Weekend in San Antonio

5 September 2011 0 Comments

What a fantastic weekend! For the first time in well over a year, I got to see my pals Dave and Noah. Oh, and Dave’s wife, Rebekah, too! The last time I saw them was at my wedding in Lubbock, back in May 2010. I was very happy that they came, especially since Dave and Rebekah had to drive several hours and Noah had to fly from Indiana. I was a little disappointed, though, because the wedding weekend was short and I didn’t get to spend as much time with them as I’d wanted. So earlier this year, with that in mind, we decided to have a geek’s reunion during the Labor Day weekend.

Jessica has long-standing plans to go to New York for her “Cosmo Con” event in a couple of weeks, so to save a little money, she decided not to come with me to San Antonio. She said, “You can just go have guy time.” So, Friday morning, I loaded my truck and headed to San Antonio. Noah was flying from Indiana, so I wanted to time my drive just right so that I could be at the airport to pick him up. I haven’t driven to San Antonio in four years, but I made it with no problem at all, and I arrived at the airport half an hour before Noah’s plane landed.

When I got to the airport, I walked straight to the flight status screens to check Noah’s flight number to make sure his flight would be on time. Instead of 12:30, it was listed as 3:30. Huh? That can’t be right. I whipped out my phone to re-read the email Noah forwarded with his flight details. Hmm… 12:30. The flight board also said it hadn’t take off yet. But Noah sent me a text message a few hours ago saying he was seated on the plane. Huh? Well, turns out the airline had a flight number mix-up, because there was another flight number that had the same times as the one Noah sent me. Odd. Oh well, other than the flight number confusion, I had no problems catching Noah. We headed to the truck and proceeded to Dave and Rebekah’s place.

Shortly after arriving at Dave and Rebekah’s, we decided to take a trip to RackSpace to see where Dave works. The tour of RackSpace’s newest facility was quite interesting, especially since it was built into into the old Windsor Park Mall (which closed about 6 years ago after financial decline following a shooting in 1992 and again in 1994). RackSpace has done a heck of a job at turning it into a nice place to work. Lots of it was still unfinished, though.

On the way to RackSpace, Noah revealed to us that he was re-enlisting in the Air Force. Congratulations, dude! That’s a mighty honorable thing to do, and I was happy for him — I know I couldn’t do it (again). He’ll be heading to his first duty station (in Ohio, I think) sometime this month.

The rest of Friday was spent chatting and catching up, and later that evening, Dave and Rebekah had friends from Bible study coming over to visit. We all had dinner, then played Mario Kart on the Wii. Our game play came to an abrupt halt when one of the guests killed the Wii accidentally while trying to turn off the controller. She didn’t know that the power button on each controller was for the entire system, not the controller. Oh well, it was a good stopping point, and everyone left. Afterward, Dave, Noah, and I fired up the PS3 for a round of Castle Crashers.

Saturday started with a pile of pancakes Rebekah made from scratch. Yum! Dave and I were a little tired, though, as we stayed up until about 2 am tinkering with a database problem (too geeky to talk about right now). After stuffing ourselves with the best sugar in the house, we sat for a moment to decide what we would do that day. We ended up driving to Cascade Caverns in Boerne to see the cave tour. Since we had no idea about tour times, we ended up being about an hour early, so we played a few rounds of pool to pass the time.

The tour through the cave was pretty slick. Literally. Just as we passed into the cave, Dave slipped and busted his ass. Our tour guide had only three rules when we started: 1) take nothing but pictures, 2) leave nothing but footprints, and 3) kill nothing but time. Well, thanks to Dave, she added a few more rules as we went: 4) no falling, 5) no questions, and 6) don’t get ahead of the tour guide. We had a pretty good time, but the rest of the group were pretty dull and quiet. Maybe Dave and I were obnoxious, but the tour guide seemed to have fun with us and I thought we made it a little more entertaining.

Anyway, what was great about the tour was that it was very cool down there — an excellent break from the summer heat! The cave is still 95% active, the tour guide told us, so all of the walls were totally wet and there were growing formations all over. They did a pretty good job of keeping things natural, sans the few handrails and water pumps (to keep the floors from flooding). There were plenty of places to gash your head and bust your elbow. At the very end was a pool with an opening to go even further down. That’s for the more serious explorers, though, except it wasn’t even open to the public yet. Maybe we’ll go back someday and do the part?

After the cave tour, we began to have an old favorite creep into our minds: Carino’s. But it was a bit too early in the day for dinner, so we decided to go bowling. Not much to speak of there — we only played one round, but had a good time anyway. After one round of bowling, the time had finally come to have dinner at our old Carino’s back when San Antonio only had one location on Loop 1604 and Bandera. I had my usual Spicy Shrimp and Chicken plate, and it was perfect. After dinner, we spent the rest of the evening playing Castle Crashers, being loud, and drinking Jack Daniels Tennessee Honey (well, Rebekah and I drank that, actually).

Sunday was spent at the shooting range. Dave and Rebekah brought a couple of old .22 Rugers, a .22 rifle, and a Springfield XD9 9mm. I brought my Taurus PT111 9mm, Taurus PT845 .45, Taurus 738 TCP .380, and Kel-Tec P-32 .32 (yeah, I like Taurus). We got an outdoor bay all to ourselves, which would have been great, except the wind was blowing so hard that none of our targets would stand still for more than a minute. .32 and .380 rounds are expensive, so I wasn’t going to waste them on wavy targets. Rebekah was eager to shoot my small .380 and .32, and I talked Noah into firing my .45. Although, I think I speak for everyone when I say we all had the most fun with their .22 rifle. Dave bought a 30-round banana clip for it from Academy earlier that day. The rifle has a scope on it, so once you got it lined up and steady, you could just keep pulling the trigger as fast as your finger would go. Yee-haw! After shooting in the summer heat, we headed home to shower off and clean guns.

Sunday evening was spent watching Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. Even though I’d already seen it a few times, I was just appalled that someone like Dave hadn’t seen it yet, so I was happy to watch it again. Dave really liked it, just as I expected. Rebekah made a casserole (I can’t remember what she called it), but it has some crushed Doritos, taco meat, cheeses, and all some other good stuff, and it was absolutely delicious. After the movie, guess what… yeah, we played Castle Crashers again until it was time to hit the sack.

Monday morning, we all rose extra early. Noah had to be at the airport by 8 am to catch his flight back home, so I volunteered to take him, and then head straight on out so I could be home by lunch to see my lonely wife. As Noah and I arrived at the airport, we exchanged a quick goodbye, and then he was gone. Just then, it hit me how fast our time had come and gone again. We all planned on this weekend for months, and now it was over. Geeze, how quickly time flies, eh?

I sure was glad to spend time with Dave and Noah — I think of them as brothers. I can’t wait to see them again soon.