Day 8 - Houston

Today was our day off, and we all appreciated it greatly. Despite being a day off we all got up early and got started with our day to hopefully see part of Houston and do some sight seeing. Our goal was to run a few necessary logistical errands, go downtown and see some sights, maybe even a car show, and then back to the west side of town to register for the MS150 and visit the expo they had set up.

Traffic

We left Gail's house and got to I-10 to head downtown and were rudely greeted by:

So we decided to get off the highway and head towards the Galleria and were greeted by:

So we decided to change our route and head towards the MS150 registration and were greeted by:

Registration

Finally we made it to the Omni Hotel where the registration was taking place. The event was very well organized, with a very large number of volunteers in attendance to help everything go smooth. The organized the registration so that you turned in your paperwork on one end of the expo hall and you pick up your packets and t-shirts at the other end of the expo hall. Of course in between the two were rows of bike shops selling their goods at reduced prices. Hard to pass up the deals at this place. We all did pretty good with passing them up, and went on home to get ready for the next day.

The corporate sponsorship of this event was excellent. There were volunteers, food, equipment, and transportation everywhere. As you can tell at the left Isuzu was a major sponsor and provided the transportation for the event. This was one of the official vehicles. They also had a VW Beetle with a similar treatment on it.

Dinner

Dinner was an interesting proposition. We went to a very nice restaurant called the Pasta Company, which had excellent bread among other delicious entrees. However the service can sometimes make or break a restaurant. If you happen to go into this restaurant and are greeted by the waiter pictured below it might be a good idea to hit up the Burger King across the way. George asked for a simple request, especially for an Italian restaurant. George asked for a cup of Oregano and some Olive Oil to dip his bread in. When the waiter returned be brought George some red pepper. Of course he was thoroughly embarrassed when we informed him that this was no Oregano. We asked him to go to the chef and request some Oregano. We embarrassed him even more when he returned and said that they had no oregano in the entire place. Seems difficult to cook Italian food without Oregano. It seems that by no accident George's food was very late in arriving to the table. 

It is one thing for a waiter to not know everything when he starts, but this guy was actually experienced. As we left the restaurant our waiter was training a new employee to work at the restaurant. Incompetence was actually being bred before our eyes.

Relaxed

In all the day off was very nice. We needed the day off to get ready for the weekend and despite sitting in traffic and experiencing poor service at the restaurant everyone took it well and felt much better after taking the day off. That will probably be short lived as tomorrow will come very soon and we need to be up and ready to leave the house at 4:45am. Sleep tight and FAST!