Traveling Man

We are in Texas at the moment…San Antonio to be exact. This trip has been planned for nearly a year and although we have been here several times before it is a city we love and I was determined that we would go on with our plans as normal. This time we brought along my mother to introduce her to the sights and flavors of this wonderful city.

Some people think I was crazy to attempt a trip with these two that are so dear to me. Dave has difficulty talking and absorbing conversation and mom is hard of hearing so my plan is if no one is listening I will just talk to myself! I am the sole driver of our rented vehicle with no GPS and neither is any good at navigation, although Dave has the edge on mom. We flew into Austin at night and drove 90 minutes in Seattle-worthy rain with windshield wipers on hyper-drive. The locals have been experiencing a drought so long that the young-uns have no idea what rain is so you can imagine how badly they handled driving in a deluge. I was a bit frazzled by the time we checked in.

Dave is a history buff and he loves his cowboy history…so this place is a gem! Bandera, a hill town outside SA, touts itself as “The Cowboy Capital of the World” but it is The Alamo in the center of the city of SA that sparks a light in Dave’s eyes. (I am still flummoxed why the creators of The Alamo chose to build it smack dab in the center of the tourist district!) It was Dave’s 3rd visit to this small crumbling former mission made famous by its suicidal last stand in 1836 and you would have thought it was his first by the excitement he showed. His reading and talking skills leapt a notch while there and it gave me insight into how to implement improvement for the future.

Another upturn is the partial return of his appetite and the plethora of BBQ joints hereabouts is handy! The stroke seemed to have affected his taste buds and his formerly ample keenness for food had him eating like an anorexic teen. A few foods like BBQ seem to be the exception and we have taken advantage of the region and have eaten BBQ every day since arrival. I have teased Dave about his svelte figure now that he has dropped 30 pounds but I am relieved I no longer have to prod him relentlessly to consume life sustaining calories. Now if only the pounds he is losing don’t keep transferring to me!