The “darker” photos are from the journey to work Wednesday morning. There was rain in Rockport as I left but it wasn’t until approaching Gregory that the sky started to look ominous. In Portland I was greeted with a flash of lightning and accompanying thunder clap. On the causeway you could hardly see for driving rain and by the time I got onto the bridge the traffic was doing 15mph.

Eddie helps to distribute the pizza

However, even although she was bribed to help her Daddy, she was in fact very helpful and carried the garland and bows to each lamppost and then wrapped the garland around each pole as I returned to firm ground to secure the bottom end of the garland with a zip tie. We decorated two streets this way and also managed to visit with other groups of volunteers to record their efforts in photographs and video. Click the icon for a link to the Youtube video we made of the event. After everyone was finished we returned to the House of Rock on Starr Street for a pizza and soda lunch.

Eddie in toy mode

Eddie in teenage mode

No sooner had the pizza and soda been consumed but I was reminded of the price my daughter’s help commanded and so it was off to La Palmera Mall where Eddie had very specific ideas about which shops we were going to visit. Picking up a directory on the way in I was impressed with my little girl’s navigation of the mall utilising the map. It was a confusing time for me as I was led from store to store first looking at 10 year old toy like things then moving on to clothing and jewelry type stuff more toward the 16 year old spectrum (I imagine – what would I know,

Eddie standing on "Mr Fishy"

I’m just the Daddy) Eddie purchased a stuffed toy (category 1 I suspect) and appeared to be very keen to remain within sight of her Daddy. Then she disappeared amongst the jewelry and seemed quite content to not know where I had gone. (For the avoidance of my dear wife’s doubt – I always knew the whereabouts of our daughter!) Eddie was determined to purchase earrings and took much time selecting a pair of little yellow ducks; sadly I felt the need of telephone consultation with Mommy who delivered the sad news that Eddie’s choice was not of suitable quality. It’s an allergy thing, we know from past experience that if Eddie wears anything “cheap” she will suffer an allergic reaction and so precious metal is the way to go. Thinking to avoid disappointment I heard myself say “Never mind Pet, I’ll take you to the Treehouse Art Collective on the way home”. And so it was to be that we visited the Treehouse, Eddie bought two pairs of suitable earrings, and she got to visit with Mr Fishy again (the 10 year old coming out again I guess).

And so the denouement of our Daddy / daughter day drew to a close. We headed home via Aransas Pass to collect Little Ted who had been staying with a friend overnight. When we picked him up he was full of horse riding stories the likes of which he might wish to moderate prior to enthusing to his mother – just saying.

Little Ted with "the attached bike"

On Sunday Little Ted volunteered to get started with our training for the 2012 Conquer the Coast bicycle event. I thought he had forgotten all about it or simply didn’t want to take part. However, like the proverbial elephant, Little Ted has a) remembered and b) decided to eat the task one bite at a time – starting today! Of course there was a catch. He also remembered that, when suggesting that an eight year old cycle 65 miles with me, I had told him we would use “the attached bike”. When he is 9 going on 10 he will be much bigger and heavier and therefore, in my opinion, able to use his own bike. This is not his view at all.

Little Ted and Ted

Anyway I am grateful for anything he is happy to do with his Daddy and so we put the bike together and set off to the local park to begin our training with a 6.5 mile cycle. I’m thinking he has his sights set on the time trial stage of Conquer the Coast (dream on mate!) as he was obsessed with reaching 21mph in the park. I have told him that I once reached 42mph going downhill from Scotland into England and so he decided 21 mph would be a fair target for us (for us read the Daddy engine) to reach on a flat course. We did achieve that speed and Little Ted went to sleep early and exhausted. (Still not sure quite how he comes to be the exhausted one!)

Here is a YouTube video  slideshow of our day.

What was I thinking – ils sont francais!

Given the life she has led I think that, all things considered, she is still an amazing personality. Many folks her age look worse and sound as they look. At 62 (2009) she still gets my vote. Actually she now looks a bit like one of my neighbors and that is scary weird.

The sun comes up and brings the dawn
As usual

Saturday afternoon comes around and through the London fog I hear – Brenda Lee

Frankly I’m surprised I never displayed suicidal tendancies!

This all took place when I was eight years old and has perhaps lodged itself in my memory because Mr Acker Bilk, in my mind anyway, was a dead ringer for my Uncle Leonard and it was he (Leonard) who was responsible for filling my living room with both the music of Acker Bilk and a London fog like accumulation of cigarette smoke on Saturday afternoons prior to the weekly materialization of Dr Who’s TARDIS.

In spite of this inauspicious start to Friday it did turn out ok and I got to have one of those “only in Texas” moments that I have occasionally when I noticed my “big truck” had been overshadowed by another “BIGGER TRUCK”

Usually when I get into my little F150 and drive off down the road the outside temperature indicator falls a few degrees; not this weekend.
When I got in the truck on Saturday afternoon it registered 105F and as I approached the Harbor Bridge it went up to 106F and stayed there all the way to Rockport!

I am an only child from a “distant”, rather than a close family and therefore have limited recollections to roll out of a family nature. Having said that I do recall that when my Uncle Alan returned to Edinburgh from Scunthorpe, bringing with him my Aunt Drene, Cousin Ian, and Cousin Alistair, we did congregate on a Saturday afternoon [sometimes] along with my Uncle Leonard and Aunt Annette in our house. [ for our house read "the house my grandmother lived in" with my mother and myself ] Mother and Leonard worked on a Saturday morning and so everyone gravitated to our house “after work” on Saturday to smoke heavily and check their football pools. [ ancient equivalent of the modern lottery ] My memory of these times is one of boredom and disgust [ I never have smoked or tolerated smoking in my vicinity ] only assuaged by the knowledge that after the football [ soccer ] results were finished the next program on the BBC was Dr Who, a firm childhood favorite and well worth the wait.

Dr Who – the William Hartnell years. I guess everyone has their favorite “Doctor” and so those who do not know definitively can now guess at my age based on this admission.
Here is a YouTube video offering a glimpse of the excitement of my youth together with the evocative anthem to which it played out.

As I went about my business of distributing DTown Delivers and ArtWalk / Corpus Christi First advertising materials to Downtown Hotels this morning my eye was taken out into the bay by the sight of two “little” tugs chugging Eastwards. Ah-ha, I thought, a tanker must be heading into port. And so, being a tad nerdy, I whipped out my trusty HTC EVO, logged onto the CCConnect Wi-Fi network and checked Marine Traffic.com to find out that there were indeed two tankers trundling towards t’port. The “Overseas Maremar”, a US flagged tanker and The “Delta Ocean” originating from Greece.

The Overseas Maremar became the subject of an earlier Facebook posting whereas I decided to drive down under the Harbor Bridge to get a close view of the Delta Ocean. Here are the photos taken as the ship approached the Port of Corpus Christi:

The best picture of the morning would have been of the two tugs maneuvering the Delta Ocean into the dock next to the already berthed Overseas Maremar taken through the Harbor Bridge. However this was not to be as Corpus Christi’s answer to big city transit cops approached me and told me I was not allowed to take photographs pointing into the Port. This is an interesting, if redundant, notion given the amount of information available to anyone intent upon malfeasance and with access to the Internet. As evidenced by the copious amounts of information freely available online regarding the Port of Corpus Christi and the vessels sailing to and from said port – check out the links in this blog entry and, whilst you’re at it, try Google Earth for views of the Port. Satellite views are pretty revealing, maybe not live feed, but still probably more useful to miscreants than innocent photographs of public places taken by members of the public from the public sidewalk.

Of course, in my book, arguing with port security personnel is right up there with shouting at cops and verbally abusing TSA or USCIS personnel. It’s just not something a sane, sensible, and civic minded individual would want to do. However, after first politely complying with the request to put my camera away, I did take this chap to task over his contention that it was not legal to take photographs within the Port. He was unable to articulate exactly why he “was right” and at the same time unable to effectively counter my suggestion that it is probably my constitutional right to be allowed to take photographs of “things in plain sight”. Anyway, having agreed to disagree (and to put the camera away), we continued to chat for a while and discovered that, in our respective teenage years, we had encountered similar amusing experiences of flying military training aircraft.

So my advice to photographers challenged regarding their right to photograph:

Comply with polite requests immediately
Ask who is talking to you
Ask by what authority they make their request
Turn potential conflict into a pleasant chat and leave everyone smiling.