Listing Through Life

Generally when I’m on the road I like to visit places that are exclusive to the area. That’s why I was planning on visiting the George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum on Saturday. But that, and most of the other museums in Dallas, were closed due to the ice storm. I ended up at the aquarium because it was the only show in town. But even so, it was a pretty cool place to visit.

I had to enter through a side door because the tropical plants at the main entrance were covered with plastic to protect them from the cold.

Reviews on the Internet said that the aisles in this place were narrow — which they were — and that it was always so crowded that it was hard to move — which it wasn’t. I don’t think I saw more that 15 other visitors during the three hours I was there.

There are multiple levels, so some of the exhibits were visible from eye level and above and sometimes even from below.

There were a lot of birds, including many that were free-flying, and mammals and reptiles and amphibians along with the fish. It was really more of an indoor zoo than a typical aquarium.

They had a three-toed sloth that was free to crawl around in some small trees in the middle of the path without bars or netting. There was a young guy standing there to make sure nobody touched it or messed with it. When I first went past, the sloth was climbing up and down. The guy said nothing as I held the chair out for inspection. Later, it was sleeping curled up on a branch, but the guy was still dutifully watching.

The spotted jaguar was relaxing by the glass of its enclosure when I put the chair on the ledge. It took a swipe at it from a sitting position, then stood and made a more serious attempt. Then it slowly ambled away as though it had only been kidding and wasn’t really interested.

Later this cat had disappeared and a black one had taken its place. But that one was only interested in chewing on a piece of black piping and paid no attention to me or the chair.

Here’s the shark tank from above, with two people in the glass tunnel.

And a shot from inside.

The family in the photo above was speaking a language I didn’t recognize. They saw the chair when I pulled it out and laughed. A minute later, there was the sound of a conch shell being blown and a man and woman walked through in costumes and invited us to their show.

We followed them through the museum for a ways until they disappeared through a doorway. We could hear their show but didn’t see it until I finally found them on top of the jaguar cage.

After their dances, they explained about Mayan culture, then came down for photos.

I volunteered to take a photo of the family with the Mayans. The father asked me about the chair and seemed interested but unable to understand why I did it. He asked me if he could take a photo of the chair and I said sure — if I could take a photo of them with it. Their older daughter was playing gently with it, but she put it down just before I got the photo.

We got to talking. It turns out that he and his wife are from Moldova and immigrated five years ago — to Illinois. They were in Dallas on vacation and at the aquarium for the same reason I was — it was the only thing in town that was open. We laughed at the lack of snowplows and how the only people out on this day were from the north.

These Black-footed Penguins were outside, but even they seemed cold. Perhaps they’d acclimatized to typical Dallas weather. The high was about 20 degrees on this day.

A large tank contained creatures native to the Orinoco River, including a manatee. It was drifting about trying to extract food from a plastic pipe. While I was taking photos, a Dallas policeman walked through and said that on normal days, the crowd would be so thick I wouldn’t be able to see the manatee, much less take photos.

There was more — snakes and bats and owls and crocodiles and otters and all sorts of stuff. For a fall-back activity, it was a lot of fun. I’m glad I got to go — on a day when it was empty.

I knew before I headed for Texas for a conference that bad weather was predicted. It was overcast and cold when I landed. I drove from Dallas/Fort Worth Airport to the Holiday Inn Express in Plano on dry roads. But two hours later when I left the motel and drove the two miles to the conference, freezing rain had begun falling. The streets were still clear, but sidewalks and other surfaces were slippery.

The conference ended at 8:30, and I exited to a frozen world. My rental car was covered with a thin sheet of ice. I had no scraper, so I did what I could. I turned on the heat and rear-window defroster and sat in my car and waited. After about twenty minutes, I was able to use the rental car keys to clear about half my windshield and small holes in the ice on the side windows. I crept on the icy, nearly-empty roads back to my motel.

When I woke up the next morning, this was the view from my room.

And this is a close-up of a holly bush outside the motel.

My car looked like a frosted cake and I had to pound and yank on my doors to get inside. The owner of a van, also attending the conference it turned out, had a scraper. I asked him if I could borrow it. He said it would cost me — that when we got to heaven I could pay him back. I promised that if he ever needed an ice scraper in heaven, I would be there to lend him one.

Here’s my car after I’d been working on it for a while. I could only do so much because there was a line of people waiting for the scraper.

I took this photo to show how thick the ice was. This isn’t snow.

I was finally able to crawl to the church. The roads looked like this. I wasn’t using my windshield wiper — it was frozen in this position.

Dallas apparently has very few snowplows and only four sand trucks. The streets hadn’t been touched. There wasn’t a lot of traffic and what there was moved very slowly. The freezing rain continued until noon.

The start of the conference was delayed by two hours, so I had plenty of time to take these photos.

At 5:30, when the conference finished, things weren’t much better. The rain had stopped but the roads hadn’t been touched.

I wasn’t looking forward to an evening spent in my motel room, so I stopped at a large mall called The Shops at Willow Bend. About two thirds of the shops had never opened, and others had closed early. There were very few people around, and even Santa in his house was lonely.

He left about the time I got there, and I grabbed the opportunity to get a red chair photo.

An empty mall with closed stores didn’t entertain me for long. I drove to the motel and parked. There was a large strip mall about a quarter mile away. I set forth on foot in search of supper. The grass along the road was frozen stiff.

My first stop was a gas station/McDonald’s. It was open for gas, but the restaurant was shut.

Unless I wanted to return to my car and drive somewhere, my choices were two — a place called Chow that served sushi, and Joe’s Pizza. I chose the latter. There were only a few people eating inside, but there was a steady stream of carry-out business. I ordered tortellini with sausage and a side of fried mushrooms. Fifteen minutes later, I had my food. I walked it back to my room and spent the evening reading and watching Netflix.

I had scheduled my flight home on Saturday in the evening so I could spend some time at the George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum. But the library was closed due to the weather, as were several other museums I checked. I finally found one that was open — the Dallas World Aquarium downtown. (See next post.) It didn’t open until 10 and I had already checked out of my room, so I drove to a nearby Walgreens and bought a Diet Pepsi and considered my next move.

The roads hadn’t been touched and were, if anything, worse because the ice was frozen hard and had lost any slushiness. The few cars out and about were moving very, very slowly. The woman in this gray car was being so careful that I’m pretty sure I could have parked and passed her walking.

I parked on the sheet of ice in the mall lot, turned up the heat full blast and read for an hour. When it was close to time for me to leave, I got out of the car and pounded on it with my fists until I had broken off most of the ice.

The route to the aquarium was on the tollway. Two of the three lanes were clear and dry most of the way, although things were icy and slick on the overpasses. There wasn’t much traffic, but what there was would slow down and crawl anytime there was any amount of ice on the pavement. As I was exiting the highway by the museum, I saw one of the four sand trucks in the city.

The tropical plants at the aquarium entrance were covered with plastic to protect them from the 15 degree temperatures. I entered through a side door and for the next three hours I had the entire place almost to myself.

There wasn’t much else for me to do, so I headed for the airport. The tollway heading west was clear on the flat stretches, but the overpasses were tricky with hard, rutted ice that tossed my car back and forth. On one stretch of road that headed downhill with a distinct slant to the left, my car was slowly sliding toward a foot-high guard rail that may or may not have prevented me from falling about 50 feet to another road below. Fortunately, about the time it got really exciting, the pavement cleared and my wheels were able to grip.

I’d been receiving warnings that my flight could be potentially cancelled. It wasn’t, but many others were. So even if I had scheduled a flight for earlier in the day, I wouldn’t have gotten out of there until evening. A lot of people had spent the previous two nights on cots in the airport, and several were setting up for another night as the evening wore on.

I was so early that my flight wasn’t yet appearing on the departure board. A harried woman employee of American Airlines told me to go through security and find out about my flight on the other side. I think she was just trying to get rid of me, but I did as she said. I had six hours to kill. My first priority was to charge my phone. I found an outlet and read for an hour or so (Hellhound on His Trail, by Hampton Sides, about the assassination of Martin Luther King and the search for James Earl Ray).

I also happened upon this sculpture.

The plaque in the floor on top of which I put my suitcase read:

Circling An Urban Musical instrument by Christopher Janney, Artist

Begin North, walk the Westward path between III and IV

At the South weave up between 001 and TWO keeping score

Now quickly it’s 2 and 3

Take care to be

Back to where you departed

Listen to the harmonic labyrinth you started

I didn’t bother trying to figure it out.

When my flight finally showed up, I discovered I was in the wrong terminal. I caught the shuttle to my gate. What I could see out the window wasn’t comforting. The entire airport was still covered in ice except for small paths down the center of the runways.

I wasn’t interested in any of the restaurants in my terminal, and I still had plenty of time so I walked to yet another terminal and had an overcooked bacon cheeseburger at Chili’s which was a big mistake.

I still had an hour before my flight was scheduled to board, but the information wasn’t on the screen at my gate. I asked a woman behind the counter if it had been cancelled. She said no. But when I asked if it was on time, she laughed and said, “Nothing is on time today.” I sat and read some more — until she got on the intercom and said my gate had been moved to another one three spaces down.

More sitting and reading. The original time, 8:25, came and went. We were told we didn’t have an airplane yet. Then we had a plane but we didn’t have a crew. We were told they had just arrived at a different gate and were making their way toward us. Boarding time was moved to 9:00 and then 10:00. When the crew showed up, I recognized them. They’d been hanging around the gate a couple hours earlier before the plane had gotten there. They weren’t coming from another gate — they had been enjoying a leisurely dinner.

We finally boarded. The plane was only half full because of all the people who hadn’t made it to the airport, or even to Dallas, because of the storm. Then we sat some more while they filled the plane with standby passengers who’d had their flights cancelled. There were at least six pilots deadheading on the flight. If the pilot had been incapacitated for any reason, there were plenty of replacements on board.

Then we had to taxi to the de-icing station. I could hear the plane crunching through the ice as we went. The whole taxi-way was icy.

De-icing seemed to take forever. It was 11:10 when we finally left the ground. The flight only took an hour and 20 minutes because, we were told, we had a 160 mph tailwind and were traveling well over 600 mph. There was barely time for beverage service. I had alerted the limo company that my flight was delayed, so that was no issue. I walked in the door of my house at 2:00 a.m.

The storm messed up my sightseeing plans and stuck me in the airport a lot longer than I wanted to be there, but it could have been much worse.