Rep at Large - It's Official

Nothing like seeing your name in lights.  But there it is.  As of the NASFAA conference business meeting and the end of this year's annual conference, I have officially begun my two year service as a member of the NASFAA Board of Directors.

And I have a feeling I will be in for a very interesting ride.

I had the opportunity to sit in the peanut gallery of the current board of directors to "dip my toe" back into the waters of NASFAA service.  I have also already received two official board memos from the NASFAA President, Justin Draeger.  I cannot tell you how good it feels to be back in the saddle and part of the game.

But there is one point of bitter sweet.  This conference was Jeff Baker's last.  Jeff is the Department of Education's Policy Liaison and Implementation Director.  I have received my most up-to-date federal news from Jeff since the moment I first arrived on the scene in financial aid.  He was one of the reasons that I knew I was going to fall in love with this profession.  Here was this crusty old guy (and I think he would be ok with me describing me in this way), who had to say some pretty controversial stuff at times, but who was real, authentic and honest in his delivery.  His dedication to financial aid and his job was easy to observe.  His interest in listening to the financial aid community and his understanding of the challenges we face was a relief.  His shoes, and the imprint they have made, are large indeed.

I will miss Jeff.  And Jeff, in answer to your comment during your final Federal Update, when you were talking, I totally was ALWAYS taking notes.

Moses - A Regular Guy

Tomorrow it's my turn to do the children's sermon.  The Bible story for this week?  Moses and the burning bush.  Sweet!  I love Bible stories like this one.  Any Sunday School attending Methodist kid worth their salt knows this story and with a little prompting - you just sit back and let the kids do your job.  Real Mark Twain stuff.

But Boy Howdy.  I can feel the hand of God in and around this moment and this promise I made over a month ago.  God is with me, God has been with me this whole time, and God will remain with me forever.  It is an incredibly comforting thought. 

My Bible verse from yesterday was Psalms 119.  "Your promise revives me; it comforts me in all my troubles."  The devotion was on the challenges of parenting.  "God will sometimes stir up ingredients in your life like suffering, struggling and pain to remind you to depend on him...God promises he will be with you in it and through it, and he will preserve your life.  The process is not always enjoyable in any realm of thinking, but...in those moments, you must be aware that the promise of his presence on the other side is your hope!"

And tomorrow, I get to talk about the story of Moses and the burning bush with a renewed sense of understanding.  God asked Moses, at the ripe age of 80 years old, to lead a virtual city of Jews out of the land of Egypt to the promised land.  And what I love most about Moses is that his reactions to this news are so real.  First, he is curious..."Looky what we have here...a bush that is on fire but it isn't burning up?  Cooool."  Then, he is stupefied, "This is God.  God is talking to me?!  Whassat?  Quick, take off your shoes...better bow...holy moly!"  And finally, God drops the bomb.

And Moses - with every bit of knowledge of the importance of the request - says to God - "Ummm, are you sure?  I mean, I don't think I'm the right person for that job."  His reaction is hilarious, priceless, incredibly normal, incredibly human.  But God answers him right back, "Hey dude, don't worry, I've got this.  I've got your back."

And that's the key right there.  God really does "have our back."  The hard part, is letting him. 

"God is good.  All the time."  And the people say, "All the time.  God is good."

R.A.L. - Who Do I Represent - REALLY

Picking back up where I left off.....

Facts are facts. (See RAL post dated March 18, 2017)  But facts aren't everything.

It is popular practice when working with high school aged children to make them take a career assessment.  Each time I have done one, the result I get is funeral director.  I'm not sure what that means, but what I am sure of is that very few people leave high school thinking, "I want to work in college financial aid."

In fact, I would venture to guess that most people don't even think of financial aid as a vocation.  Financial aid people are an afterthought - like a bookshelf in the public library.  They exist, performing an important function.  But they and the job they do are nothing that anyone can remember with any accuracy - even after spending a good amount of time in their presence.  And the interesting thing is, I think most financial aid people are ok with that.

A bookshelf, though it goes through life mostly unnoticed, feels important.  It holds in its arms everything from Mike Mulligan and the Steam Shovel and Blueberries for Sal to Pride and Prejudice, Walden, and The Republic.  Bookshelves don't care about your wealth, your looks, or your political and social prowess.  Bookshelves care about making it easier to access the knowledge you seek.

I wandered into this profession in the summer of 2002, one year following the birth of my second son.  I began my experience locked in a Colorado College residence hall with hundreds of financial aid people from across the Rocky Mountain region at an event called Summer Institute.  Our purpose?  To dive into the nine volume, regulatory handbook of "things you need to know" and "things you need to do" to be a good steward of federal taxpayer funds.

At the front of the room teaching us were these people who knew what being a financial aid administrator was really about.  And what became clear to me - and the reason I am still plugging away in this profession - is that being a good financial aid administrator has very little to do with regulations.  Regulations change seemingly at the whim of whomever is currently in power in Washington DC.  Learning them is important and necessary.  But learning and following the regulations is not why we do what we do.

Rather, at the heart of a good financial aid administrator is the primal knowledge that there is potential in every individual.  At the heart of a good financial aid administrator is the compelling desire to help those individuals wade through the volumes of regulations to gain access to the opportunities they seek.  At the heart of a good financial aid administrator is the desire to fight to make the path smoother, simpler, wider, prettier so that it isn't so scary for those who may be intimidated by the thought of walking it.  At the heart of a good financial aid administrator is the burning desire to serve.

Spring Break Galveston - The Ride Home

It's time to leave our temporary oasis on the beach.  What a wonderful base of operations it has been.  We have encountered several different kinds of owners in the past.  Walt Burger was friendly, efficient, and communicated about the important stuff.  Toes in the Sand is also known as VRBO #276059.  I definitely recommend it.

When you come in the door, the house, which is decorated beach style has a large, open living area with a kitchen on one side and a large sectional couch and tricked out TV on the other.  The generous deck opens toward the beach and contains some comfy wooden chairs and a picnic table.  There are two dining tables inside - both by the beachside windows.  We used the small one as a home base for our brochures, camera, and sunscreen station.  We ate at the large table and the kitchen bar.  The kitchen bar is also where I set up my writing station.  It was a perfect perch to use to write while keeping an eye on the beach.  The house comes appointed with all necessary appliances and a coffee maker.  There are plenty of dishes and glasses to last our family. 

The back of the house had three bedrooms and two bathrooms.  One bedroom is a master suite where Ross and I slept.  The other side has another king sized bed and there is a middle room with four good sized bunk beds.  Sam grabbed the king bed and took over that room - Isaac slept on a bottom bunk and used the other three for storage.  In the hallway - bonus - was a washer and dryer which came in handy a couple of times.  (We travel with Tide.)

We loved our stay here.  It was quiet.  It was a good way away from the bustle that was Galveston.  It was right up our alley and definitely our cup of tea.  Once the Texas spring breakers disappeared - we had the beach essentially to ourselves.  We were right by a public access area so there was the occasional family or group of college students who popped in and set up day camps in front of the house.  But after that first weekend, I wouldn't ever call it crowded.

Renting a VRBO is a little more expensive than a hotel room - but I will tell you, food prices on the island are not cheap.  Eating out with two teenage boys can add up quickly - so we saved hundreds by shopping at the local grocery store and eating at least two meals - sometimes all three - and all snacks at the beach house and out of the car.  We reserved early, got a price break for reserving the entire week and saved overall.  Careful planning of cabins with kitchens and roomy spaces has been the reason we have had some lovely vacations over the years.

The night before, Ross and I worked together to find a route that would avoid both Houston and Dallas.  Initially, we tried to ride out using the ferry on the east end of the island - but the island is so long that way added another hour to our overall trip.  So, since we were already on the west end of the island, we turned left and paid $2 to travel across the bridge at the west end.  Then we followed Highway 36 (the hurricane evacuation route), connected to 77 south of Waco and popped back up on I-35 just south of Fort Worth.  The trip was immensely better, had more scenery and less crazy traffic.

We ate lunch at the Rocket Café in Robinson, Texas which is a tiny town south and east of Waco.  It's a tiny, local diner in a strip mall, and the food is definitely worth experiencing.  They have daily specials and hamburgers that are hand pressed, not preformed and frozen.  At the end of the meal, the waitress surprised us by bringing out a pan of banana cake and asked us if we wanted some.  We signed up for four perfect-sized pieces.  Along the way we stopped a couple of times for gas at Chevron stations to boost Isaac's stock investment.

We arrived at the newly opened Ardmore, Oklahoma Hampton Inn at around 5:00 p.m. and stopped for the evening.  We ate dinner at the Café Alley in downtown Ardmore.  Another fantastic meal - these owners know a thing or two about food, wine and cornbread.  Ross and I agreed the café is a place we would like to return to in order to try additional things on the menu.  All the dinners we had were great.  The boys took a lot of theirs home to eat after a swim in the pool. 

We ended the evening swimming (the boys met and played pool football with a couple of families with boys from Newton and Texas) and then watched the UCLA/Kentucky game on TV.  A wonderful end to a relaxing day of driving. 
 
 
 
 
 

Spring Break Galveston - Day 8

This morning I got up at my normal "before everyone else" time and decided I was going on a quest.  I set out on the beach ignoring every literary impulse to not go out on the beach because - in literature -  beaches are where dead bodies wash up, are found, are made.......and I found what I was looking for and added it to my shell collection.  I found some other things too.  I hung out with the birds to see how close they would allow themselves to get to me before flying off.  I took a close up of a plastic bottle covered with barnacles that had washed up on the beach.  Those little guys never give up.  I made it back into the house by 8:00 a.m. having already had a grand adventure.


It's our last day in Galveston.  We aren't going to waste it.  We headed out first thing in the morning to Moody Gardens - a local resort hotel with several attractions geared toward the younger set.  Here, though, is the problem with traveling "off season" - sometimes you run into hiccups.  And there were several at this resort.  The ropes course and zip line are only open on Saturday and Sunday, the aquarium is closed until May for a massive renovation, and the rainforest - which on the website said would be back open today - was still closed for unforeseen difficulties in the tree maintenance scheduled for earlier in the week (and the reason we waited until today to show up).

So.  We saw what we could of the rainforest - which included some pretty sweet looking frogs (some of the best and prettiest examples of poison dart frogs I've ever seen), an Amazon river otter (awesome - could have watched her all day), several different types of geckos, these HUGE Madagascar giant jumping rats, and a crazy big, leafcutter ant farm that made us all itchy.  After that, we headed to the museum to check out a pretty cool display of 14 steel, interactive dinosaur puppets welded by artist John Payne.  We were overrun by a grade school class of kids on a field trip - but the sculptures were worth being patient with the children and sharing the levers and controls.  After that we sailed for an hour around the Harbor on the paddleboat Colonel.  Don't recommend that one - it really was the only disappointment of the day.

At this time I would like to state for the record that Mom IS the best navigator in the family.  I did happen to spectacularly win - by a full 60 seconds - the "which way is the quickest way back to the car" contest.  I don't know why they even try...
After piling in the vehicle, we traveled a very short distance to a quick highlight which was well worth the $10 admission fee.  We also realized this is another one of our "standards" on vacation - the Galveston Lone Star Flight museum.  The museum, which is basically a huge complex of hangers, has one of the largest collection of WWII airplanes that are still flyable.  Most have been restored and painted to resemble famous planes that fought in the war.  We saw, among other things, the Thunderbird - a B17 Flying Fortress (super cool), biplanes, a Cobra Gunship, the Scout Bomber Douglas (SBD) Dauntless, and an impressive display of nose art.  These airplanes are pretty, folks - worth seeing if you are into that sort of thing.


After that, we had some final shopping to do in the Strand and then to Walmart for Texas fishing licenses.  It was time to fish on the Galveston pier.  We bought some squid in the bait shop where we purchased our pier pass.  And then we headed out to the pier to see what the boys could catch.  Within 20 minutes - nature boy had hauled in 3 good sized catfish.  He was making the groups around us feel a little inadequate.  After reeling in 3 in a row, he was done, too easy he said. 

His brother, who has other talents, caught some sea grass and lost his bait a couple of times but nothing else.  He did get some excellent lessons and quality time from big brother - so that's a win.  While we were there, I made friends with a Border Collie/Rottweiler cross tied to the pier.  Sweet, sweet dog.  Some of nature boy's luck rubbed off on the dog's owner while I was petting the dog.  He hauled about a 10 pound catfish which was very exciting.  Meanwhile, Sam did the pier rounds shaking hands and chatting up the locals.  When he is fishing, he is definitely in his element.  We stayed about an hour and a half and enjoyed ourselves immensely.

We headed down the road for dinner at Joes Crab Shack.  Then it was back home to the beach.  This was the longest - and according to Sam - the best day we've had.  Success.

Spring Break Galveston - Day 7

Hump Day - the time to return is upon us.  But I'm trying not to think about that.  There are a lot of things I'm trying not to think about on this trip...

Today was a nothing to do day.  So we did nothing.  All day.  And we enjoyed it.

Some observations: 
1) Doing nothing means different things to different people.  For teenagers it means watching YouTube.  For Dad, it means watching TV and observing people.  For Mom, it means writing.
2) Doing nothing includes doing something.
3) When you are doing nothing, you still have to eat.  We went to Jimmy's on the Pier and had hamburgers and fresh caught red snapper for lunch.  Shopped around a little in the gift shop.  And then went back to the house.
4) Doing nothing on a beach means that you can take a break from doing nothing and take a walk to look at things we don't see every day.  We found a mermaid, a proposal, three completely intact, tiny, swirly seashells and a bird mandible, a log spit from the sea with barnacles all over it that were still alive - for a little while longer anyway, several sand castles - one with a Lego on top, lots of birds, a few people, and one dog.

A final observation from this prairie girl.  Nature is loud on the beach.  To achieve quiet, you have to shut all your doors and windows and possibly even put on noise cancelling headphones.  It is, however, still peaceful.  I walk on the beach and my shoulders are relaxed.  I am at ease.  It's a peace that comes from having everything else - all manmade sounds - drowned out.  "Look at me!" nature says.  "I'm powerful!  I am a sight to behold!"  And you can do nothing else but stare and agree.  All thoughts in your head suspended but what is right there in front of you, below you, around you. 

Me.  I think I prefer the peace that lives where nature is subtle.  "Come and sit with me," the prairie says.  And you sit, just you and the cows.  And your thoughts wander until you notice that you are sitting by a wildflower.  Maybe it's purple.  And you think - "How did this get here?  This wildflower out in the middle of all this prairie?"  And then your ears hear the sound of grass blowing in the wind or the quiet call of a Bob White or the buzz of a bug, or the chirp of a frog.  And you settle.  You clear your mind of all distraction.  Because the details of the place that surrounds you are so breathtaking, so wonderful - you don't want to miss a single one.

Spring Break Galveston - Day 6

If the Hicks' have seen nearly every submarine there is to tour - we've also seen nearly every railroad museum there is to tour.  Today we knocked out the Galveston Railroad Museum.

I gotta say, it is a good one.  Even if you aren't fans like we are, this one will keep you entertained.  As we were walking through the tracks and climbing around the various cars I remembered a conversation I had one time with Bill and Evelyn Morris who were winter Texans in the Galveston area in their younger days.  Bill - a former railroad engineer - gave this museum high complements which is saying something coming from a professional.  He was right!  And I wish he was still alive so that I could tell him we visited.  I will, when I return, tell Evelyn.

This museum was among the best we have been to.  We didn't opt for the audio tour.  We are readers and there is a lot of information in the display cars and on placards attached to and scattered throughout the trains on the highlights.  The old depot is wonderfully preserved with sculptures of the ghosts of travelers past going about their daily business while you listen to 1930s music playing in the loud speakers.  They have telephone booths where you can pick up a 1930s style phone (a novelty for the boys) and listen to people important to the transportation industry.  There are three model railroads to view and an impressive display of railroad china.  My favorite was the Pullman. 

A luxury car that was owned by the editor of the Washington Post was sitting on track 5 with a note that said it had carried Dwight Eisenhower as a passenger.  Behind it was a wonderfully preserved mail car and three beautifully preserved passenger cars.  There are cabooses (I miss cabooses).  But the real find of the day was in one of the dining cars.  There in the kitchen was a six pack of soda from Pops.  We felt we had come full circle.

Ross and I ate at the 3 taco plate special at the snack bar for lunch while the boys ate the "very good beef gordita" plate.  We enjoyed our dinner sitting in the gazebo frequently rented for weddings to get out of the wind.

After lunch it was time to head to the harbor for a tour of the tall ship ELISSA and the "Official Harbor Tour of the Texas Seaport Museum.  The tall ship, when it is operational, makes daily cruises of the bay area and you can ride along.  During the off season (which is what this is), they close it for periods of time to restore and repair it for another season of sailing.  Today, the crew was all up in the rigging doing something again....it was difficult to tell and hard to watch!  Down on deck, today was varnishing and polishing day.  There is a lot of wood and brass on the ELISSA.  By this time tomorrow it will be shiny and sparkly.

Definitely an intimate experience, you wander amongst the crew who is hard at work.  One of them (I think she needed a break) initiated herself into my thought process as I stared between a placard of information about the ship's wheel and compass and the wheel and compass itself trying to reconcile the two.  She was most helpful.  Below decks the experience was a bit roomier as the crew was concentrated mostly above decks.  There was an excellent bit of research on the purpose and genesis of the sea shanty.  The only one I knew was "What do you get with a drunken sailor."  It's called a Stamp and Go shanty.  Stamp and Gos were sung when the work required many hands taking hold of a line holding cargo or some other thing that needed hauling and marching away with the line on deck.  Sing the song - it's cadence does have the feel of "hauling" something heavy.

After that, we rode the Seagull II for a great tour of the harbor and the boats docked there.  Among them was the Del Monte boat that delivers 600 semi trailer boxes of pineapples and bananas into Galveston from places south each week and delivers them into these huge, refrigerated warehouses until they are hauled away to places north.  There was also a boat docked that regularly ships cars back and forth overseas.  The guide said that the inside of the boat looks like a big parking garage.  Today it was unloading new Fiat vans and several industrial dump trucks onto the dock.  We also learned a little about historic Pier 19 and the Mosquito Fleet.  The pier is the home of Katie's Seafood Market as featured on TV.  One of the workers brought out the "catch of the day" for all of us to view.  It was a very large red snapper that definitely looked like a keeper.  There were several brown pelicans on the dock and building eyeballing the fish as well.

From there, the Captain took us out to a concrete boat purposefully sunk over 100 years ago as a man made reef.  Along the way we got a harborside view of Seawolf Park again.  And....we saw dolphins.  Which was, of course, the purpose of the cruise for most of the people and children on board.  The excitement of the experience gained me a friend in the form of a chatty four year old young man who had just seen Moana, was an expert in climbing poles on the school playground and who entertained me with conversation for the rest of the ride. 

Something about boating takes the stuffing out of you.  So we took off back for the house and a quiet evening at home watching movies, reading and generally staying out of each other's way.

Spring Break Galveston - Day 5

Today it's time to explore the island again!  Tummies and sinuses weren't feeling great for all parties today so the thought of a marina cruise was out. Instead, we opted for an inland, self-guided audio tour of the Moody Mansion.  Mom was, of course, all in for this particular activity.

The tour is like someone's genealogy research come to life.  As I was wondering the grand front hall I couldn't help but think how wonderful it would be to be part of this family.  They can come to this location and see their family history in literal 3D.  Instantly and before I knew more about her - I wished that I could meet the woman behind it all - Mary Moody.  Even if you aren't part of the family, the home is a wonderful look into Galveston royalty and the lives of two sisters that, if you take the time to listen to the tour, come to life as easily as if they are standing there talking to you.

Libby, the youngest of four children kept a pickled snake in her room to keep her brothers at bay and clearly had a Texas sized personality to go with her family name.  This Texas tiger married a politician and lived her adult life in a stately home in Washington DC entertaining and becoming fast friends with Lady Bird Johnson.  According to one story, she raised the Texas flag every morning at her home earning it the title of "The Texas Embassy." 

The real story, though, is the quiet, oldest sibling Mary.  One of the audio tours of the home is narrated by this original southern belle.  She later married but had no children.  Instead, when her husband and father died within months of one another, she found herself in charge of her father's financial empire.  She lived into her 90s, served on over 50 charitable boards and had to be one of the first women to successfully run a multi-million dollar business.  In one of the back bedrooms on the second floor, there are pictures of Mary eating and shaking hands with famous people (think John Wayne and Mamie Eisenhower) alongside treasures that she picked up from her travels.  After discovering my enthusiasm this woman, the docent on the second floor let it spill that Jackie Kennedy asked the family for permission to use the patented silk wall covering found in the downstairs reception room in her bedroom at the White House.  Fascinating woman, beautiful home.

When we finished the tour, I asked the guy running the cash register in the garage for a good place to eat with boys.  He recommended the Sunflower Café and Bakery which was a few blocks away on 14th Street.  We ate outside while a couple of greedy birds fought over scraps of carrot and lettuce left behind by other diners.  It was here that we had our first encounter with the common grackle (see below). This bird, which was the size of a small poodle, dive bombed a poor woman eating right next to us and flew close enough to Ross and I that we could have reached out and grabbed it.  The waiter, who was doing his best to shoo the crazy birds, said that one had stolen a shrimp directly off of his tray as he was delivering the food to some patrons the day before!  Food and adventure - the dude in the garage hit the nail on the head.

Following lunch we headed out to Pelican Island and Seawolf Park.  The boys commented that we have potentially seen every submarine that there is to see in the United States and we think they might be right.  For some reason, the Hicks clan is drawn to all things navy.  The park has two dry-docked "museums" that are very well preserved.  The first is the USS Cavalla - a submarine with the distinction of sinking the aircraft carrier Shokaku - one of the carriers associated with the Pearl Harbor invasion.  The second is the USS Stewart - a destroyer commissioned for service in 1944.  Destroyers, folks, are just cool.  The entire family enjoyed crawling over this one and eyeballing the machine guns, mess halls, captain's quarters, map room and other fascinating gizmos found all over the ship.

After a brief stop for frozen yogurt on the way home, we relaxed in cabin while the boys went to swim in the surf with a couple of groups of college kids on spring break.  It was here we had our encounter with the second grackle.  Ross and I were quietly minding our own business when this large black bird swooped in through the open patio door and flew around the living room.  We both did that standing crouch one does when contemplating having to tackle a large bird flying in a space where it is not wanted.  This unexpected motion startled the bird as much as it startled us.  To our immense relief, it immediately retreated back out the door which we promptly shut.  No more surf noise for the afternoon.

When the boys were ready, we headed to Nate's West End Steak and Seafood for a satisfying dinner.  At a "sit anywhere you want" table, we ate steak, tuna, pasta and salad and discussed important things like, "If the Gulf is known for seafood and Hurricanes, what is Kansas known for?" and "What are two of the most interesting facts you learned today?" and "How big does a hurricane have to get before it is called a hurricane?"  and "Can you boys get through one meal without touching each other or throwing paper wads in each other's drinks?"  Today was a full and very satisfying day.

Spring Break Galveston - Day 4

We have food.  We have boogie boards.  We have a football.  We have reading material.  We have deck chairs.  We have a house on the beach.  We aren't going anywhere today.

We all kept to our own schedules - meeting at meal times and the occasional basketball game on TV.  The boys spent a good several hours perfecting their boogie boarding skills, everyone spent time working on their tan, and the evening was topped off by hunting for crabs at night on the beach.

We thought about big questions today.  How long until a house on the beach loses its novelty?  Is the water on the chairs in the morning humidity, or rain?  What are those clumpy things on the beach?  How far out do you have to go to get out of the shallow water?  How far in do sharks swim?  Would it be better or worse for the Shockers if we watched the game?  Does coffee on a deck by the beach naturally taste better?  Why is it so cold in the afternoon when the sun is out?  Should we worry that the boys can shake the house intentionally and enjoy doing so?

Bottom line, today was a relaxing day of avoiding the highways as the locals left for home after their spring break.  Tomorrow they go back to school and tomorrow we get the island to ourselves.

Spring Break Galveston - Day 3

This morning, I awoke at 8:00 a.m. and took this picture:

I haven't been in Galveston for more than 24 hours and I'm already in love.  We took it easy this morning and watched people and the beach slowly wake up.  We ate breakfast in courses and shifts while Isaac did his laundry and the family got ready.

After a quick review of the "things to do," we piled in the car around 11:30 a.m. and headed into town.  Our goal - the Ocean Star Off Shore Drilling Rig and Education Center.

This museum, located on the Bay side of downtown, is housed in a retired jackup drilling rig and contains interactive and educational displays about offshore drilling.  Here was the source of our first of two pleasant surprises of the day.  I was perusing the Hall of Fame looking at names and reading about oil giants and there, in the 1989 founding class was non other than Dean McGee, founder of Kerr-McGee oil and native of Humboldt, Kansas - my hometown.

The museum is a great reminder of the importance of fossil fuels and oil to the American way of life -  a display right inside the door contains a host of items that contain chemicals derived from oil.  Inside is everything from crayons to shampoo, laundry detergent, cameras, phones, shoes, bandaids, hair dryers and Barbie dolls.  I saw new developments in deep water drilling including "Bullwinkle"; a fixed platform rig that is taller than the Empire State Building.  There were even pigs - which in the oil world are rubber devices used to service and maintain the pipelines.

At the dock near the museum were several fun sites that we don't see in Kansas everyday.  An imposing one was the Carnival Freedom - a cruise ship that makes regular 5 and 7 day trips to the Caribbean, Mexico and South America.  Based on their reaction, I'm fairly certain this was the biggest boat the boys have seen up close and personal.  On a smaller scale, but just as cool, was the Clipper Stad Amsterdam.  The Clipper , its Captain and 30 crew members run luxury private cruises to the British Virgin Islands and Martinique.  They were getting ready to sail while we were walking around.  Finally, we got our first glimpse of the 1877 Tall Ship Elissa also docked at port.  We plan to tour her later in the week (the daily sailing excursions are closed through April 2 due to regular maintenance), but today we stood and watched one of the crew members climb up into her masts to fix something.  He got high enough we couldn't watch anymore.

We ate a quick lunch at Jimmy Johns and then took a walk to the shops in the Strand District - a National Historic Landmark district of Victorian era buildings housing restaurants, shops and antique stores.  It was on the way to the Strand that we encountered the second of our surprises.  After seeing the boys in their blue, high school t-shirts, a man walked up and asked Ross if we were indeed from Winfield, Kansas.  I lifted my sunglasses and said, "Ed?"  It was none other than Ed Larson - a man we knew from our early years in Winfield.  Ed sang in our wedding dressed in his coveralls.  He was pinch hitting for our soloist who was snowed in and unable to make the ceremony.  It is indeed a small world.

After shopping, we headed to Fisherman's Wharf for a cool drink and to watch the Carnival Freedom depart from Galveston port on its way to the Caribbean.  From there, it was time to head home after a quick trip to Walmart for boogie boards.

The boys spent the early part of the evening throwing a football and enjoying the beach while we watched from the house deck.  After tiring of that, we went inside and retired to dinner from the fridge (Isaac made eggs.), basketball and conversation on the couch.  It was a good day.

Spring Break Galveston - Day 2

It is approximately 9 hours and 22 minutes from Winfield, KS to Galveston, TX.  Traveling by the most direct route - I-35 to I-42 - you pierce the heart of two of the largest cities in the United States, Dallas and Houston.

We decided, after driving this route for a few hours, that there are two types of travelers who are defined by the routes they choose to "get there."  We spent today wearing the shoes of the type of traveler that we are not, and find it uncomfortable.

The Interstate traveler is no-doubt seeking efficiency - a concept we appreciate during the work week but find disturbing while on vacation.  Packed between lanes of cars, you point the car and drive.  The views to each side of the road are lined with billboards, advertisements and stretches of grass populated by the occasional wildflower.  Hours of the same.  Miles of repetition.

We stopped for lunch in Corsicana, TX at The Cotton Patch - a restaurant chain begun in 1989 by Larry Marshall and Mike Patranella in Nacogdoches, TX.  Their website describes a culture of giving which made me feel good about eating there.

We finally arrived at our destination.  We have rented a house on the shore of Galveston Beach acquired through VRBO.com - our favorite traveling tool on vacation.  The house, named Toes in the Sand, is owned by Walt Burger who has been great to work with.  We arrived around 6:30 p.m., tired and ready to eat. 

We visited the local seafood restaurant called The West End where we met a great waiter who discussed the Final Four with us and shared his opinions about mixed marriages between KU and KSU fans versus the lack of marriages between OSU and A&M fans.  After stocking up on food supplies at the local grocery store, it was back to the house to sleep.

Fun fact about houses built on stilts:  They move.