Dallas hates us. PVUUC likes us okay.

[featherynscale]

So anyway. Dallas. We drove down to Dallas Thursday night, as soon as I got home from work. We knew the drive was going to suck, but wanted to do it then so that we'd have a day to kill in Dallas and do some touristy shit (you know, see things, take pictures, have fun) before we had to be at PVUUC for the start of the class on Friday night.

This did not go down at all as we had planned. We got into Dallas at 3 a.m. Friday. We caught the change-of-interstate to go to the hotel we'd reserved and almost immediately ran into standing traffic. There had been a multi-fatality wreck on Dallas' 635, and the entire highway was shut down, with all four lanes of traffic being shunted off to a single-lane exit, at which there was a traffic light. We finally made it the 11 miles further to the hotel by about 4:15. According to the news, they were still cleaning up the accident at morning rush-hour.

This was to be a theme of the weekend. We sleep in a bit, get up at 11 a.m., knowing that we have all day to have fun before we have to be at the church at 5. We have lunch, pick up a few essentials left behind (like a car stereo, but that's another story), and hit the highway to go to the Dallas Aquarium. We hit the highway at 1:30 or so. At 1:45, we hit the parking lot that is I-35 southbound. At 3:45, we finally reach an exit (five miles or so from our starting point) at which we can turn around to go back to the church, having squandered most of our Aquarium time in the traffic jam. We pull off the highway, opt to not just hop back on I-35 North, and weasel around side roads to I-635E, which takes us churchward. We have about five good minutes here, until we hit the next traffic jam. 4:00 happens, and then 4:20, and then 4:45, and we are still in the 11 miles between I-35 and the exit for the church. 5:00 happens. We call dop4, who is supposed to meet us at the church. He tells us that we should exit as soon as possible, because the wreck that's causing the problem is at the church exit. Of course it is. Also, he can't give us side-street directions, because he doesn't know that part of the town west of the church.

Between creeping to the next exit, taking the next exit, only to have it spit us back out into the highway, creeping to the next next exit, and wandering around on unknown streets trying to find the place, we finally make it to the church at about 5:30. This whole adventure has occurred within 25 miles of actual geography.

Fortunately, we're able to get something to eat, do some prep, and start the class on time. The class goes well. One of our students gives us some information about where to go for nightlife in Dallas, and tells us that not far from the church, there's a train station, and we can hop on the train and go down to this place, and the train runs until 2 a.m. So we're thinking, okay, let's go out, we'll have a drink, dance, and generally hang out for a while.

We go down to the train station. It's 10:30. The train runs until 11 p.m., but it runs later on Saturdays. We think, oh, okay, we'll go out tomorrow night instead. This is fine, we're not dressed for it anyway. We go back to the hotel and crash.

Next day class runs all day long. We're at the church from 8:30 in the morning to 9:30 at night. We find out that Dallas' pagan community center, a place called Betwixt and Between, is closing its doors, and they're having a big last-night party over there. Bonus points, it's near this area where we've been told the clubs are. So we can just follow dop4 over there, hang out for a while, and then go out dancing.

In order to do this, we have to get on the highway. We have informed dop4 of our apparent enmity with Dallas road spirits, but he thinks it will be fine. We get a little ways past the southernmost point of our highway explorations on Friday, when, yeah, you know it, we're stuck in standing traffic behind another wreck. dop4 calls us to commiserate.

We finally make it to Betwixt and Between, and there is, indeed, a party going on. We hang out for a little bit, but things seem to be dying down. So we're talking to some of the folks, and we ask for directions to our next destination. They look at us and say, "What do you want to go there for?" We explain that we were told it was a good place to go for clubs. Oh, no, most everything over there has closed down in the last year or so. The only thing left are some tourist traps and the House of Blues (which is pretty much a tourist trap, just a tourist trap which occasionally has good live shows). This is the word of doom. Defeated, we go back to the hotel room.

Sunday, we don't even try for extracurriculars. We go over to the church, do part of the service, hang out for lunch, and get back on the road to get the hell out of Texas.

This same sort of thing happened when we were in St. Louis for the Summer Solstice ritual at General Assembly last year. We go to work, but we leave time for fun, and then, fun spectacularly fails to happen. What's the deal here? Business trips shall be for business only, no fun allowed? That's no good, universe, it's no good.

Comments

"Stay out of <strike>Chinatown</strike> Dallas, Jake"

[jackbabalon23.livejournal.com]

You know i've always been a bit trepidatious about the idea of ever visiting the Lone Star State. I always have scenes out of Midnight Express running through my head (albeit with ten gallon hats and tea saucer sized belt buckles) where the presence of a R04ch in an ashtray would mean years of prison sex (and not the fun kind) and back breaking labor. I don't know why this is (my inner womans intuition perhaps), but something in my belly tells me that it is in Texas where they keep the dreaded Lovecraftian creature known as 'The Ugly American' chained up in an old 1950's bunker lab that was once a Indian burial ground.


I'm glad you and yours made it back:)

Re: "Stay out of <strike>Chinatown</strike> Dallas, Jake"

[featherynscale.livejournal.com]

I tend to have similar feelings about Texas. It's not a place I would go just for fun, you know? In fact, the only other time I have been in Texas, I had a layover at the DFW (Don't Forget to Write) airport, and my first flight was delayed, so that by the time I got to DFW, my second flight had already left. I trucked my gutterpunk ass down to the airline counter, inquired about later flights, and was told that there weren't any and I was out of luck. So I strongly implied that I'd be happy to sleep in front of their ticket counter and they offered to get me a hotel room for the night (travel tip #12: airlines dislike having their property cluttered with gutterpunks, and the judiciously dressed can use this to their advantage). The hotel they put me up in was attached to a Bass Pro Shop (no shit, there I was), and was all done up in a hunting lodge theme, with all kinds of taxidermy everywhere. Effed up.

So Texas is not my favorite. (Also, when I think about going to Texas, I have some George Dorn flashbacks.) But you have to go where the work takes you, no?