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| Flash Flood Warning... and not all from perspiration |
The vendors on my half of the room asked each other when they were bugging out. I made some jocular comment as the exhibit manager came by, so I asked him flat out when we should expect to pack up. His response was wishy-washy, suggesting anytime after noon would be okay, but we were "encouraged to stay for the final drawing."
I didn't want to be the first one to tear my booth down. Well, that's a lie. I did, just not obviously so. Noon seemed like the perfect opportunity to start packing, but the several vendors took extremely long lunches, I couldn't employ my jedi mind trick and start the process until they came back. Luckily, the "burly guys used with the franchise moving boxes between points A and B" -- I can't think of the name for the group -- wandered the hall offering to pull out crates. I have a booth-in-a-tube, and the tube was buried under the $50 rented tablecloth. The other vendors came back, took that as a hint, and started boxing up their crap. I was so outta there.
I changed into civilian clothes. While I basked in the air conditioning, I surfed the Capital Metro bus schedules trying to figure out which bus to take to "Red River somewhere," home of Easy Street Recumbents, where I was planning to rent a bike. Mike, the owner, runs the business from his house. Because it's part-time, and Mike has a day job, there's no address published on the site. Everything is done by appointment only.
Mike gave me a quick, and much-needed walk-through of riding a recumbent. Key points:
- Start with the pedal at the 12 o'clock position
- Keep shoulders down, butt in the seat.
- Look where you want to go.
- Relax. - controls are very twitchy.
I put the bike in my room, toweled off, and walked to El Sol y la Luna for eggs, fruit, fried plantains and two gallons of iced tea. The lightning started. Soon, the rain started, and I do mean rain. Water pooled up as the official flood warning scrolled across every cable channel. The fancier ones feature bitmaps like the one above. Texas thunderstorms are spectacular.
If it's not pouring tomorrow, I plan to get some bike time in along Loop 360, meet with one of our industry "partners," have lunch with friend Elisa and then fly home.
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