First off, our stuff has arrived from London at last!! However, it arrived at 6 pm on Thursday, when we were due to go away Friday morning for a weekend in Dallas, so it's pretty much still there, piled up in boxes.
Well, our weekend excursion to Dallas was pretty good overall. Driving down went fairly well, altho my driving was a bit dodgy, as I kept crabbing right in the lanes - the natural instinct for driving on the other side of the road, & apparently quite hard to ditch. Cat got a bit nervous about it, so she did the bulk of the drive down.
We met up with Ray & Pat from Oklahoma, & Ray acted as native guide, steering us to the biggest available branch of Half Price Books, where we spent a couple of happy hours wandering around and oohing and ahhing, buying a relatively restrained pile of books at the end. I have to say, we really needed the native guide - Dallas traffic is almost as aggressive as London traffic, and the city centre is a spectacular spaghetti of freeways: quite beautiful and awe-inspiring as an object, but also pretty daunting as something to navigate! Oh, and I should mention, Dallas is Hot Hot Hot - I thought Little Rock was pretty hot & sticky, but Dallas has it beat into a cocked hat.
Monty had arrived by the time we got back to our motel, so we all went out to the nearby Steak&Ale place for a drink (and in Monty's case, dinner), and sat and talked for a couple of hours.
Saturday, I went off with the lads to the wargames tournament, playing FOG. As I hadnt had time to excavate any armies, I had arranged to borrow figures from the umpire, Ian Buttridge, and took an Aragonese army - I'll post the list & battle reports on Kruppfalz .
During the first round, John Witstyn pitched up, with his son Austen in tow (about 12 I think). Once I'd finished off my opponent, we went off for an early lunch, and a chance to catch up and chat. He's changed remarkably little - quite a bit greyer, but that's hardly a surprise - much the same calm and happy John that I remember so fondly, with all the verbal quirks, and the same sparkle.
The rest of the tournament took up Saturday pretty thoroughly, and we didn't get back to the motel til about 9:30, then went next door for steaks & beer, and a post-tournament dissection. Cat had intended to go shopping in Dallas, but the traffic had intimidated her enough that she chose to stay at the motel and read her new book for the day.
Sunday we had planned to go spend time with John & his family, but we were both so tired (and probably a touch hungover from the beers), and so worn from the heat & humidity, we had to cry off, and just drove home - I did a lot more driving this time, & seem to be getting over the crabbing problem.
I was quite surprised by how green the bit of Texas we saw was, but then, it's just the very north-east corner. It was quite noticeable when we passed from Arkansas to Texas, tho, both in the change in terrain, from rolling hills and plains, to pretty flat (not Nebraska-flat, but still, flat), and in the change in feel of the rural homes, from fairly prosperous in Arkansas, to looking quite shabby and poor in Texas - until we hit the edge of the commuter belt, when it abruptly changed to 4000sqft mansions on hobby farms or half-acre sprawls, of course.
Oh, and I won the tournament, which was a nice way to start things off in the USA!
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