whole, in addition to being fairly dazzling -
and, as it turns out, well preserved into their late 50s).

About half the class showed up (it had been a tiny class),
some with spouses, some without.

Lots o' divorces, a few involuntary retirements, but more
lucky got-out-while-the-getting-was-goods, a couple of
trophy wives. On the whole an affluent and well-fed bunch.
The most beautiful girl in the world was still beautiful
44 years after I'd met her, not a big surprise. On the
whole, the women are better preserved than the men, or
else perhaps camouflage techniques and cosmetic surgery
are extremely effective these days.

People who didn't give P.D. the time of day back when were
clustering around his athletic-looking self, and not just
the women. I was amused to find him so suddenly popular;
I hope he was as well.

I had a fine time chatting with people other than the ones
I had come to see! I do keep in touch with a few still by
e-mail, so it wasn't a surprise or much of a loss, and it
was fun comparing notes with classmates I'd not had any
contact with at all over all those years.

There was a lovely buffet on offer, but, unlike my normal
self, I forgot to eat. When it was time to remedy this,
all the food had been packed up. I guess it wouldn't have
put the caterers out too much to ask for a plate to be
made up, but who cares. I hadn't seen food since noon, but
I hadn't seen some of these folks since the Nixon regime.

And aside from the one downtown evening, my experience was bounded by
SW Freeway and Westheimer, Kirby and 610, so it wasn't exactly representative
of the city.

The party broke up around midnight, but not being
sufficiently liquored up (Malbec was my poison of choice,
a couple bottles or more worth), P.D. and I hightailed to
Katz's Deli and Bar for another hit. Parked next door,
where the parking troll informed us we had to eat next
door, which we assured him we would, after taking a drink
at Katz's. I seem to recall Maker's at $7 for a generous
shot, but I can't recall whether I had one, two, or three.

One's a Meal next door beckoned. By this time, though, I was
so far gone that I don't remember anything about eating -
all I can recall was being visited by the parking troll, who
was probably making sure we showed up, and having a pleasant
chat with him. P.D. dropped me off at the hotel at 2
something and I toddled off to bed, tossing and turning and
thinking of the great and small loves of my life before
finally dozing off.
===
My watch alarm was unwelcome, but the hotel wakeup call,
which I'd ordered for 4 minutes later, didn't work, so I was
grateful for having set that.

At the desk I discovered I'd been charged for phone calls as
well as Internet, though it's all bundled, supposedly. It
took the night manager several minutes of typing to fix.

SuperShuttle came precisely at 0550 as promised, and so I
got to the airport about 0630. Security was surprisingly
breezy, despite there being a long line of Kettles, most
going to Phoenix and then Honolulu, carrying all their
worldly possessions with them. A pair of charming older
ladies, seeing me with my passport out, asked if they
needed their passports too, to go to Honolulu. After I
said no, they pulled them out anyway.

US1675 IAH CLT 0855 1216 734 2A

I tried for the 0705, so as to visit the club in Charlotte,
but an anxious nonrev essentially begged me not to get on.
The snappish gate agent said to her, we'll deal with you
when we're finished with the paying customers. I relented,
and the nonrev got her seat in first. I plugged in and
worked an hour, no great loss to me. Afterward, though, I
overheard the (black) gate agents discussing how rude and
obnoxious the (white) nonrev had been, so I almost regretted
my niceness.

An okay flight, which I slept through.

US1088 CLT BOS 1307 1515 734 2F

Very pleasant flight, despite serious bumps on the way down.
We got in a little early.

-33-