ESA Fun

Wow, I've been a really slow blogger these days.

Anyway, after hanging out in Penasco with Dennis for a few days, Olivia, Abby, and I loaded the car and headed off for Texas. I rented a Kia Soul, which was advertised as an "intermediate" sized vehicle. I would argue with that. It was pretty darn small. But as we didn't take any dogs or camping gear with us, it all worked out. We left on Saturday at around noon. The first few hours of driving were gorgeous. Mountains and canyons and rivers and beauty. Then we hit Texas. Boooooorrrriiiiinnng. Abby thought so too. Since I had neglected to add Olivia as a driver when I rented the car, she was left with the task of "keeping Abby entertained." If you have kids, or have ridden with Abby, you know this is no small feat. Even though I was pretty sick of driving, I was secretly happy not to be the one straining my neck to read Slinky Malinky for the hundredth time, or the one playing games with folded toilet paper, or the one to get yelled at--"DON'T LOOK AT ME!"--repeatedly. After a couple hours we decided to let her watch a movie on my ipod touch.

After a good 6 hours in the car, we stayed at a hotel somewhere near Lubbock (a hotel that took about an hour to find and that had the weakest air-conditioning ever). That was the night that I called Alex to say goodnight, only to find that he was in the emergency room in New York (on his way home from a bike race) because he felt like he was having a heart attack. Wonderful. Don't worry, his heart is fine. Turns out he has gastro-esophogeal reflux disorder, or GERD. No biggie, just means he can't drink coffee, shouldn't drink too much beer, eat tomatoes, go biking, wear tight clothing, eat too fast, eat too much, or generally do anything even remotely normal or fun.

The next morning (Sunday) we took off for Austin. It was another long haul, about 6 hours again, but with the reward of not having to drive for another week and awesome air-conditioning. Rachel arrived later the same afternoon and my mom arrived the next day. Mostly we just hung out at the hotel room, went to talks, and went out to eat. It was much too disgusting outside to do much else. The first morning there I decided to walk with Abby to Whole Foods to buy some snacks. It was only 1.2 miles away. What a horrible experience. At 9 in the morning it was already like 100 degrees and was about 80% humidity. I was dripping sweat on my soaked through clothing by the time I arrived. I didn't walk very far after that. Rachel went running the same morning. I don't think she ran again after that. The highlights of our eating experience were Stubbs BBQ, Uncle Billy's Brew and Que, and The Gingerman. The crepe place was good too.

Hanging in the hotel room.


Eating Rachel's plum.

We did manage to do a couple of non-hotel, non-eating things. One day we decided to go to a nearby lake (because the nearby spring was closed for cleaning all day). The lake was surrounded by dead grass, litter, and vultures. Not very enticing. But we were so hot we got in anyway. A lot of good it did. The lake was probably 90 degrees. It felt like bath water. Abby seemed to like it, but the rest of us were pretty disappointed. It wasn't a total waste though, there were hundreds of pretty little dragonflies hanging around, just asking for their picture to be taken.

Drying off. (It didn't take long.)

Taking pictures.

Some pictures.

And of course, we had to go see the famous Congress Bridge bats. There are about 1.5 million Mexican free-tail bats that live there and they egress from under the bridge at about 7:30 pm every night.

The Bridge.

The Bats.


The Girls.

Here are a couple of short videos I took. (By the way, the scientists and the general public were distinguishable because the public said things like "EW! They're pooping on us!" while the scientists said things like "Did you know they forage almost 20 miles away?")

Video 1



Video 2



Oh yeah, and I guess Rachel and Olivia and I all gave talks at some point during the week...they were phenomenal, as I'm sure you guessed!