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Katy Trip - Grandchildren, OOMCZ photography and Graving
I was mostly packed by the end of May 5th. Sunday morning May 11th, Bob mowed the lawn and took the trash to the dump. I printed out the boarding passes. I had already unplugged the modem, so I had to go back and plug it in and turn on the printer first.
Because we have a 6:15 a.m. flight Monday morning, we went up to the stay in the Hampton Inn on Sunday. We left the house at about 2 p.m. Iris in bloom at our house (I always take photo to document when we leave.
and as we were driving down the hill by the sewage treatment plant, I mentioned that I had packed my hat in my suitcase, and Bob said he forgot his hat. I said to go back for it, which he did. Then when we got up to about Mechanicsville, he looked at his wrist and said that he had forgotten his watch.
We stopped at Boston Market and took the food up to the motel with us. Then when we were almost up to the airport he also said that he had forgotten his camera. Got to the Hampton Inn about 1630. After we got to our room, he put his hand in his pocket and found his watch. So all that was left behind was the camera.
They put us in Room 109, but when I went in, the room had not been cleaned. So they switched us to 108 across the hall. We had asked for a 3:30 am wake-up call, because we wanted to get to the airport in plenty of time. Bob wanted to have time for the baggage people to not know what to do with the scooter
We didn't get the wake-up call. But Bob was sleeping on the side of the bed next to the clock radio and he could see the time. So when he waked up at 3:30, he got up and went to shave. Bob started taking luggage out at 4, and came back and said the van was ready, so I went out and got in even though I was still barefoot. It was dark. I put my shoes and socks on in the van. We got to the airport before 4:20, but the Southwest curb check and ticket counters don't open until 4:30 and they said they didn't have anyone to push a wheelchair until then. One of the other passengers went and got me a wheelchair to sit in and we got in line.
When it was our turn to check in, the guy looked at the scooter bag and started to say that we would have to pay extra because it was overweight (they said 85 lbs). But Bob didn't hear what he was saying and interrupted him be telling him it was my scooter. So the red-cap said OK and that was it. He just took it without a question. I don't know if it helped that I had discussed it at length with the Southwest people. A wheelchair person came, and took us through security - it was one of those camera things rather than magnetic. He left us by the gate and said the gate agent would take me down the gangway.
We were very early. I took photos and dozed and read my Kindle (which I had the foresight to charge and add some books to it), and the gate agent did indeed take me down the gangway before the rest of the people boarded. The flight was full. I took the second set of seats - window and middle.
I had an assignment to take photos illustrating motion for the OOYCZ #6, so I thought that the low light this early in the morning would mean a slow shutter speed that would show motion. But people were not moving that fast.
Taking off
I don't know about Bob, but I dozed and also read the kindle. About 8 EDT, I switched my watch and camera to central time. Bob did his watch a little later.
We got in early, and the man in the aisle seat took down our luggage. Bob left the plane first, and I eventually got myself together enough to get out the door and to a wheelchair. The wheelchair lady took us to baggage claim
and Bob told her to leave me in a chair while he collected the luggage. The Luggie came through first. (Luggie suitcase from the wheelchair)
I called our daughter and she said she was about 5 minutes away.Bob got the scooter out and set it up, and I got on. After we got the luggage,we put Bob's carryon and my pocket book in the Luggie bag and I got on the scooter and pulled my red bag. Bob had the Luggie bag (which was much lighter now) and his suitcase and our carryons. We went out and found our way to the pax pickup area and in a few minutes our daughter came.We went back to her house. Bob hadn't seen it before, so we had a tour.
Because we couldn't check into the motel much before 2 and I thought we ought to pick up the car after 1300 we talked and met the dog, and had lunch. Then she took us to the rental car place
and we got a red Hyundai .... which turned out to be a hybrid. We have no idea what all the dash display things mean and there is no owners manual. The luggage was in our daughter's car, so she led us to the Hampton Inn here in Katy.
She left and went to take one of the granddaughters to the dentist, and Bob went the market that she pointed out that had the best produce. I unpacked and got organized. Because the youngest granddaughter has taekwando at a somewhat awkward time for meals, we ate dinner before we went back to their house.
We went to Saltgrass Steak House
which is about a half block from the hotel. We were there in time for Early Bird
I got one of the early birds - fried shrimp with a Caesar salad and sweet potato.
Bob got a regular dinner with a salad
and ribs and coconut shrimp.
Bob has a swallowing problem and usually asks for two glasses of water, so they brought him a whole carafe of water and the waiter personally filled his glass every time it got half empty. I tried taking some more motion photos of the fans
Then we started to drive back to our daughter's but the car said its left front tire was low. So we stopped at a Shell station, and their air place said there was 24 lbs of air, but it wouldn't take a credit card. So we went to the next station and Bob went in to get some change because it took $1.00 in coins
I had some things for our daughter, and the print copies of photos I've already had digitized and everyone had a good time looking them-
at least one of them our daughter said if she had not seen the photo, she would have sworn she had not been there.
Also my grandson fixed my phone back, and tried to fix the GPS which will not recognize that there is a state of Texas. The only state beginning with a T that it knows is Tennessee. It was raining a little bit. I tried updating the maps - paying for an update and reloading, but it still won't recognize Texas.
It is supposed to be raining tomorrow too and for some reason I had not planned for rain so that night I looked to see what we could do in the rain and found that Katy had two museums and a Visitor's Center with a RR depot. I wanted maps and thought that might be a good place to get them.
It rained very hard over Monday night. There was flooding and auto accidents.
So Tuesday May 13th we had breakfast at the hotel and started to go over to to their house.. But the car's left front tire was low again, so I persuaded Bob to stop at Avis. They decided that the car was defective, so they gave us a Ford SUV instead. They did show us where the seat heater was. I kept saying that the seat was warm and I don't think Bob thought I knew what I was talking about, but there was a seat heater button in the center console that had been pushed on.
We took out luggage out of the car (we had the scooter and the computer and water) and sat to wait. The desk person first wanted to know if I could get into that car because it is high. I can but it is a little more difficult. He kept assuring us that the car would be around shortly, but it turned out that the guy who was to bring it around couldn't because the desk man still had the keys.
We got our stuff into the car and it was another vehicle without a manual which we don't know what all the knobs do. We set the time and date. But it took us a long time just to figure out the radio, and Bob still can't set the trip mileage. At one point, Bob noticed that it had a back-up camera. We finally got to our daughter's about 10:45.
It wasn't raining really hard - just off and on, so we decided to go out to lunch and to the visitor's center. For some reason she thought it was at the Chamber of Commerce,
so we went down there, and we ate at Otto's. There wasn't a lot of parking, and Otto's was where we found a parking place.
Our daughter had a burger and sweet potato fries,
Bob had a club sandwich (which came on a very long plate)
and I had the Tuesday special which was beef brisket tacos.
Then we looked at the map and found that the Visitor's center was someplace else entirely, so we went there. It was the old RR depot which the city of Katy had preserved.
There was a caboose but the Visitor's Center was in the depot. The lady who was there had gone across the street for something, but she came running back, and we had a nice chat and she showed us the depot and also we got a map of Katy.
other side of the window
Other waiting room
Baggage area
We left there about 2:30 and went back to our daughters. She has printed out a schedule for us and she had to take our grandson to the dentist, so we went back to the hotel and met them at 6:30 for dinner at Carino's (which I keep confusing with Carrabba's. They are similar. The youngest one had the children's menu and a crayons
(she had spaghetti and a meatball - probably because they didn't actually have Mac and cheese),
The middle one had the gluten free menu (she had the Italian ribs)
and the rest of us had the regular adult menus. Service was good and the food was good. All of us except the youngest had soup or salad first, (my potato soup
so she ate the bread which her sister couldn't eat.
Her sister had the garden salad. The men (our grandson, son-in-law and Bob we down at the other end of the table) had the Italian chili. My pasta dish
We were finished about 8 and stood around and talked for a bit. (grandson, two granddaughters and daughter)
Then Bob and I went back to the hotel (which was across the street) and I tried to figure out what we were doing the next day.
Our daughter wasn't going to be with us because she had a meeting. I wanted to go to some cemeteries in Fort Bend County and I found a website with the historic cemeteries on it, but when I tried to put them on a paper map (because I couldn't use the GPS), I found that most of Fort Bend is not on the Katy maps and I did not have a map of the rest of it.
Bob went to breakfast but I was still wrestling with the maps so I had half a grapefruit and then tried to eat a banana that he bought at the store, but they were so green I could not peel one of them. So Bob brought me back some scrambled eggs
I wanted to go to a cemetery that I had found called Andrew's League or McKenzie that was not on Find A Grave. So we started out about 9:30. Bob had our daughter's camera. But the first place we went to was a church called Spring Green Baptist Church..
We found it,but all the gates were padlocked and we could not get in.
Then we tried Andrew's League which I had the location, but the Directions to the Cemetery on the website said "See other notes" and there were no other notes. Bob got out and went looking but did not find it. Using the Find A Grave app, I saw that Briscoe cemetery was nearby, so we went there
and Bob took 36 photos using our daughters camera
I had decided I was eating too much food (ultimately I gained 11 lbs), so I brought the bagels and Nutella with me from the hotel (Bob bought some when he did the grocery shopping). I thought was would go down to Beasley next and as we were driving through town I saw the sign to the WOW cemetery (Woodsmen of the World).
So we diverted to there.
Woodmen of the World is a fraternal benefit society based in Omaha, Nebraska, United States, that operates a large privately held insurance company for its members. The history of this organization includes the erection of numerous distinctive tombstones depicting tree stumps across the country before 1930. Like this one next to where we parked.
Bob took the scooter out for me and we started out to take photos.
Because we have a 6:15 a.m. flight Monday morning, we went up to the stay in the Hampton Inn on Sunday. We left the house at about 2 p.m. Iris in bloom at our house (I always take photo to document when we leave.
and as we were driving down the hill by the sewage treatment plant, I mentioned that I had packed my hat in my suitcase, and Bob said he forgot his hat. I said to go back for it, which he did. Then when we got up to about Mechanicsville, he looked at his wrist and said that he had forgotten his watch.
We stopped at Boston Market and took the food up to the motel with us. Then when we were almost up to the airport he also said that he had forgotten his camera. Got to the Hampton Inn about 1630. After we got to our room, he put his hand in his pocket and found his watch. So all that was left behind was the camera.
They put us in Room 109, but when I went in, the room had not been cleaned. So they switched us to 108 across the hall. We had asked for a 3:30 am wake-up call, because we wanted to get to the airport in plenty of time. Bob wanted to have time for the baggage people to not know what to do with the scooter
We didn't get the wake-up call. But Bob was sleeping on the side of the bed next to the clock radio and he could see the time. So when he waked up at 3:30, he got up and went to shave. Bob started taking luggage out at 4, and came back and said the van was ready, so I went out and got in even though I was still barefoot. It was dark. I put my shoes and socks on in the van. We got to the airport before 4:20, but the Southwest curb check and ticket counters don't open until 4:30 and they said they didn't have anyone to push a wheelchair until then. One of the other passengers went and got me a wheelchair to sit in and we got in line.
When it was our turn to check in, the guy looked at the scooter bag and started to say that we would have to pay extra because it was overweight (they said 85 lbs). But Bob didn't hear what he was saying and interrupted him be telling him it was my scooter. So the red-cap said OK and that was it. He just took it without a question. I don't know if it helped that I had discussed it at length with the Southwest people. A wheelchair person came, and took us through security - it was one of those camera things rather than magnetic. He left us by the gate and said the gate agent would take me down the gangway.
We were very early. I took photos and dozed and read my Kindle (which I had the foresight to charge and add some books to it), and the gate agent did indeed take me down the gangway before the rest of the people boarded. The flight was full. I took the second set of seats - window and middle.
I had an assignment to take photos illustrating motion for the OOYCZ #6, so I thought that the low light this early in the morning would mean a slow shutter speed that would show motion. But people were not moving that fast.
Taking off
I don't know about Bob, but I dozed and also read the kindle. About 8 EDT, I switched my watch and camera to central time. Bob did his watch a little later.
We got in early, and the man in the aisle seat took down our luggage. Bob left the plane first, and I eventually got myself together enough to get out the door and to a wheelchair. The wheelchair lady took us to baggage claim
and Bob told her to leave me in a chair while he collected the luggage. The Luggie came through first. (Luggie suitcase from the wheelchair)
I called our daughter and she said she was about 5 minutes away.Bob got the scooter out and set it up, and I got on. After we got the luggage,we put Bob's carryon and my pocket book in the Luggie bag and I got on the scooter and pulled my red bag. Bob had the Luggie bag (which was much lighter now) and his suitcase and our carryons. We went out and found our way to the pax pickup area and in a few minutes our daughter came.We went back to her house. Bob hadn't seen it before, so we had a tour.
Because we couldn't check into the motel much before 2 and I thought we ought to pick up the car after 1300 we talked and met the dog, and had lunch. Then she took us to the rental car place
and we got a red Hyundai .... which turned out to be a hybrid. We have no idea what all the dash display things mean and there is no owners manual. The luggage was in our daughter's car, so she led us to the Hampton Inn here in Katy.
She left and went to take one of the granddaughters to the dentist, and Bob went the market that she pointed out that had the best produce. I unpacked and got organized. Because the youngest granddaughter has taekwando at a somewhat awkward time for meals, we ate dinner before we went back to their house.
We went to Saltgrass Steak House
which is about a half block from the hotel. We were there in time for Early Bird
I got one of the early birds - fried shrimp with a Caesar salad and sweet potato.
Bob got a regular dinner with a salad
and ribs and coconut shrimp.
Bob has a swallowing problem and usually asks for two glasses of water, so they brought him a whole carafe of water and the waiter personally filled his glass every time it got half empty. I tried taking some more motion photos of the fans
Then we started to drive back to our daughter's but the car said its left front tire was low. So we stopped at a Shell station, and their air place said there was 24 lbs of air, but it wouldn't take a credit card. So we went to the next station and Bob went in to get some change because it took $1.00 in coins
I had some things for our daughter, and the print copies of photos I've already had digitized and everyone had a good time looking them-
at least one of them our daughter said if she had not seen the photo, she would have sworn she had not been there.
Also my grandson fixed my phone back, and tried to fix the GPS which will not recognize that there is a state of Texas. The only state beginning with a T that it knows is Tennessee. It was raining a little bit. I tried updating the maps - paying for an update and reloading, but it still won't recognize Texas.
It is supposed to be raining tomorrow too and for some reason I had not planned for rain so that night I looked to see what we could do in the rain and found that Katy had two museums and a Visitor's Center with a RR depot. I wanted maps and thought that might be a good place to get them.
It rained very hard over Monday night. There was flooding and auto accidents.
So Tuesday May 13th we had breakfast at the hotel and started to go over to to their house.. But the car's left front tire was low again, so I persuaded Bob to stop at Avis. They decided that the car was defective, so they gave us a Ford SUV instead. They did show us where the seat heater was. I kept saying that the seat was warm and I don't think Bob thought I knew what I was talking about, but there was a seat heater button in the center console that had been pushed on.
We took out luggage out of the car (we had the scooter and the computer and water) and sat to wait. The desk person first wanted to know if I could get into that car because it is high. I can but it is a little more difficult. He kept assuring us that the car would be around shortly, but it turned out that the guy who was to bring it around couldn't because the desk man still had the keys.
We got our stuff into the car and it was another vehicle without a manual which we don't know what all the knobs do. We set the time and date. But it took us a long time just to figure out the radio, and Bob still can't set the trip mileage. At one point, Bob noticed that it had a back-up camera. We finally got to our daughter's about 10:45.
It wasn't raining really hard - just off and on, so we decided to go out to lunch and to the visitor's center. For some reason she thought it was at the Chamber of Commerce,
so we went down there, and we ate at Otto's. There wasn't a lot of parking, and Otto's was where we found a parking place.
Our daughter had a burger and sweet potato fries,
Bob had a club sandwich (which came on a very long plate)
and I had the Tuesday special which was beef brisket tacos.
Then we looked at the map and found that the Visitor's center was someplace else entirely, so we went there. It was the old RR depot which the city of Katy had preserved.
There was a caboose but the Visitor's Center was in the depot. The lady who was there had gone across the street for something, but she came running back, and we had a nice chat and she showed us the depot and also we got a map of Katy.
other side of the window
Other waiting room
Baggage area
We left there about 2:30 and went back to our daughters. She has printed out a schedule for us and she had to take our grandson to the dentist, so we went back to the hotel and met them at 6:30 for dinner at Carino's (which I keep confusing with Carrabba's. They are similar. The youngest one had the children's menu and a crayons
(she had spaghetti and a meatball - probably because they didn't actually have Mac and cheese),
The middle one had the gluten free menu (she had the Italian ribs)
and the rest of us had the regular adult menus. Service was good and the food was good. All of us except the youngest had soup or salad first, (my potato soup
so she ate the bread which her sister couldn't eat.
Her sister had the garden salad. The men (our grandson, son-in-law and Bob we down at the other end of the table) had the Italian chili. My pasta dish
We were finished about 8 and stood around and talked for a bit. (grandson, two granddaughters and daughter)
Then Bob and I went back to the hotel (which was across the street) and I tried to figure out what we were doing the next day.
Our daughter wasn't going to be with us because she had a meeting. I wanted to go to some cemeteries in Fort Bend County and I found a website with the historic cemeteries on it, but when I tried to put them on a paper map (because I couldn't use the GPS), I found that most of Fort Bend is not on the Katy maps and I did not have a map of the rest of it.
Bob went to breakfast but I was still wrestling with the maps so I had half a grapefruit and then tried to eat a banana that he bought at the store, but they were so green I could not peel one of them. So Bob brought me back some scrambled eggs
I wanted to go to a cemetery that I had found called Andrew's League or McKenzie that was not on Find A Grave. So we started out about 9:30. Bob had our daughter's camera. But the first place we went to was a church called Spring Green Baptist Church..
We found it,but all the gates were padlocked and we could not get in.
Then we tried Andrew's League which I had the location, but the Directions to the Cemetery on the website said "See other notes" and there were no other notes. Bob got out and went looking but did not find it. Using the Find A Grave app, I saw that Briscoe cemetery was nearby, so we went there
and Bob took 36 photos using our daughters camera
I had decided I was eating too much food (ultimately I gained 11 lbs), so I brought the bagels and Nutella with me from the hotel (Bob bought some when he did the grocery shopping). I thought was would go down to Beasley next and as we were driving through town I saw the sign to the WOW cemetery (Woodsmen of the World).
So we diverted to there.
Woodmen of the World is a fraternal benefit society based in Omaha, Nebraska, United States, that operates a large privately held insurance company for its members. The history of this organization includes the erection of numerous distinctive tombstones depicting tree stumps across the country before 1930. Like this one next to where we parked.
Bob took the scooter out for me and we started out to take photos.
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There was a dog behind the fence who was running up and down and barking
when I saw this cute monument.
In my perambulations around the cemetery, I found the Our Lady of Guadeloupe Church Cemetery which was behind and off to one side of the WOW Rosenberg Cemetery. So I went in there and took 30 some photos too.
Between the two of us we had about 560 photos in the Rosenberg Cemetery (not counting Our Lady of Guadeloupe. Now it was about 12:30 and I wanted to use the bathroom, so we drove down to a McDonalds and Bob got a shake and a hamburger and I used the bathroom and ate my bagels.
Don't know exactly why.
and then went back to the hotel because we were to see the taekwando lesson and had to be at Beth's by 5. I downloaded the photos from my camera, but did not figure out until we were on our way over to our daughters that I could just put her card into my camera and download those photos too.
The taekwando lesson was very interesting.
I am working on my OOMCZ Motion assignment
jumping jacks
Then we went back to our daughter's house and had dinner and played a game.
May 15th
Today we went out looking for cemeteries. I used her computer to print out directions.
We started out looking for the Dr. Johnson Hunter family cemetery which I thought I had found it -
it was supposed to share an entrance with Oak Hill Cemetery.
Sure enough, we found a little green sign pointing to Oak Hill Cemetery.
We turned down the driveway and ended up at a gate that said Oak Hill.
Our daughter got out an opened the gate (the chain was just draped over it - it wasn't padlocked). We could see some gravestones
So she went into the woods (hoping that she didn't get poison ivy) and took photos.
Most of them I could read well enough to put them with the memorials but this one I had a hard time with
as my eyes are not focusing right - I don't get an updated prescription until June (after cataract surgery)
Bob closed the gate.
We kept going on the driveway to see if we could get out the other end and came to a HUGE gate
about 12 feet tall. Not locked but it opened in toward us, and could only be opened a little bit
because it got stuck on a lump of dirt. So Bob had to back and fill until he could get through.
Opposite us was Oak Hill cemetery. That gate was locked, so we just took photos of the signs
and then went down the OTHER driveway (which was in better shape)
Next we tried to find the Henry Jones cemetery. We saw it off the road on the way to George ranch. (entering George Ranch)
But the admission price was $10/person and we didn't really feel like paying that much. So we just drove past it twice,
and I noted where it was on the map. We tried to find Kuykendall Cemetery but I misread the directions and
had not found the map location on the historic map site. We drove up a fence line until we came to a rickety wooden
bridge and decided not to risk the rental car. Later I found out that it would have been just past there.
We ended up at Jones Cemetery on Cemetery road, but the gate was padlocked with about six locks.
And the sign had fallen off the brick thing that it was on.
We stopped for lunch at Burger King,
and then went to look for Feris Cemetery. It was listed as the corner of Preston Street near Collins Rd,
but we drove past that intersection from each direction (don't know what this interesting looking building is)
and did not see it because the photo that we had was an old one, and in the meantime a water company
and strip mall had been built behind it. So it was just a little square of grass in front of the strip mall
with a teeny tiny sign.
We found another cemetery which we weren't sure what the name was, but our
daughter and Bob got out and took 80 photos,
and I looked for a possible name. Turned out it was Faithe Thomas.
From there we went and found Morton Cemetery - a huge one. But too big to do in the time we had.
We dropped our daughter off to take our grandchild to taekwando, and went back to the hotel to organize photos. We ordered BBQ from Dickie's for dinner.
Friday May 16
Got to our daughters about 10 - this time I figured out that I could put the directions in a text file
on a thumb drive to print out. (My grandson has got my computer so that it will log into her network,
but it won't print wirelessly) Weds night I went through the list from a to k, so last night
I started at W and went forward. We decided that a lot of the cemeteries
we might visit were in Needville so we would go down there.
Bob was whistling along down the highway and missed the turn and then
the next place the U turn was disabled so we eventually got off and were bumbling
around the countryside when we found Cottonwood Cemetery,
so they took almost 100 photos there. There was a dog in the cemetery. Bob is using my camera, so I took this with my cell phone
Then we went looking for Wheat Cemetery. According to the directions it was right be the highway, but we couldn't find it. We did find Guy
Cemetery, but decided not to stop there. In Needville
(historic downtown)
We went to TX Burger/Subway for lunch.
I had the steak finger special - it turned out to be fingers of chicken fried steak with white gravy and fries. I also had a root beer float.
Bob had a milkshake and they had hamburgers
Starting out again we found and visited Needville Baptist Church cemetery
(in a hay field-car by the hay bales),
If you look closely at this photo you can see our daughter's pink shirt - a small cemetery so only 25 photos
New Prospect Baptist Church Cemetery,
(where the only sign was on the van) - 105 photos
Peaceful Rest Cemetery (with Cemetery spelled wrong on the sign which was put up as an eagle scout project), where they took about 120 photos
San Francisco Cementerio Sociedad, (160 photos)
and Sitta Cemetery and St Michael Archangel Cemetery. Our daughter took photos of Sitta
And Bob took photos in St Michael Archangel
She was in the chorus, and als sang Oceans and accompanied herself on the guitar.
There were also other singers, a pianist, a dancer, where I was again trying for motion photos
And this one was the one I eventually used - it is a single dancer
and at the end a pairs dance where one of the people in it was a grown woman who was not a student or teacher at the school.
Our granddaughter didn't stay for the after party because she probably couldn't eat any of the food.
Saturday May 17th - spend the morning at taekwondo class (have not yet processed all those photos) but they did sparing and were scored like a competition (granddaughter is blonde in black)
When we all got back to the house, Bob basically took a nap and I entered cemetery photos and wrote up the last couple of days. I caught Padme the dog peeing on the rug (which she is apt to do) and yelled at her. Dog with youngest granddaughter
They heated up the pool, so the girlsl and I went for a swim. (It has been a little chilly for swimming). The other grandparents came over and we had a sumptuous BBQ with shrimp, salmon, skewered vegetables, corn on the cob, deviled eggs, and then we had a choice of brownies, sherbet or banana cookie pudding. Other grandfather trying my scooter
We went back to the hotel - Bob has complained about the lights on the dash being too bright and I was trying to turn them down, but I activated the rear windshield wiper. Got back and parked by the side door as usual but the keys wouldn't work to open it, so we were going around to the front to get the keys reprogrammed. Bob was a little ahead of me as I had to turn around. I got one back wheel of the scooter off the edge of the ramp. Dirt on sidewalk is where the wheel was
When I tried to get the wheel out, the scooter and I toppled over sideways and fell to the ground. My pocketbook strap was over the handlebars which caused the scooter wheels to spin madly in space. Bob was already around the corner. I got myself uprighted and back together and caught him as he was going through the door to the corridor where our room is.
Sunday we stayed at the hotel until after 1600 (they had a church function from 2 to 4) and then went over to Beth's house, and our grandson, Bill, Beth, Bob and I all went to the robotics banquet.
table
The salad and dessert were on the table - the rest of the food was buffet
They had the robots there. This was last years
This years
I found that that our grandson researched to find the best robotics team in the area and Beth and Bill bought their house specifically so that he could go to that HS.
They roasted all the seniors, and announced the new student officers (grandson is now a VP in charge of Community Affairs). The students gave the mentors a little plaque with a pedestal and ball on it (an 'in' joke). The resigning faculty liaison gave a tearful speech at the end.
One of the awards that the team won
Monday I packed. Well I mostly stayed in the bathroom and Bob helped me pack. We checked out of the hotel at 11:30 and drove over to Beth's house and transferred the luggage over to her car. Bob took the car and turned it in. THere was a note about a charge for an 'excessively dirty car' so Friday, Bob borrowed a bucket from Beth and washed all the smashed bugs off the front of the grill and windshield. She picked him up at the car rental and drove us to the airport. We got to the airport at about 1:30. We curb checked the bags and they asked us if Bob would push me, but we said not.
Apparently the wheelchair people are not paid except for tips and they have trouble getting them. We waited for a wheelchair person for 45 minutes. Other people in wheelchairs came and went. But we had time. They said that due to graduations, there were some planes that had to have nine wheelchairs
People weighing their bags and re-organizing so they are not overweight
Two reasons not to push yourself - the wheelchair person knows the airport and how to get through security with a wheelchair. And the wheelchair person can get the blue boarding pass sleeve for first boarding.
Art in the airport
I walked through the scanning security thing, and again they had to pat me down. I asked why. They showed me my outline which had yellow patches on it. On my upper arms and on my legs. (Why I don't know). They had to check that area.
We went to gate 24 where there was a flight going to DFW. Ours was the next flight at 4:10. Bob went to the bathroom and filled my water bottle. A flight came in and people got off and then they towed that plane away. Our plane came in and people got off and then we were to board. I put my pocketbook on the window seat and used the bathroom.
It was a full flight. We were to take off at 4:10, but we did not leave until 4:45.
I don't know why. One of the flight attendants said that we were waiting for connecting passengers but we didn't see anyone board late. The trip took 3 hours and so we landed about 45 minutes late.
They told us that the wheelchairs were not there yet and that the wheelchair people should wait until people that had tight connections got off.
Bob got off with the carryons and waited for me in the jet way. I waited until there was a big gap in people getting off, and then went up and used the bathroom again. When I was done
there were two wheelchairs there so I got into one.
The luggage came out pretty quickly. We decided to do as we had done in Houston. Bob unpacked the scooter, and put his carryon and my pocketbook into the scooter case. I got on the scooter and towed my computer bag. Bob put my red bag on top of the scooter bag and pushed the scooter bag (now much lighter) and pulled his suitcase.
We went out where we had been told to wait at door one. Bob had found his phone and wanted to call the Hampton Inn. I told him to go back inside to call as it was so noisy out there that he couldn't hear me even when I shouted at him so I knew he would not hear anything on the phone.
We had to get out from where we were to the center island, but there was a bus across the pedestrian walkway (A big Greyhound type bus). Bob wouldn't wait for the bus to move - he moved all the luggage and the scooter up the curb. Then he left me with the luggage and walked down to the island - there was a police car parked with flashing lights keeping people from coming in to pick up where we were. Got to the hotel and picked up our car. Getting our bags and getting to the car took about a hour. We stopped at McDonalds and got a sandwich. We got gas at the Wawa and we got home about midnight. The mail was here, and the cat ran around like a crazy cat. At least he didn't hide this time.
We got unpacked and the wash done, Bob went to the commissary and mowed the lawn. The only problem is that I can't find my address books.