Houston - There Is No Problem

My night at the Holiday Inn was better than expected. The staff were great and as I was a bit tired after the 5 hour drive and my walk through The Alamo I didn't even venture out. The hotel was virtually empty with an entire four people, including myself, troubling the chef and the wait staff that evening. I had an excellent steak and salad along with three glasses of wine and was ready to head for bed when the subject of margaritas came up and of course the bar lady claimed to make the best one ever. I threw down the challenge and we had a taste off. Australia won!!! I had the chef, the food and beverage director and the concierge all come out to judge. It was time for bed though, Houston Space Centre tomorrow then a five hour drive to New Orleans.

Danielle the Food & Beverage Director who who oversaw the margarita contest.

Ellie, one of the girls that I work with, put together a homemade booklet with a few facts about each state and some examples of their strange laws. Apparently in Texas it is illegal to have your hair cut in a startling or unusual manner, nor may you milk another persons cow. Well I don't think I broke any of those laws so I will have try harder as I enter Louisiana.

So the Space Center Houston, what can I say? It has wall to wall awesomeness that we have all wached on TV in the past. It is just something else to witness in the flesh, so to speak. The first thing you see as you drive through the main gates is the Space Shuttle mounted on its specially designed 747. Sadly it is not yet open to the public but work was clearly underway. Scaffolding and gantry are being built so it looks like sometime soon you will be able to walk through the space shuttle. Mind you they have a command bridge already that you can walk through now.

I got to check out the original mission control centre. It is no longer used and his been reset to 1965, the date of the first successful mission was run from it. There are apparently six mission controls here at Houston with the one running the International Space Station (ISS) just one floor below us. Sadly we didn't get to see that.

We then checked out all the module training stuff. They have full mock ups of the ISS along with some equipment currently being developed, namely the Orion spacecraft and the NASA entrants to the robotics championships.

We finished the tour part with a walk through Rocket Park which featured the rocket which helped drop Skylab on us back in 1979. However most impressive was an entire Saturn Rocket, the same type used to power the Apollo program. Words and pictures don't do the thing justice, it's huge.

Thee four pics above show the different stages of the rocket and are laid down end to end in a giant airconditioned shed.

So from there I hit the road to New Orleans. It was a hell of a drive. Google told me 5 hours and 5 minutes, reality told me 6.5 hours. At 3.06pm I crossed the State line and entered Louisiana. I had the first fail of the prepaid currency card at a gas station in Lafayette, I got caught in traffic jam in Baton Rouge. The weather got so bad at one point that I had to slow down to about 10 miles an hour. also I crossed the mighty Mississippi River which is huggggggeeeeee. I crossed a twin span brige that ran for 30 kilometres across the Lousiana bayou, it was pretty spectactular. I was so exhausted when I got to New Orlens (it was a little after 8.00pm) that I decided not to go anywhere other than the bar and order up some dinner before heading to bed. Tomorrow I awake to explore the wonderful world of New Orleans. The bar staff have given me the lowdown. so watch out New Orleans, here I come!