You Ate What??

What am I eating??? Read on for the answer...

I returned to Amarillo, Texas, again this week for work. I've been there about 6 or 7 times in the past 3 years, but this time I made sure to get some new experiences since this may be my last scheduled visit for sometime. As far as I can tell, there are THREE (3) places to go in Amarillo:

1) Downtown. I'll toss that one in there even though there really isn't a ton there. It's run-down, quiet, and clearly not the focal-point of the city. There are about 2 blocks of restaurants that look like they're only busy a couple hours a day. But it's an intriguing place and shows how our car culture really takes the emphasis off downtowns and leaves them ghost towns, even in a city of several hundred thousand like Amarillo. There are a few attractive buildings like the City Hall and the Chamber of Commerce.

2) Palo Duro Canyon State Park. They call it the Grand Canyon of Texas. That sounds hokey, but actually, this is far and away one of the best state parks I've ever seen. It is a major canyon that is also rather accessible. It has gorgeous terrain and is heavily used by mountain bikers and trail runners. You know I got my run on!


3) Oh yeah, the BIG TEXAN. Home of the 72-oz steak. If people have heard of anything about Amarillo, this is usually it. This restaurant is pure tourist-trap Texan kitsch. And it is a must-see. I had been avoiding it for years, but I finally made a visit. And it was amazing. Their claim to fame is that if you eat a 72-oz steak, potato, roll, salad and shrimp cocktail in 1 hour, it's free. Many have tried, most have failed. I did not attempt this feat/feast since I had to work the next day, but I was tempted. Randomly, the Big Texan was featured in this MSN article the same week I was there!

While I was dining at the Big Texan, at the urging of some of my Texan colleagues, I tried some seafood. A local variety of oysters. Rocky Mountain I believe. (I wasn't fooled, I knew what they were). I tried one and it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. But I didn't eat a second one (although I suppose they should be consumed in pairs). I'll throw in some photos from my Big Texan experience.

The Big Texan himself looms over the Interstate

Can you eat the 72-oz steak and fixins?

The table where the "magic" happens. Many have tried, most have failed...

Running with Armadillos

I am blogging you all (sorry, y'all) from the great state of Tejas! I'm back in San Angelo for work, more wind turbines!

West Texas really is gorgeous. Especially this time of year with all the wild flowers blooming and valleys a luscious green. Red clay valleys and beautiful blue skies! I love it here! Plus, toss in a high of 80 degrees and it's downright agreeable here.

Here's a shot from one of our proposed wind turbines:

After my work out on the mesa was done, I decided to go for a run in the only local state park, San Angelo State Park. I found out about it by looking at the website of the local running club, the Road Lizards. They look like a fun group, hopefully on my next visit I can meet up with them for a run! Anyways, the park was great, lots of running trails, however, a little light on the signage, so I felt pretty lost, and with rattlers out there, I was a bit nervous. The highlight was definitely seeing a couple of armadillos just hanging out. Those are some pretty awesome creatures! I've definitely never seen those in the wild before. All in all, a great run, and a great time in Texas! However, I'll be very glad to get back to Minny. I've been traveling too much lately.

Best souvenir: a pretty sweet bumper sticker I think you'll agree!

What's the Matter With Texas?

Or was it Kansas...?

This post is a big shout-out to Mike I'm An Iraqi. May it never be said I only speak ill of Tejas.

The past year or so I've been traveling a lot to West Texas for work, wind turbine-related projects. Basically I help design the site layout, and these are some big sites too, oftentimes 100 square miles or so. The first couple trips are fun, and seeing the mesas of the caprock of West Texas is interesting, but after a while, it's a little boring.

I've mostly been going to the Amarillo area, but this past week I went to Sterling City, which is about halfway from Abilene to San Angelo, or about 5 hours west of Dallas. This trip came at a really busy time for me, so I wasn't really looking forward to it, but I had some interesting experiences that more than made it worthwhile.

Texas is an interesting place. I think Texas can be boiled down to, "Bigger is Better." Everything is Texas is HUGE! The highways are big, the overpasses are enormous. Even all the highways have frontage roads that are basically highways running on either side of their highways. And the people are bigger, much bigger. I thought Minnesota was the land of giants, but nope, it's Texas. It seems everyone is 6-6 and could play linebacker. I'm not suggesting Texans are fat (5 of the fattest 14 cities), because they don't seem fatter, just BIGGER in every dimension.

But I stumbled on new proof that TEXAS is bigger. At the DQ for lunch one day I ordered a Blizzard and a medium diet coke. This is what they consider a medium drink.


What the...??? Are you kidding me, a MEDIUM???? You should have seen the jumbo sized cups they had. Wow! (note the TX logo on the DQ cup, quality!!)

On a side DQ issue, I love the fact I work less than a mile from DQ HQ. Knowing DQ is from here makes going to DQ on the road feel a little like home, even if the cup has the state of Texas on it.


The other thing about Texas, is that while I have heard that Texas is a great place to go biking out in the country (and the road biking looks phenomenal there, other than the wind), the running sucks. Really sucks. Monday night in San Angelo I wanted to run an hour and get a feel for the town, so I decide to go running. The front desk directs me to these roads that are for "running". Well, running along side roads that are all 50 mph speed limits, no sidewalks, and little lighting is not my idea of a safe run. After 20 minutes of dodging traffic and potholes, I saw a VERY friendly cop who directed me to the ONE residential road that wasn't basically a highway. I did one-mile repeats on that and was happy. That's the other thing about Texas. EVERYONE is friendly. I LOVE TEXANS (well, not those who claim to be from Crawford, but that's another post). From my first trip to College Station in college to now, I have found virtually every Texan to be friendly and overly helpful. We may claim Minnesota Nice, but Texans don't need a slogan, they're just naturally good-natured.

The last fun thing from my trip was the work itself. It was BEAUTIFUL up there on the mesa being 600 feet above the land below. The cacti were blooming, everything looked green, the playas had water in them. It's a great time of year to be in West Texas. Every direction I looked I saw beautiful and inspiring views. It's nice because the wind turbines haven't been built yet, it's all just open land now, nothing obstructing the views. However, I'm not the only one who enjoys West Texas this time of year. So do the rattlesnakes! The drillers killed a big one the first day we were on site. And this is what we saw on Tuesday right after we got into our truck after inspecting a potential wind turbine location:

And right after that, we hiked about 2 hours through the most remote portion of the site. From that time on, I stopped appreciating the views off the mesa and started staring at the ground before I took every step!

So to recap...
Texas sucks because:

• Running (in cities) is messed up
• Things are too big
• They're all Republicans (one quick story, for the hotel's continental breakfast, I was the only one there and so I changed the news to CNN. The hotel worker changed it to FOX and said that they're only allowed to show FOX NEWS. Ridiculous.)
  

But really, Texas rocks because:

• It's freaking beautiful in a desolate sort of way
• The people are fantastic
• THINGS ARE TOO BIG!!

Overall, I'd put Texas at #2 on my places I love to visit but would never live, right behind NYC.